This article presents findings from a 1-year-long ‘online news ethnography’ and 20 semistructured interviews conducted in Italian local newsrooms. It explores journalists’ practices in their relations with sources throughout the entire process of news production: discovering, gathering, and writing news. The relation between institutional sources and journalists sees the former acquiring increasing importance for the latter. At the same time, journalists guarantee access also to a limited array of non-elite sources. The result is what can be called the ‘pluralization’ of primary definers: the extensive and unframed use of a wide range of sources (mainly institutional, but also non-elite). Whether this asymmetrical coverage reinforces or weakens conceptions of political, social, and cultural power should be investigated further, but the work of journalists as watchdogs appears to be in danger.
The dominance of institutional sources and the establishment of non-elite ones : The case of Italian online local journalism / S. Splendore. - In: JOURNALISM. - ISSN 1464-8849. - (2017 Aug 01). [Epub ahead of print] [10.1177/1464884917722896]
The dominance of institutional sources and the establishment of non-elite ones : The case of Italian online local journalism
S. Splendore
2017
Abstract
This article presents findings from a 1-year-long ‘online news ethnography’ and 20 semistructured interviews conducted in Italian local newsrooms. It explores journalists’ practices in their relations with sources throughout the entire process of news production: discovering, gathering, and writing news. The relation between institutional sources and journalists sees the former acquiring increasing importance for the latter. At the same time, journalists guarantee access also to a limited array of non-elite sources. The result is what can be called the ‘pluralization’ of primary definers: the extensive and unframed use of a wide range of sources (mainly institutional, but also non-elite). Whether this asymmetrical coverage reinforces or weakens conceptions of political, social, and cultural power should be investigated further, but the work of journalists as watchdogs appears to be in danger.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
---|---|---|---|
2017_Splendore_Journalism.pdf
accesso riservato
Descrizione: Online first
Tipologia:
Publisher's version/PDF
Dimensione
401.7 kB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
401.7 kB | Adobe PDF | Visualizza/Apri Richiedi una copia |
1464884917722896.pdf
accesso riservato
Tipologia:
Publisher's version/PDF
Dimensione
94.06 kB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
94.06 kB | Adobe PDF | Visualizza/Apri Richiedi una copia |
Pubblicazioni consigliate
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.