The Social Roles of Journalism

Journalism is valued, contested, and sometimes attacked, because of the role it plays or potentially plays in society. Journalists collectively develop a sense of what social good they provide in the world, partly to provide direction in their daily work and partly to defend their authority in the face of competing visions of what journalism should be and do.

The Social Roles of Journalism explores how journalism’s place in the world is in near constant (re)creation, (re)interpretation, appropriation, and contestation. It investigates how journalism’s roles have been created, conceived and practiced around the world and why journalists often struggle to perform the roles they value. The book identifies the characteristics, types, and levels of roles – in doing so, it develops a model of how roles are internalized, enacted, reflected upon, normalized, and negotiated. Ultimately, the book intends to bring greater clarity to the broad and often fragmented work on journalistic roles, introducing a novel and integrative theoretical framework on which future research can build.

This book is an essential resource for advanced students and scholars of journalism.