Journalistic epistemology and digital news circulation: Infrastructure, circulation practices, and epistemic contests. (February 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Carlson, Matt
• Other Names: Ekström Mats guest-editor.; Lewis Seth C. guest-editor.; Westlund Oscar guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: New media & society. Volume 22:Number 2(2020)
• Page Start: 230
• Page End: 246
• Publication Date: 2020-02
• Subjects: Authority -- circulation -- digital journalism -- epistemology -- knowledge -- news audiences; Mass media -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Mass media and culture -- Periodicals; Information technology -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Internet -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 302.2305
• DOI: 10.1177/1461444819856921
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1461-4448

Abstract

The digital media environment provokes many questions about the state of journalism as a knowledge producing practice. As a means to better assess how changing digital news practices connect to journalists' epistemic authority, this article combines Ekström's emphasis on journalistic epistemology as a social practice of knowledge production with Bødker's conceptualization of circulation both as a form of information transmission and as a site for producing shared meanings about journalism. To develop a model for analyzing the epistemic consequences of digital news circulation, three components of circulation are explored: infrastructure, circulation practices, and epistemic contests. These components consider, respectively, the materiality of digital media, various usage patterns that arise, and public struggles over what news as a form of knowledge ought to look like and who should produce it.