Press-Public Collaboration as Infrastructure: Tracing News Organizations and Programming Publics in Application Programming Interfaces. (May 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ananny, Mike
• Other Names: Forte Andrea guest-editor.; Lampe Cliff guest-editor.; Wellman Barry guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: American behavioral scientist. Volume 57:Number 5(2013)
• Page Start: 623
• Page End: 642
• Publication Date: 2013-05
• Subjects: open collaboration -- networked online journalism -- press-public infrastructure -- application programming interface -- news organizations; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 300
• DOI: 10.1177/0002764212469363
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0002-7642

Abstract

Understanding and evaluating systems for open collaboration depends, in part, on appreciating their normative and institutional contexts. In this article, I examine press-public collaboration by tracing how and why news organizations both distance themselves from and depend on networked actors outside the newsroom to achieve professional and organizational goals. I situate contemporary press-public networks within infrastructure scholarship, review their relationship to models of the public sphere, and trace the motivations and assumptions embedded within news organizations' application programming interfaces, software toolkits that let those outside the newsroom access and repurpose journalistic data.