Taking a contextual and historical approach, Journalism, Technology and Cultural Practice provides an accessible introduction to the various stages of journalism’s adoption and exploitation of technology from print to digital.
This foundational text explains the cultural norms and practices that have developed within journalism, why the industry has evolved in the way it has, and what this may mean for the direction of journalistic practices in the future. Readers will examine key technological developments from printing, through radio and television, to contemporary digital developments, whilst also tracing the major cultural shifts empowered by these changes over time. Conboy additionally highlights how journalists have been actors in these processes and have had a central role in defining the culture of their practice.
Journalism, Technology and Cultural Practice is a valuable resource for students of Journalism/Media History and Journalism/Media and Society.
Author(s): Martin Conboy
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 213
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Print and journalism: The contexts of technology
Introduction
Print and news
Journalism as continuity
Capitalism and communication
Postal distribution of news
Affordances of print
Print technology
Miscellaneous printed material
Printed news
Commercial implications
Audiences, markets and reception
Reformation: conduit and crucible
Journalism as a radical communication shift
Early periodical publications
Printed news: discussion and resistance
Policymakers
The formation of a public sphere
Journalism’s radical renewal
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Journalism: Industrial capitalism and civic claims
Introduction
The transformative power of steam
The industrialisation of print
Developments in paper manufacturing
Combining technological networks
Telegraphy and the compression of time-space
The rise of news agencies
Typewriters and telephones: speeding up reporting
Some consequences of speed
Technology and the workforce
The cultural implications of technological infrastructure
The power of imperial networks
Resistance to hegemony
Professional levelling
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The recurring issue of the image in news
Introduction
The image and printing
Images, news and popular culture
The stand-alone print
Woodcuts as an educational illustration
Image as popular entertainment
Woodcut revival
The Illustrated London News – image as entrepreneurial catalyst
Wider cultural considerations of image in news
Illustration as a social and political intervention
Continuity and change?
Editorial cartoons
Photography: a slow incorporation
Technological convergence and expanding markets
The discursive appeal of photojournalism
Photography’s tabloid turn
Ideological framing
Photojournalism and the digital
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Radio journalism: The power of the voice
Introduction
Broadcasting to the masses: anxieties and aspirations
Social and political contexts
Commercial considerations
The substance of radio journalism
The US model
The British solution
Institutionalising radio journalism
The British model gains traction
The authenticity of live broadcasting
Post-war developments
From phone-ins to shock jocks: opinion bites back
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Television journalism: Entertainment and authority
Introduction
Repurposing the technological terrain
The image: progress or problem?
Chronology of development in the US
Chronology of development in the UK
The British duopoly
Benefits of commercial pressure
Shiny new things: the expense of innovation
The defining feature of the anchor
Generic limitations
The gendered screen
The tabloid metaphor
Entertainment as opinion
Rolling news: technology and expectation shifts
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Print’s gestation: Between broadcasting and the digital
Introduction
The succession of telegraph and telephone
Radio re-shaping the press
Photography and image: discourse and materiality
Precursors to the digital age
Computers as business solutions
Political-economic synergies
From page to screen
Online newspapers
Colour as metonymic in the UK
Industrial resistance
The case of Wapping
Post-Wapping
The extended screen
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Profit and control in the digital era
Introduction
Digital journalism’s features
Diversity and its disruptive potential
The ambivalence of challenges to authority
Some precursors to digital journalism
Advertising: the disappearing dividend
Advertising pressurising content
The digital and technological debate: a continuity
Techno-determinism
Social determinism
Responses to polarities: the digital and democracy
The residual influence of journalism’s institutional base
Long-term social changes
Actor Network Theory
Business models: the heart of the matter
Business survival models
Testing the audience
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Consumption and contribution in the digital era
Introduction
Preliminary context
Contemporary change
Journalism and news: distinguishing features and continuities
Generic conventions
Sharing: extending a practice
Challenging and reinforcing boundaries
Incorporating the audience
The audience responds
Institutions and feedback: an asymmetrical relationship
Journalists and the digital
Gatekeeping in the digital era
Reasserting journalism?
Journalists: redefining their terrain
Live blogs as journalistic practice
Twitter as a nexus of digital challenges
Twitter’s negative functionality
Journalists and Twitter
The marginalisation of non-elite users
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
