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Sharing the News: Toward a Construct of Epistemic Interoperability.
- Source :
- Conference Papers -- International Communication Association; 2012 Annual Meeting, p1-31, 31p
- Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- In 1978, Gaye Tuchman encouraged sociologists and media scholars to consider journalism as a system of knowledge. In this paper, I take up her challenge with an eye toward online news. I begin by arguing that much of the classic sociological research in communication that examines journalistic practices, coming as it does from decades when the influence of mass media was at its height, has tended to focus on the manner in which journalists serve as gatekeepers, limiting public access to information. I assert that today, in the digital age, journalists are much more explicitly embedded in--and reliant on--an online information ecosystem in which many other systems of knowledge coexist and circulate information alongside the news media. I argue that media researchers would therefore do well to implement insights from science and technology studies, where sociologists and historians have developed tools for examining how systems of knowledge are constructed and how they interact. Borrowing from the sociology of scientific knowledge on the one hand and Tuchman's (1978) work on the other, I flesh out what it would mean to think of news and other centers of cultural production online as epistemic cultures (Knorr Cetina, 1999) centered around distinct systems of knowledge. Subsequently, I review several existing lenses within communication and science studies that examine how different systems of knowledge interact and trade with one another. And finally, I conclude by attempting to tie together the various literatures discussed throughout the paper into a theoretical lens for examining how the interaction of various systems of knowledge online might be considered in relation to news production, as well as the production practices of other epistemic cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- INTERNETWORKING
SOCIOLOGISTS
JOURNALISM
SOCIOLOGICAL research
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- Supplemental Index
- Journal :
- Conference Papers -- International Communication Association
- Publication Type :
- Conference
- Accession number :
- 85900528