The struggle for authority and legitimacy

Autor(en): Sandra Banjac, Folker Hanusch
Abstrakt: Scholarship has pointed to an artificial hierarchy between political and lifestyle journalism that is rooted in norms and values stemming from Western-liberal thought. Within this distinction, lifestyle journalism has been subordinated as occupying a marginal or peripheral position in the field. Yet, how journalists perceive this distinction has rarely been studied empirically. This study draws on concepts of ‘boundary work’ and ‘othering’ to examine how political and lifestyle journalists discursively reinforce and contest boundaries and hierarchies. Through semi-structured interviews with 22 lifestyle and 26 political journalists and editors in South Africa, we show that political and lifestyle journalists engaged in both intra-field (self-)expansion, and (self-)expulsion and (self-)othering, by evoking several boundary markers. Boundaries were reinforced through gendered discourses, autonomy ideals, claims to specialization and accessibility in news beats and presentation, beliefs about political journalism’s preservation of humanity, and greater risks to safety of political journalists. Boundaries were challenged by politicizing lifestyle journalism and popularizing political journalism, providing a counter-narrative to political journalism’s negativity, and treating lifestyle journalism as economically beneficial.
Organisation(en): Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft
Externe Organisation(en): University of Groningen
Journal: Journalism
Band: 24
Seiten: 2155-2173
Anzahl der Seiten: 19
ISSN: 1464-8849
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849221125702
Publikationsdatum: 09-2022
Peer-reviewed: Ja
ÖFOS 2012: 508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft, 508014 Publizistik
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete: Communication, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Link zum Portal: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/the-struggle-for-authority-and-legitimacy(6dd4e4ee-bb64-49a5-849f-45767caf7d67).html