The Life Informatic : : Newsmaking in the Digital Era / / Dominic Boyer.

News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? In The Life Informatic, Dominic Boyer offers the first ant...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Backlist 2000-2013
VerfasserIn:
Place / Publishing House:Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2013]
©2013
Year of Publication:2013
Language:English
Series:Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (240 p.) :; 10 halftones, 2 line drawings
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Acknowledgments --
Prologue --
Introduction: News Journalism Today --
1. The Craft of Slotting: Screenwork, Attentional Practices, and News Value at an International News Agency --
2. Click and Spin: Time, Feedback, and Expertise at an Online News Portal --
3. Countdown: Professionalism, Publicity, and Political Culture in 24/7 News Radio --
4. The News Informatic: Five Reflections on News Journalism and Digital Liberalism --
Epilogue: Informatic Unconscious: On the Evolution of Digital Reason in Anthropology --
Notes --
Bibliography
Summary:News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? In The Life Informatic, Dominic Boyer offers the first anthropological ethnography of contemporary office-based news journalism. The result is a fascinating account of journalists struggling to maintain their expertise and authority, even as they find their principles and skills profoundly challenged by ever more complex and fast-moving streams of information.Boyer conducted his fieldwork inside three news organizations in Germany (a world leader in digital journalism) supplemented by extensive interviews in the United States. His findings challenge popular and scholarly images of journalists as roving truth-seekers, showing instead the extent to which sedentary office-based "screenwork" (such as gathering and processing information online) has come to dominate news journalism. To explain this phenomenon Boyer puts forth the notion of "digital liberalism"-a powerful convergence of technological and ideological forces over the past two decades that has rebalanced electronic mediation from the radial (or broadcast) tendencies of the mid-twentieth century to the lateral (or peer-to-peer) tendencies that dominate in the era of the Internet and social media. Under digital liberalism an entire regime of media, knowledge, and authority has become integrated around liberal principles of individuality and publicity, both unmaking and remaking news institutions of the broadcast era. Finally, Boyer offers some scenarios for how news journalism will develop in the future and discusses how other intellectual professionals, such as ethnographers, have also become more screenworkers than fieldworkers.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780801467356
9783110536157
DOI:10.7591/9780801467356
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Dominic Boyer.