New(s) Times

Available from: Simon Cottle Retrieved on: 07 December 2015
Simon Cottle
New(s) Times ι Towards a 6 Second Wave9 of News Ethnography
Abstract In this article the author argues that a 'second wave9 of news ethnographies is needed to theoretically map and empirically explore the production of today's fast-changing and differentiated news ecology. It is necessary to bring up-to-date, and revise, where necessary, earlier findings and theory established by influential 'first wave9 studies of news production. To this end, this article challenges the position of six interrelated, and seemingly entrenched, theoretical 'orthodoxies9 within the field of news study, and argues that each has become increasingly out of touch with today9 s production practices, diversified news ecology and wider news culture. A question mark is thus placed by the continuing validity and explanatory power of established views on news production, and a number of productive 'ethnographic departures9 are opened up for future research. Introduction In the fast-changing fields of media and media research, studies that once challenged researchers and students to rethink the basic positions of accepted theory can all too quickly become ritually rehearsed and accepted as orthodoxy. An orthodoxy, by definition, tends to dull serious reflection and can inhibit further research. Such is now arguably the case with the 'first wave' of substantive news production studies conducted across the 1970s and 1980s (for example: Warner, 1971; Epstein, 1973; Altheide, 1976; Murphy, 1976; Tuchman, 1973, 1978; Schlesinger, 1978; Golding & Elliott, 1979; Gans, 1979; Bantz, McCorkle & Baade, 1980; Fishman, 1980; Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987; Solpski, 1989).1 Though relatively few in number, ethnographic studies such as these proved to be highly influential. Collectively they demonstrated how the indepth study of news producers, their cultural milieu and professional domains could help to explain the dynamics and determinants of news output and, as such, they served to qualify the generalizing and largely speculative theories of that time. Both 'underdeveloped' instrumentalist ideas of news control and conspiracy, for example, as well as structurally 'over-determined' theories of news as ideological reproduction, came up against the more grounded
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‘New(s) Times: Towards A “Second Wave” of News Ethnography.’
Communications 25 (2000) 1
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theorization of news manufacture of these in-depth studies. These studies simply helped to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between (and contingencies of) news production and the functioning of those in power. Since many of these ethnographic studies were conducted, however, much news ink has dried up for good under the bridge of technological change, and economic, regulatory and cultural forces have also played their part in the radical, and often professionally traumatic, reconfiguration of news corporations, news production and journalist practices. Today, digital technologies, satellite and cable delivery systems as well as the opportunities for convergence that these provide, have all stimulated the pursuit by corporate news players of new(s) synergies and profits through the simultaneous production for multimedia news outlets (Murdock, 1990; Herman & McChesney, 1997; Boyd-Barrett, 1998; Thussu, 1998). These changes, in turn, have paved the way for 'multi-skilled' journalists who are now often obliged by short-term contacts and flattened career structures to turn to 'flexible' work practices, and 'package' news according to increasingly standardized formats (Altheide & Snow, 1991; Bromley, 1997; Franklin, 1997; Franklin & Murphy, 1998; Cottle, 1995, 1999). Today 'news culture' (Allan, 1999) is no longer confined to the professional milieu inhabited by news workers and their immersion in an impinging web of news factuality plied and constructed by competitor colleagues and news organizations. For those living in advanced, late-capitalist societies news has become seemingly all-pervasive and an inescapable part of modern existence. For many news is embedded in the temporal flows and spatial arrangements of everyday life (Scannell, 1992; Silverstone, 1994). It is also deeply insinuated within, as well as conditions the public rituals of politics and state (Chaney, 1986; Carey, 1989; Dayan & Katz, 1992), and it 'mediates' the play of contending interests, corporate public relations and the 'social explosiveness' of 'manufactured uncertainties' in the so-called 'risk society' (Deacon & Golding, 1994; Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1989; Miller, 1998; Beck, 1992). Even yesteryear's 'folk devils', it seems, now often 'fight back' via the news media (McRobbie, 1994). News assumes a rich variety of cultural forms, it serves both the domains of 'serious' and 'popular' culture and in addition to traditional print and broadcasting mediums it is now also delivered by online technologies. The latest '24-hour-real-time', capabilities of news (MacGregor, 1997; McNair, 1999), according to contemporary social theorists, help to visualize, stretch and create a sense of interconnectedness with the global and the local, as well as with each other (Giddens, 1991; Tomlinson, 1994; Thompson, 1995). In short, it is not journalist hyperbole to say that today's 'mediated' society is suffused with an impinging news culture and we are, to coin a phrase, living in 'new(s) times'.2 Although the positions of contemporary social theory grant center stage to the concerns of media, mediated culture and identity, they too often (as in the past) advance their claims about the news media without attending to the