No abstract

No abstract

This article by the Digital Journalism Editorial Team surfaces with the explicit ambition to reassess the field of Digital Journalism Studies and map a future editorial agenda for Digital Journalism. The article dissects two important and closely interrelated questions: "What is 'digital journalism'?", and "What is 'digital journalism studies'?" Building on the commissioned conceptual articles and the review article also published in this issue, we define Digital Journalism Studies as a field which should strive to critically explore, document, and explain the interplay of digital and journalism, continuity and change, and further focus, conceptualize, and theorize tensions, configurations, power imbalances, and the debates these continue to raise for digital journalism and its futures. We also present a useful heuristic device-the Digital Journalism Studies Compass-anchored around digital and journalism, and continuity and change, as a guide for discussing the direction of the growing field and this journal.

No abstract

This essay reconceptualizes “social capital” as it relates to scholarship regarding the traditional news media. Much academic attention links the news media to Robert Putnam's view which focuses on social capital as enhancing “civic pride” and collective/community involvement. I suggest Putnam's perspective is often adopted without wider exploration of what the theory may offer the future of the commercial news media in western societies. This essay proposes the term “mediated social capital” may be a more suitable lens through which to consider this theory, taking a cue from Pierre Bourdieu who views social capital as a resource of power that may be utilized to maintain or build a position of advantage.