Dealing with the mess (we made): Unraveling hybridity, normativity, and complexity in journalism studies

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the rise and use of the concept of hybridity in journalism studies. Hybridity afforded a meaningful intervention in a discipline that had the tendency to focus on a stabilized and homogeneous understanding of the field. Nonetheless, we now need to reconsider its deployment, as it only partially allows us to address and understand the developments in journalism. We argue that if scholarship is to move forward in a productive manner, we need, rather than denote everything that is complex as hybrid, to develop new approaches to our object of study. Ultimately, this is an open invitation to the field to adopt experientialist, practice-based approaches that help us overcome the ultimately limited binary dualities that have long governed our theoretical and empirical work in the field.

Encoding the UX: User Interface as a Site of Encounter between Data Journalists and Their Constructed Audiences

“…From a methodological perspective, our study offers a novel approach to analysing the process of encoding UXs, by combining semi-structured interviews with multimodal discourse analysis, and interactive design analysis, of artefacts. Such multimethod research design answers calls within journalism studies for more nuanced investigations of complex situations and phenomena (Witschge et al 2018;Carlson et al 2018). Our findings combine producer and artefact analysis insights, where appropriate, to offer a rich, contextually sensitive and nuanced picture of data journalism UX design practice.…”

“…12 data journalism stories (Table 2) were selected because our informants viewed them as examples of their practice, which allowed for artefact observations to be combined with interview data, offering a richer analysis. Following calls for a more situational, contextually sensitive approach to journalism studies (Witschge et al 2018), the corpus represents a range of data journalism formats, of varying levels of interactivity and cognitive immersion to give an account of the multiplicity and nuances of UX design practice.…”

Mediated Skewed Diffusion of Issues Information: A Theory

“…Information flows within this hybrid media ecosystem, supplemented by interpersonal communication (Chadwick, 2013;Coleman et al, 2016). Understanding this hybrid media approach allows scholars to account for the complexity of online media ecologies and move beyond a binary perspective on the field (Witschge, Anderson, Domingo, & Hermida, 2018).…”

Social Media and Journalism: 10 Years Later, Untangling Key Assumptions

“…Finally, as authors, we are not immune to critique in this process. Having published many studies in this area, including one of the most-cited works on journalists' use of Twitter [46], we are well aware that we have contributed to the some of the problems outlined below and thus, akin to Witschge and colleagues [87], are "dealing with the mess (we made)" as self-critically as possible.…”