Aarhus Universitets segl

Journalism Studies GUEST LECTURE

“What Would a Cosmopolitan Journalism Revolution Look Like?”

Oplysninger om arrangementet

Tidspunkt

Torsdag 7. oktober 2021,  kl. 16:00 - 18:00

Sted

Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N, Building 5335, room 016, The Peter Bøgh Auditorium

Arrangør

Henrik Bødker

This talk uses the experience of co-authoring the forthcoming The Journalism Manifesto (Polity Press) with Barbie Zelizer (Annenberg, UPenn) and Pablo Boczkowski (Northwestern) as a jumping off point for theorizing what a truly revolutionary cosmopolitan journalism (and cosmopolitan journalism studies) would look like. The talk begins by briefly summarizing the main conclusions of The Manifesto and detailing the market rationale for its odd existence. The second and longer part of the talk reflects on how one of the authors (Anderson), in attempting to write global manifesto for journalism revolution, was forced to grapple with the universality (or not) of journalism and journalism studies itself.

Within journalism studies this talk argues that the field has recently embraced two normative impulses that are difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, after several decades discussing technology, digital business models and the social organization of newswork, journalism studies is now analyzing and critiquing the normative values of journalism. At the same time, the field is increasingly adopting a comparative, global level of analysis. This, especially when China enters the picture, raises the question of the universality of journalistic values in the first place.

Within journalism itself, on the other hand, there is an increasingly essentialist understanding of “localism,” one which is part and parcel of a larger essentialist turn in thinking about identity in the social sciences and humanities more generally. Against all of these essentialisms, both within the field and outside it, I invoke the work of Paul Gilroy and conclude by discussing how his thinking about the “Black Atlantic” challenges our notion of what it means to be local, global, and value-driven.

C.W. Anderson is a Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, and the author or co-editor of five books: Rebuilding the News (Temple), Remaking the News (MIT), The Sage Handbook of Digital Journalism (Sage) and Journalism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford) and Apostles of Certainty: Data Journalism and the Politics of Doubt (Oxford).