{"title":"The journalist in the story. Conceptualizing ethos as integral framework to study news production, news texts and news audiences","authors":"Kim Smeenk, Frank Harbers, Marcel Broersma","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtad014","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This theoretical article presents ethos as a conceptual framework to understand journalism’s authority and shifting epistemologies. We argue that ethos, the strategic self-image of the journalist in the text, is an essential part of the performative potential of journalism, even in detached “objective” journalism where journalists are seemingly absent in their articles. Analyzing journalism from an ethos perspective, elucidates how journalists build on and rework epistemological frameworks while ensuring the performativity of their text. Drawing on narratological theory, we show that ethos is ambiguous and that the possible disparate evaluations of the journalist’s reliability by audiences impact the possibility of news stories to enact their performative potential. Ethos offers an integrated framework for studying relationships between news texts and news production, contexts and audiences, highlighting how values such as reliability, authenticity or objectivity are projected, circulated and attributed in the journalistic field and the information ecology at large.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":"4 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Communication Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtad014","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This theoretical article presents ethos as a conceptual framework to understand journalism’s authority and shifting epistemologies. We argue that ethos, the strategic self-image of the journalist in the text, is an essential part of the performative potential of journalism, even in detached “objective” journalism where journalists are seemingly absent in their articles. Analyzing journalism from an ethos perspective, elucidates how journalists build on and rework epistemological frameworks while ensuring the performativity of their text. Drawing on narratological theory, we show that ethos is ambiguous and that the possible disparate evaluations of the journalist’s reliability by audiences impact the possibility of news stories to enact their performative potential. Ethos offers an integrated framework for studying relationships between news texts and news production, contexts and audiences, highlighting how values such as reliability, authenticity or objectivity are projected, circulated and attributed in the journalistic field and the information ecology at large.
期刊介绍:
Communication Theory is an international forum publishing high quality, original research into the theoretical development of communication from across a wide array of disciplines, such as communication studies, sociology, psychology, political science, cultural and gender studies, philosophy, linguistics, and literature. A journal of the International Communication Association, Communication Theory especially welcomes work in the following areas of research, all of them components of ICA: Communication and Technology, Communication Law and Policy, Ethnicity and Race in Communication, Feminist Scholarship, Global Communication and Social Change, Health Communication, Information Systems, Instructional/Developmental Communication, Intercultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Journalism Studies, Language and Social Interaction, Mass Communication, Organizational Communication, Philosophy of Communication, Political Communication, Popular Communication, Public Relations, Visual Communication Studies, Children, Adolescents and the Media, Communication History, Game Studies, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies, and Intergroup Communication. The journal aims to be inclusive in theoretical approaches insofar as these pertain to communication theory.