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Blumler, Jay and Cushion, Stephen 2014. Normative perspectives on journalism studies: Stock-
taking and future directions. Journalism 15 (3) , pp. 259-272. 10.1177/1464884913498689 file
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NORMATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON JOURNALISM STUDIES: STOCK-TAKING AND FUTURE
DIRECTIONS
Journalism has advanced greatly as a field in its own right in recent decades. As well as a
cause for celebration, however, this may give rise to concerns - in particular that scholars
may pay increasing attention to the inner workings of journalistic institutions at the expense
of their external ties, impact and significance, including their normative ones. It is true that
important normative analyses have appeared in the literature, six of which the article
defines and exemplifies. So far, however, these ideas have had relatively little influence
upon the thought or practice of journalists. The article concludes by suggesting a way in
which a closer and more constructive dialogue could be achieved between journalism
scholars and practitioners, centring on the normative challenges faced by both sides.
KEYWORDS: Journalism Studies; Normative Analysis; Civic Engagement; Public
Communication; Democracy; Comparative Research
In this article we aim to review and assess the place of normative ideas in journalism
studies.
1
We discern and depict a somewhat mixed picture of them. On the one hand, a
number of scholars have made significant contributions over the years to a corpus of
normative thought about the media – ones which we attempt to define and classify below.
On the other hand, these are ever in danger of being marginalized, due both to seemingly
more urgent preoccupations within academe and to pressures on journalistic organizations
that have weakened their civic commitments – some of which we also try to identify below.
We hope that out of an analysis of these conflicting tendencies, some suggestions can be
derived for the future direction of normative journalism scholarship.
The rise of journalism studies
By journalism studies, we refer to `the multidisciplinary study of journalism as an arena of
professional practice and a subject focus of intellectual and academic inquiry’ (Franklin et al
2005). And journalism studies has undoubtedly advanced by leaps and bounds in recent
years as a field in its own right (especially outside the United States where it had had
something of an earlier foothold), securing increasing disciplinary autonomy from broader
academic pursuits in mass communication, sociology and cultural studies (Cushion 2012a).
This rise of journalism studies is evidenced in dedicated panels at international conferences,
peer-reviewed journals devoted specifically to the subject, the readiness of major publishers
to commission book-length manuscripts and even in the DNA of educators, many of whom
have assumed the identity of journalism scholars. Hence, Journalism Studies Divisions have
been formed within the leading organizations of communication academics such as the
International Communication Association and the European Communication Research and
Education Association, attracting large numbers of members and of papers for presentation
at conferences. The recent proliferation of journals established exclusively to publish articles
about journalism has been striking. Examples of such journals of recent origin include
Journalism studies, Journalism Practice, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Digital
Journalism, Journalism Education, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator and
Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies. Some of these latter ventures even signal
the emergence of specialist sub-divisions within the journalism studies field. According to its
opening editorial, for example, Journalism Education is designed to `align academic
scholarship with real-world professional priorities…on matters of specific interest to
journalism educators’.
Marginalizing influences
Although developments of such abundant vigour must be a cause for celebration, they
also give rise to causes for concern. In our view the latter have not been sufficiently
discussed. The danger is that scholars, authors, educators and students will focus more and
more on the complex inner workings of journalism at the expense of attention to its
external ties, impacts and significance. In other words, journalism studies could become too
inward-looking, marginalizing normative concerns that should remain fundamental to the
study of journalism.
Four factors may induce such an imbalance. One is the impetus of specialization itself.
Scholars encouraged to adopt more specific journalism identities may just naturally focus
more of their research, writing and teaching on the institution’s inner anatomy than on its
outer face. We note, for example, that many publishers are commissioning series that are
shaped by changes in the industry (technological, commercial, etc.) or that purport to deal
with specific media, such as newspapers, magazines, television and radio journalism.
Palgrave is featuring a series at present that will arm `journalists, academics and students
with a unique practical and critical guide to key areas of contemporary journalism practice
for the digital age’. This is not to devalue these and other similar publications but to point
out how they may push matters of organization, operation and function further to the
centre of journalism studies to the neglect of normative evaluations.
Second (and related to the above), there are the numerous, dynamic and varied
technological developments that are buffeting everyone involved in journalism these days
and that invite a great deal of research, analysis, application, even Futurology! Almost all
the articles in a recent special issue of Journalism Studies on `The Future of Journalism’, for
example, pivoted one way or another on the course or impact of technological change. This
is again not to devalue the merit or rigour of these scholarly inquiries. But to point out the
somewhat technologically-driven terrain of recent journalism scholarship.
Third, there are the severe challenges to their short- and long-term viability that many
journalistic organizations face these days. The resulting developments and problems, often
accompanied by financial and staffing reorganizations, naturally prompt much thought,
research and speculation. It would be unsurprising therefore if amidst this barrage of
change agents and shifts of industry scenery, the field of journalism studies were to concern
itself predominantly with the institution itself rather than with its external ramifications.
These tendencies may be reinforced by a fourth factor, the increased employment of
professionally trained journalists in university departments (termed `hackedemics’ by Errigo
and Franklin, 2004), some at senior levels. By professionally trained journalists we refer here
to the rise of former (or even current) journalists employed in universities who have to
some degree had specific journalistic training (whether within the industry or via a
professional skills based course), such as newsgathering, editing and distributing news
content (see Harcup 2011a, 2011b for further discussion about the entry of journalists into
journalism faculties). The rise of so-called ‘hackademics’ is partly a response to the demand
for skills teaching in what are essentially practical/academic hybrid courses. In many cases
the input of professional journalists will have enriched departmental curricula, enhanced
the understanding of students and extended the insights of faculty members into industry
workings. Indeed, many former journalists have become leading scholars in the field (Zelizer
2004). But many of these (notably in the UK) are employed primarily as a teacher (rather
than a researcher). Thus, a more practical focus in journalism faculties could further
strengthen preoccupations with the nuts and bolts of reporting as distinct from the broader
relationships that journalism has with society and politics at large.
The need for a normative perspective
And yet, the broad church of public communication, which includes the contributions of
journalism and journalism studies to it, is an inescapably normative domain. That is, it is
inescapably involved in the realization of – or failure to realize – collectively self-
determining processes of citizenship and democracy. Civic values – not only utilitarian ones,
not only financial ones, not only professional ones – are at stake in how journalistic
institutions perform. But if journalism studies becomes too insular and becomes fixated on
the practical world of news production, on fast-moving technological changes, on future
funding models or on comparing professional identities, then the fundamental relationship
journalism has with civic values could become a rather distant concern.
Of course journalism is not the only contributor to public communication. Its many other
sources include politicians, interest groups large and small, campaigning causes, think tanks,
charities, community groups, high-profile bloggers, even a few socially conscious celebrities!
However, journalism is typically the key communication conduit through which such opinion
advocates can gain attention and prospects of influence. That is particularly the case for
television news, still the primary source of audience information in most advanced
democracies despite the growth of online media. Yet longitudinal studies in some countries
have shown an increased proportion of journalistic interpretation in the medium’s reporting
of political news, while that of politicians’ comments has measurably declined (Hallin, 1992;
Steele and Barnhurst, 1996). Indeed a recent study established that journalists interpreting
political news in live two-ways (i.e. with anchors) made up a considerable share of UK
television coverage of politics, a practice, according to the authors, that elevated the media
from playing a secondary to a primary defining role (Cushion and Thomas 2013). In a 1999
article, Mazzoleni and Schulz captured the upshot of much of this in their concept of
`mediatization’, which refers to the process whereby politicians (and by extension other
opinion advocates) tailor their message-offerings to the perceived news values, newsroom
routines and journalism cultures prevalent in the mainstream media. It is as if, in addition to
its direct contribution to public communication, journalism also exerts an indirect yet
powerful magnetic pull on the messages that all the other institutions in society would like
to put across.
It follows that journalism should be examined not only empirically, not only analytically
but also normatively. But what might be meant by a normative perspective? In a remarkably
substantial work, Christians et al (2009) offer a useful definition in terms of `the reasoned
explanation of how public discourse should be carried on in order for a community or nation
to work out solutions to its problems’. On similar lines, Blumler (2012) describes normative
approaches as `attempts to look at prevailing communication arrangements, at how they
relate to defensible civic ideals and whether there are ways in which they might be
improved’. This would encourage scholars not only to examine empirically how journalism is
organized and what it does but also to discuss the values that journalism should embody
and the quality of news that could be produced (Cushion 2012b).
Since at least the 1920s in fact, when followers of Walter Lippmann (1922) and John
Dewey (1927) clashed over their differing visions of democracy, of media roles in democracy
and of citizens’ competences to participate in it, significant veins of normative analysis have
graced the writings of journalism scholars and thoughtful ex-
journalists. And since the 1980s
that normative component of journalism scholarship seems to have increased and branched
out. If so, this may have been spurred by several developments in the period: the disturbing
injection of a Machiavellian streak into competitive political communication, arising from
the systematic professionalization of party publicity machines; the increasing
commercialization of many media organizations, both privately and publicly managed; the
emergence of the Internet, with its numerous divergent avenues of communication traffic,
which has stimulated much thought and experimentation about the realization of different
democratic values (Coleman and Blumler, 2009) and of course the translation from German
into English (1989) of Jurgen Habermas’ normative edifice, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Consequently, normative contributions to journalism studies have come in various
shapes and sizes. These have involved different norms; different research or analysis aims;
assessments and comparisons of different bodies of media content, whether local, national
or international; different verdicts and conclusions; and different degrees of reflection on
normative analysis itself.
Six normative approaches to journalism studies
In this section we outline six relatively prominent ways in which normative approaches
have appeared in the Anglo-American literature, giving a few examples in each case. We
acknowledge, however, that this material could have been carved up differently and
especially that our typology might well need amendment and supplementation by
references to non-English writings.
There is one seeming but nodding type of reference to a norm that we are not
inclined to include in this discussion. These are the `empirical after-thoughts’ which appear
all too often in concluding sections of articles that have been devoted almost entirely to
presentations of empirical data and which then wind up with a glancing reference to some
supposedly relevant value . In journal articles there appears a wide divergence in the level
of empirical-normative reflection, i.e. the extent to which authors make normative sense of
their data. Although it is true that some authors provide more extended discussions of the