Summary
Contents
The SAGE Key Concepts series provide students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensable study aids and guides to comprehension. Key Concepts in Journalism offers a systematic and accessible introduction to the terms, processes, and effects of journalism;a combination of practical considerations with theoretical issues; and further reading suggestions. The authors bring an enormous range of experience in newspaper and broadcast journalism, at national and regional level, as well as their teaching expertise. This book will be essential reading for students in journalism, and an invaluable reference tool for their professional careers.
Culturological Approaches
Culturological Approaches
A manner of studying journalism which suggests that the ‘determinants of news [lie] in the relations between ideas and symbols’ (Schudson, 1989: 16) rather than in the material circumstances of production and consumption. In the words of Alasuutari (1995: 71), news reporting represents the modern manifestation of the culturally signified and culturally significant story. By this approach, cultural understandings and cultural practices are the key factors in understanding the form and content of journalism because culture is inter-woven with all social practices.
Goffman argues that since ‘our understanding of the world’ precedes the stories in the press, it determines ‘which ones reporters will select and how the ones that are selected will be told’ (Goffman, 1986, cited in van Ginneken, 1998: 22). The central ...