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Negotiating News: A Study of the Social Construction of

News Realities

A Dissertation

By: Stephen F. Ostertag

University of Connecticut

Department of Sociology

2008

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Negotiating News: A Study of the Social Construction

of News Realities

By: Stephen Ostertag

University of Connecticut

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine how people engage with the news media as they

build and support their knowledge of the world outside their immediate social

environments. Based on in-depth interview data with 47 people, I argue that the news

media is a cultural resource that people use to think and act in everyday life. As a

cultural resource, people use as tools the mental impressions, or what I call symbolic

meaningsthat they associate with different news outlets as they construct and sustain

their awareness and understanding of the social world. People then justify their social

realities with lay theories that serve as cognitive blueprints as they interpret and

process a chaotic and contradictory news environment. As news elsewheres people

identify the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and the internet as separate news spheres,

which they use to quell concerns that may arise should they feel unable to establish a

grounded news reality through traditional, mainstream commercialized news outlets (e.g.,

newspapers, network news, cable news).

As I conclude, I raise two broader sociological considerations. First I question

what my respondents narratives suggest about the news medias power over producing,

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transmitting, defining and constituting the social world (i.e., symbolic power). Dominant

social institutions representing the state, economy, and religion, as well as social systems

of racism, sexism, classism, and heteronormativity, use the mass media to wield their

symbolic powers, inform social reality, and control publics. How people negotiate and

manage their news realities speaks towards both the entrenchment of dominant symbolic

powers and the threats they face as they use the media to define and constitute social

reality according to their interests and viewpoints. Second, I suggest how social theorists

may use the insights I develop here to theorize about peoples socially constructed

understandings of a plethora of social phenomena, such as crime and imprisonment,

inequality, immigration, social movements, and other issues presented in the medias vast

terrain. In so doing, I argue towards conceptualizing the media as diffuse, where media

discourse infiltrate every minutia of contemporary, industrialized, post-modern societies,

and inform much of what we know about many public issues and phenomena.

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Acknowledgements

As any sociologists will say, no project is the sole result of just one person,

though people often give full credit to just one person. Howard Becker pointed this out

long ago as he showed how much of what we read, see, listen to, and appreciate in

everyday life is often the result of collective action involving multiple players

contributing in some way towards a final product. This dissertation -and my academic

career in general- is no different.

owe a debt of gratitude to many, many people! so many that can"t possibly list

them all here. n fact, "m sure there are people can"t remember who in some way

influenced me as an academic or opened up opportunities that would not have otherwise

been available. do however, want to recogni#e the assistance and help that some very

important people provided me. There is little doubt that without their help would be in

a very different place right now.

$irst, and perhaps most important are my parents %&oan and 'onald (stertag. )y

mom, a hard-working, everyday feminist who struggled long and hard in a man"s world,

and my dad, a *ietnam *et who grew up in poverty, and worked hard everyday to

improve on an education that failed him early in life as he moved from school to school.

)y parents never stopped supporting me emotionally, psychologically, and financially as

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pursued my education. n fact, they practically forced me to go to a community college

when graduated high school despite my pleas to start working. remember my mother

saying she was afraid that if didn"t go straight to college then "d probably never go.

$or a person with summer school e+perience under his belt, a ' average, and who

ranked number /0 out of 12 high school graduating students my mom"s concern was

certainly warranted. 3imilarly, my father whose own struggles to improve his education

throughout his life served as another support structure, he served as a role-model of sorts

as challenged myself and forced myself to enter academic realms that were completely

foreign and at times frightening to me and everyone knew. $inally, without my parent"s

support there"s no way would have been able to be an undergraduate student for so long.

4hile we joke about my seven years of undergraduate education, the first half of which

was spent in a drunken stupor, the truth is, those years provided important e+posure to

education, disciplines and academic life that chose to ignore for much of my life.

Towards the end of my undergraduate career learned to appreciate such things as

intelligence and education as matured as a person, student and intellectual. $ew people

can benefit from such a maturation process, nor would have had my parents said

5enough is enough6 and cut the financial strings. Their patience, faith, and support

opened important doors and kept them open long enough for me to poke my head in and

look around before walking through. There is no doubt that without them would not be

here today enjoying the freedom and privileges that come with academic life. $or all this

and much more, thank them dearly.

3econd, and also incredibly important, but in a more direct way is my advisor,

mentor, and sometimes when "m lucky, co-author, 'r. 7aye Tuchman. 7aye has been

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invaluable, and owe a great deal of my intellectual growth to her mentorship, guidance

and tough-love. After having barely passed my first cumulative e+am 8probably more of

a sympathy pass at the time than anything9, and as prepared for my second e+am,

7aye"s mentorship and guidance in many ways saved my graduate career. 3he met with

me on a weekly basis and asked me :uestions about the material was reading as she

tried to get me to think about the theories, research, concepts and arguments in ways that

would allow me to, in a sense, join the broader intellectual discussion. )uch of my

training as a sociologist comes from her guidance and mentorship, and the time she

invested in me. only hope to make her proud as pursue my own academic career and

participate in building knowledge.

Third, is that of my soon to be wife ;atie Acosta and our son &osiah. can"t

possibly list all the ways they have helped me as a graduate student and person. ;atie

has been kind enough to read and listen to many of my papers and presentations, and her

feedback consistently impresses me as e+pect such :uality to come from a full-time

professor, not a graduate student. 3he"s also consistently there to offer the everyday

intangibles, such as emotional support when feel stupid and phony, or a stress relief

when feel my head is going to burst. But more than anything, she"s most helpful in just

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or doing something else that makes him special, simply by being himself &osiah is a

constant source of happiness and positive energy, both of which tend to be in short supply

in academia. There is no doubt that am very lucky to have ;atie and &osiah in my life,

they"re a huge help in my academic life and, perhaps more importantly, they help put

perspective on my life.

$inally, must e+tend my sincere appreciation to those who participated in this

research. 4ithout the => men and women who were kind and caring enough to spend

their valuable time with me there"s obviously no way this project would take shape.

thank and respect them all.

There are no-doubt others who also deserve thanks for their support in various

ways. ?umerous friends, family, and colleagues all played, and continue to play,

important roles in either my life or my graduate career. $or those too many to name,

thank you and wish you luck in your careers and lives.

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Chapter Outline

SECTION I: Introduction, Theory and Method 10

Chapter One: Introduction 10

SECTION II: Commercialized Mainstream News Media 39

Chapter Two: Knowing the Social World through 40

the News

Chapter Three: Judging the News: News Outlets as 71

Symbolically Meaningful

Chapter Four: Lay Theories of News: Explaining 106

the News Media

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SECTION III: The Safety Nets 129

Chapter Five: The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) 131

Chapter Six: The Internet 151

SECTION IV: Conclusions and Looking Ahead 192

Chapter Seven: The News and Social Realities 193

Appendix 1: 206

Appendix 2: ----

Works Cited: 211

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SECTION I

Introduction, Theory and Methods

CHAPTER 1: Introduction

4e are all familiar with the news. 4e have all watched, listened to, or read a

news report at some point in our lives. )any of us have done so within the past week, if

not within the past 2=-hours. 4e hear from some news stations that the recent 5surge6

strategy in ra: is working and from others that it"s not. 4e hear of more troops dying in

both ra: and Afghanistan and at that 5progress6 is being made. 3ome news media

discuss Barak (bama"s pastor the @everend &erimiah 4right while others talk about

Hilary linton"s apparent 5taking on fire6 in Bosnia when she was the first lady.

ikewise, there are news reports on Attorney 7eneral Alberto 7on#ales resigning amid

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the controversial firing of .3. judges. 4e read in newspapers and watch on television

news stories that claim the planet is warming at an alarming rate, while we hear or read

other stories that argue the planet"s warming is minor and of no need for alarm. 4e may

very well recogni#e these headlines, and the many, many others that are thrown onto the

front-page of our newspapers or that become the focus of our nightly news broadcasts.

Cet, while we may recogni#e these messages, we do not simply accept them as they are

presented in the media. 4e are critical consumers! we evaluate messages, screen them

for biases, process them in light of our own preconceived notions of what is true and

false, consider them along-side other news messages, all as we learn about the world

around us. f news serves as our window to the world, as 4alter ippman 80229 once

noted, and at the same time we critically evaluate the news, then how do we come to

understand the news worldD How do people, as critical consumers, use the news to

understand the world outside their immediate social environmentsD 4hat does this

process involveD How do people"s use of the news media to understand the world outside

their homes and local communities speak to how we live as social creatures in a

globali#ed worldD

This dissertation takes a small crack at addressing these broad sociological

:uestions. t e+amines how => men and women consume news and learn about the world

5outside.6 n so doing, it elaborates on a long tradition of news scholarship and reception

and audience research, and it highlights new directions for media and cultural scholarship

that touches on the social construction of reality, control and social change.

?ews scholars have investigated news since the 02Es 8ippman, 0229. They

offer insightful analyses into the interrelated issues of news organi#ation structures and

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news production 8Fark, 0=E! Tuchman, 0>G! 7ans, 0>G! $ishman, 0GE! Benson,

00G, 2EE! 'ickinson, 2EE>9, news content 87itlin, 0GE! Herman and homsky, 0GG!

Altheide and )ichalowski, 000!


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people as passive media receptacles who dominant ideologues easily manipulate as the

early critical theory of the $rankfurt 3chool proposed 8Horkheimer and Adorno, 0>29.

By treating as a given the fact that as members of a highly media-dominated

society we cannot fully avoid being effected by media messages 8in whatever form such

effects take9, this dissertation differs in a second way from much media scholarship. t

treats media as diffuse and as having thoroughly saturated .3. society 83ilverstone,

002! Thompson, 00/! ouldry, 2EE=! (stertag, 2EEG9. 4hile we are certainly creative

and insightful media decoders, the fact that media are diffuse implies that our creative

and insightful resistance mechanisms and practices may somehow be informed by media.

Hence, it"s very possible that our tools of resistance have been welded by the same forces

we attempt to resist. Feople may indeed be critical news consumers, but that doesn"t

mean dominant institutions and social systems fail to control the debate.

Thirdly, this dissertation uses an 5audience-centered6 epistemology, and an

inductive, :ualitative methodology that attempts to understand people"s use of news

media to create a meaningful social life 8Thompson, 00/! ivingstone, 2EE>9. The

primary research :uestions seek to address mark this difference. nstead of asking about

people"s interpretation of media messages, as is common for reception studies 8)orley,

0GE! Fress, 00! eibes and ;at#, 009, this dissertation asks how people use media,

whether in the form of content or the reputation of the media outlet from which the

content comes, in relation to their social realities. )oreover, the fact that focus on

news media, rather than other media genres, makes this research an important

1This dissertation answers calls by sociologists who ask for research 5on what viewers or

users actually do with what they see and hear (Becker, 1996: 339).

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contribution to media scholarship, since audience-centered research on news media has

been, and continues to be needed 87ans, 0>2! 2EE>9.

$inally, as part of what Abercrombie and onghurst 800G9 have labeled the

5incorporationresistance6 paradigm of :ualitative audience research 83chroder and

Fhillips, 2EE>9, many audiencereception studies sample from those who are marginali#ed

8@adway, 0G=! Fress, 009 and attempt to give them voice and celebrate their

resistance to dominant media messages. 4hile appreciate such scholarship and respect

people"s agency as media consumers, this project draws its sample largely from those

who do represent the dominant, power structure in the .3. 8e.g., white, middle and upper

class, men and women9. These folks constitute the upper levels of what Howard Becker,

in his work social organi#ations 801>9 called the 5hierarchy of credibility6 or the

invisible status hierarchy with which people in power judge, evaluate, and value the

thoughts, actions and perspectives of others. ;nowing what these folks think about news

media and how they use news media to understand their larger environments is no doubt

important and necessary for understanding how people control others, how populations

bind themselves, and how societies change. n fact, this sample represents a swing

category, in that as a group, their opinions and perspectives levy significant pressures

over the directions and actions of the primary social institutions and systems in the .3.

8e.g., political, education, medical, military, welfare9, all of which the media IreJpresent

through its vast discourses.

All in all, this dissertation investigates how people occupying the upper echelons

of the hierarchy of credibility discuss the news media in relation to their socially

constructed realities. This analysis respects the audience"s power to reflect on and

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criti:ue media messages while it accepts that the effectiveness of such criti:ues may be

limited or even counter-productive for their intended purposes. This dissertation also

proposes that people do not need to directly consume media to have opinions of its

messages, nor to use it as they create and maintain their social realities. As 3hibutani

80119 showed in his work on rumors, thoughts and actions may be grounded on hearsay

and uninformed opinion 8i.e., improvised news9, especially at times of elevated interest

and information need.

Kuestioning the role of news media in people"s understandings of the social

world

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also serves as a useful elaboration on the media effects research of cultivation

theory 87erbner and 7ross, 0>1! 7erbner, et al., 2EE29. ultivation analyses :uestion

the relationship between media consumption and visions of social reality and argue that

those who consume more television 8usually referring to 5heavy viewers6 or those who

watch television for at least = hours a day9 are more likely to describe reality in such a

27iven its audience-centered focus, this dissertation resembles the uses-and-gratifications

school of media research 8@ubin, 2EE29. )uch uses and gratifications work relies on

surveys of broad populations, and applies cluster and factor analyses as it seeks to

generali#e about the relationship between people and media 8=9. Cet, with thisdissertation practice a verstehen approach and :ualitatively e+amine the social

meanings of media. ask how people use the news media in relation to their social

realities and based on the meanings they associate with media outlets. don"t seek toanswer how media users satisfy certain psychological needs. )oreover, much-uses-and-

gratifications scholarship assumes an overarching functionalist perspective where

5needs6 reflect broad social interests, not those of certain segments of the population.'ifferences in power are ignored. )edia and media use are either functional or

dysfunctional for society as a whole. But, since power over media discourse is power

over defining and constituting the social world, raise concluding :uestions about forwhom media and media use are functional or dysfunctional 8=9. assume the

media environment is one of ine:uality and control where the status-:uo serves the

powerful. )y critical analysis considers how people negotiate a media environment

where the major outlets reflect the interests of dominant political and economic systemsthat operate within a patriarchal, racist, and heternormative environment. sing the

media to satisfy personal psychological needs may also satisfy dominant interests and

highly une:ual social systems.

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way that it reflects television depictions over other empirical measures, including

personal e+perience. This finding has led cultivation researchers to identify what they

term the 5mean and scare world comple+,6 where heavy television viewers understand

social reality as violent, evil, and dangerous, much as they see on television. ultivation

analyses research clearly marks an important step in understanding the relationship

between media and people, and it uses a skillful approach to measuring media effects.

Cet, in identifying that television does shape social reality, it leaves open :uestions about

such a process. 4e are left wondering how people use the media to create their social

realities, such as that of the mean and scary world. This dissertation e+tends cultivation

analyses by demonstrating more precisely howpeople use media in ways that create and

reinforce their cultivated social realities.

ikewise, this dissertation e+tends on several decades of agenda-setting

scholarship 8)combs, 2EE/9. Arguing that 5the news media may not be successful in

telling people what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling them what to

think about6 8ohen, 01, cf. )combs and @eynolds, 2EE2L 9, agenda-setting

researchers demonstrate how media content informs public agendas and marks public

salience. Again, though, how do news consumers use and interact with the content that

sets public agendasD How do they handle their news practices and orient their

consumption in light of their views of different news outlets and the news mediaD 4hile

many may know of issues presently offered in the agenda-setting media, how do people

remain critical consumersD This dissertation helps clarify these unanswered :uestions.

n doing, it seeks to open new lines of scholarship that :uestion how people develop

understandings of various social phenomena 8such as crime and imprisonment,

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immigration, ine:uality, political elections9 at the international, national, and local levels.

Answers to these :uestions will provide deeper understandings of such things as social

control and social change because they reveal the dynamic interaction between people

and dominant institutions in modern societies.

Fublic opinion polls dating back to the 0>Es reveal growing distrust in

mainstream media 87ronke and ook, 2EE>! Few, 2EE>9. f people are distrustful about

the mainstream news media, how do they come to know the world outside their

immediate environmentsD ertainly, asking how people use the news media, despite their

distrust in it, to understand their world can speak to this apparent contradiction.

n this dissertation, argue that people use news media to construct and justify

their understandings of the social world, and that this phenomenon is structured around

certain practices with implications for control and change. sing data derived from

interviews with => people, demonstrate that people"s use of media in their news

constructions takes on several characteristics. Feople evaluate and critici#e the news

media along criteria they themselves find significant. Feople use the mental impressions

they associate with different news outlets, or what callsymbolic meanings, as

construction materials with which they use to overcome their news criticisms and build or

reinforce their news realities. &ust as construction workers use plywood, two-by-fours,

trusses, and concrete to build a house, news consumers use the symbolic meanings they

associate with different news outlets to construct and reinforce their social realities.

$inally, people rely on lay theories that provide broader ideas about the news world, and

offer justifications for people"s news evaluations and managed news consumption. ay

theories serve as the blueprints for constructing a world-view and grounding people"s

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social realities. They also provide the broader conte+t in which people draw upon and

apply symbolic meanings. will demonstrate the details of this process throughout this

dissertation. nderstanding this process speaks to how people use media to understand

the world outside their immediate social environments. t reveals the utility of media

scholarship for those who wish to understand how people develop realities around such

social phenomena as crime, affirmative action, racism, segregation, and labor issues, as

well as for social and cultural theory and research. elaborate on these themes in my

concluding chapter and pint out some new directions for media scholarship.

By demonstrating how people use the news media to construct and reinforce their

news-mediated social realities, use my concluding chapter argue towards a larger

sociological and cultural point. Because media messages have thoroughly saturated our

core as social beings, and because people use media to construct and bolster their social

realities, scholars should :uestion the media"s direct and indirect ability to produce and

IreJproduce symbolic versions of the social world 8Bourdieu, 00! Thompson, 00/!

ouldry, 2EEE! ouldry and urran, 2EE9. These 5symbolic versions6 may constitute

such broad public issues as crime and imprisonment, immigration, race relations, welfare

and poverty, and se+uality, as well as specific issues, such as the war in ra:, atin

American immigration, the 4ar on Terror, and gang violence in Hartford. How people

develop and bolster their understanding of these and other social phenomena reveals the

saturation of media in our everyday lives 83ilverstone, 002! ouldry, 2EE=! alavita,

2EE/! ivingstone, 2EE>9, and offers insight into ideological and hegemonic practices and

the related processes of control and change of which the media play a vital part.

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t is time to e+amine how people use the news media to understand their social

worlds. This is especially the case given the rise of the internet, which has yielded newly

ac:uired agency for news consumers and makers. )oreover, as it presently lacks

direction, the current state of media sociology is in need of new research :uestions and

central themes around which to organi#e and build. The virtual absence of media-themed

sessions at the 2EE1 and 2EE> American 3ociological Association meetings in )ontreal

and ?ew Cork ity respectively reveal the need for new and insightful research into a

social phenomenon as ubi:uitous in social life as media.

Theory

et me e+plicate on how address the :uestions ask in this dissertation.

onceptually, combine work in the sociology of action literature, specifically 3widler"s

cultural tool-kit theory 80G19, with the interactionism scholarship on signs and their

shared meanings 8Hewitt, 2EE9, and the cognitive sociology literature on lay theori#ing

and schemata 8'i)aggio, 00>9. To clarify, assume that the meanings people associate

with different signs, or objectsMthat are open to different interpretationsMare social

3ndeed, some scholars have begun conceptuali#ing media from different angles and in

creative ways. $or e+ample, Benson"s 800G9 study of media organi#ations draws on the

insights of Bourdieu"s field theory to discuss the competing interests and strainedrelationships between journalists and media business owners. embo 82EEE9 proposes

new and insightful :uestions into people"s decision-making process when faced with

other options besides watching television during their daily grind. alavita 82EE/9e+amines the role of news media, in addition to other sources of information, in people"s

political knowledge, and 7levarec 82EE/9, considers :uestions of media as social objects

e+isting in cultural environments. 4hile this scholarship is surely insightful and

important, it reveals media research as scattered and absent a central organi#ing themearound which future research may revolve. 3uch a theme may include treating media as

diffuse and :uestioning how people use media to construct and bolster their e+pansive

social realities. hope to provide a kick-start to such a theme with this dissertation.

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constructs! their meanings are not given and natural, instead, they develop in social

processes and are informed by social environments. These meanings come to represent,

define, and constitute their associated signs, that is, the signs become symbolically

meaningful and people act in relation to them as they would when defining any other

situation 8Thomas and Thomas, 02G! Hewitt, 2EE9. As symbolically meaningful, signs

are cultural resources and can be used and applied like construction tools 83widler, 0G19.

Feople use them to build or construct ideas, thoughts and lines of action. This is similarly

the case for the meanings people associate with news outlets. As signs, news outlets are

symbolically meaningful! what they come to represent to others develops in a social

environment. Feople draw on the symbolic meanings they associate with different news

outlets to justify news consumption, and construct thoughts and lines of action in relation

to the social world.

3ymbolic meanings need not be accurate, nor informed by any degree of

consumption. nstead, they simply re:uire internali#ed mental impressions. $or

e+ample, say we asked a room of 2E people about their impressions ofFox News. 4hile

some people in the room may watchFox Newsevery night for several hours, others may

watch it a couple hours a week, some may never watch it, or haven"t watched it in years.

@egardless of their level of consumption, arguably a si#able majority of people in that

room have some opinion or thought that registers when they considerFox News. argue

that the thoughts, or mental impressions, that register when people think ofFox News

signify that news outlet"s shared symbolic meanings. Feople will orient their behavior

around the symbolic meanings they associate with various news outlets because symbolic

meanings are the mental impressions that serve as 5ideas Ithat anJ individual can hold in

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mindNwhile moving toward Ior in relation toJ it6 8Hewitt, 2EEL 19. )uch like

musicians who use tools to adjust musical instruments 8e.g., guitars and pianos9 so that

they are 5in tune,6 people use symbolic meanings like tools to adjust their approach and

relationship with the news media and the world it IreJpresents so that they can establish a

grounded understanding of the world and be 5in tune.6 As discuss in my conclusion,

such a practice speaks to the power to produce, represent, and transmit social forms to a

collection of people 8Thompson, 00/9, including how that power is threatened and

IreJproduced in hidden ways.

onsider the following hypothetical e+change revolving around the symbolic

meanings of individual news outlets. Although the topic may be different, it"s likely that

such an e+change occurs daily, and in many places.

Person One: 'id you see the news last night on global warmingD

Person Two: ?o, whyD

Person One: 4ell, guess there was a recent report by a bunch of scientists that said

global warming is real and that it"s partly caused by people.

Person Two: ome on, you believe thatD Flease, where"d you hear thatD

Person One: saw it onABC World News.

Person Two:?o wonder. Those liberal, tree-huggersNof course that"s what they"re

gonna say. didn"t see anything about global warming in TheWall

Street Journal.

Feople draw on the symbolic meanings of news outlets everyday in constructing

arguments and establishing and maintaining their understanding and orientation towards

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the social world. Actual consumption patterns matter little, and instead, what matters is

simply having an opinion. n fact, much like definitions of the situation 8Thomas and

Thomas, 02G9, symbolic meanings need only stand on lay logic to be true, real and lived

accordingly.

3ymbols allow for generali#ations, they signify how we should categori#e,

understand, and act in relation to the signified. nteractionists suggest that to act toward

something we must place it in its proper category. ategories reflect symbolic meanings

and are determined by the mental associations we relate to symbols. Hence, symbolic

meanings lend themselves to a type of 5shorthand thinking6 8Hewitt, 2EEL =-/9, and

serve as cognitive tools that people apply in ways that inform and justify behavior.

Feople ground their news realities and justify their news consumption with larger

lay theories that they draw upon to understand 5the news6 as a broader event in the .3.

ay theories reflect interpretive schemata. 3chemata are cognitive mechanisms with

which people draw on to process, interpret, organi#e and understand the e+ternal world

they e+perience and encounter 8'i)aggio, 00>! erulo, 2EE9. 3chemata allow for

generali#ations, and guide information into its categorical mental compartments.

3chemata are manifest in lay theories and lay theories inform an 5effort to make sense of

complicated information and construct a meaningful social reality6 83ommers and

?orton, 2EE1L 09. 3chemata and lay theories conte+tuali#e the symbolic meanings that

my respondents suggest represent various news outlets and groups of outlets, as they also

serve as reinforcing mechanisms upon which people may rest their overall news

positions. nderstanding schemata and lay theories revolving around news media is

important because they serve as interpretive mechanisms with which people understand,

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evaluate, negotiate, justify and judge news media, come to decisions about 5truth6 and

news reality, and therefore, threaten or IreJproduce dominant symbolic powers.

3ymbolic meanings, cognitive news schemata, and lay theories about news media

all reveal the symbolic nature and forces which the media come to define and with which

they constitute social reality. This is what mean when refer to symbolic power.

Symbolic power allows people to intervene in the course of events, to influence the

actions of others andcreate events, by means of the production and transmission of

symbolic forms (Thompson, 1995: 17). Such power is diffuse, and often vested in

dominant institutions, such as the state, religion, the economy, as well as in less formal,

though more cultural spheres of power, such as white dominance, heteronormativity, and

patriarchy. These dominant sources of power and privilege wield great symbolic power,

and have for some time. Communication media serve as a primary venue through which

they exercise their symbolic power. The media"s uni:ue ability to reach into various

fields and institutions and produce and present their symbolic versions of the social world

to others signifies a special form of symbolic power. 3uch power is termed media power

8ouldry 2EEE9. Together, symbolic meanings, schemata and lay theories harness news

consumers" agency and efforts to understand and organi#e the social worldMa social

world that"s delivered through the news media, reflects dominant sources of symbolic

power, and saturates everyday life. These phenomena offer insights into the media"s

manipulative and coercive forces. Cet, they also reveal shared ideas around which people

in a civil society may rally and enact social change that reflects justice and fairness in

service to societies as a whole 8Ale+ander, 2EE19.

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How people develop understandings of the news world speaks to the media"s

power to IreJpresent and define the world because it highlights the processes involved in

people"s interaction with their media environment and the resulting images of the world

that are filtered through people"s own skepticism. This practice happens regardless of

viewership levels. n fact, because the media has so thoroughly saturated .3. culture,

active consumption need not be a consideration or :ualifying factor for research

participation since signs become meaningful through a variety of avenues 8e.g., the

comments of family members, or the outlet"s reputation among friends9. As argue and

hope to demonstrate throughout this dissertation, people construct their news-mediated

social realities by managing their news consumption practices in light of the symbolic

meanings they associate with different news outlets, and justifying their news orientations

based on theories they apply towards the larger news environment.

situate my investigation into the news media"s symbolic meanings and their uses

in news consumption in a broader theoretical framework that draws from the growing

interest in practice theory 8Bourdieu, 0>>! 7iddens, 0G=, 3ewell, 002! 3chat#ki, 001!

2EE! 3widler, 2EE! @eckwit#, 2EE29. ?ick ouldry=82EE=9, in particular, calls for

media scholars to develop an additional media studies paradigm that branches off from

the common production, content, and reception studies that have roots in the Birmingham

3chool and its focus on literary criticism. Treating media as practice vastly e+pands on

scholarly understandings of media effects and the media"s involvement in society by

4Couldry (2004) calls for theorizing media as practice so as to decentre [sic] media

research from the study of media texts or production structures (important though these

are) and to redirect it onto the study of the open-ended range of practices focused directly

or indirectly on media. (p. 117) Doing so will sidestep the insoluble problem over how

to prove media effects. (p. 117)

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asking at least one of the following two broad :uestionsL 9 what type of things do people

do in relationto the media! and 29, what types of things do peoplesay in relationto the

mediaD 8ouldry, 2EE=9. The key point is in relationto media as opposed to after its

direct consumption, which is one of the substantial theoretical reasons on how this

research differs from previous media research and why it need not be so concerned with

measuring and defining an audience. Thompson 800/L 09 makes such a point while

hinting at the vast realms where media 5mediate6 public perceptions. He states, 5IiJn the

process of reception, individuals make use of the symbolic material for their own

purposes, in ways that may be e+tremely varied but also relatively hidden, since these

practices are not confined to a particular locale.6

Theori#ing media as practice accepts the fact that the simple e+istence of media

technologies, such as television, radio, newspapers, maga#ines, and now the internet,

affect us all in some way, shape and form. 3ocial scientists may have trouble confidently

measuring media effects but few would argue that life would be the same if such avenues

of communication never e+isted. Theori#ing media as practice starts from this

assumption about media saturation in modern, industriali#ed society, and then asks about

the vast range of ways in which media interfere and account for what people think, say,

and do, both directly related to media, and in realms that may appear completely separate

from anything media related. Theori#ing media as practice opens the door for media

scholars to consider how people live and breathe media in their talk and action. This

vastly e+pands where media scholars focus their investigations and it places media

studies in the larger field of social theory because, much as studies of ideology and

power, it recogni#es and celebrates the infinite ways in which media inform our everyday

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lives 8Bird, 2EE! ivingstone, 2EE>9. )y investigation with this dissertation represents

one step toward accepting and theori#ing media as practice, as seek to understand how

people use news media to understand their larger social environments.

Method

At their core, the questions I ask in this dissertation are about peoples opinions of

the news media and why they hold them. Opinion based questions are often found in

survey research, and while public opinion polls of the news media are useful in that they

track trends in news opinions and attitudes, they tend to look too microscopically (Leibes

and Katz, 1993) by examining attitudes towards specific news outlets. Moreover, such

quantitative approaches sacrifice depth in that they prevent respondents from elaborating

on their opinions. Language is central to the formation of our social world, and power

operates through peoples discourses by creating our social world and identities in

particular ways (Schroder and Phillips, 2007: 894). To understand the complexities in

peoples opinions of news media we must allow people to speak with their own words

and according to their own social realities. When allowed to elaborate, people reveal a

creative and insightful method to figuring out the madness they recognize in the

contemporary, mainstream news media environment, and their discourses speak to the

ways symbolic powers operate in the contemporary news-media environment.

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I am certainly not the first, though, to investigate media opinions qualitatively. Such

research grew to dominate media scholarship in the late 1980s and throughout the

1990s. Reception analyses, the audience research emerging from the

interdisciplinary cultural studies work at the Center for Contemporary Cultural

Studies at Birmingham began to investigate questions about audience interpretations

and decoding (Morely, 1980, 1986; 1992). Much of the reception research

celebrated the polysemic nature of media messages and the power of consumers to

resist dominant media readings (Gamson, 1992; Leibes and Katz, 1993). While this

research provided needed relief from overdeterministic studies of media content,

some remained critical and continued to focus on ideology and hegemony (Press,

1991).

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Like those qualitative media scholars who came before me, I seek to address

questions that allow people to express openly their opinions and thoughts in ways

that they feel most appropriate and that most reflect their ideas. People must be able

to draw on their entrenched understandings, expand on their ideas, clarify their

points, and refer to past comments when necessary. Such a research technique seeks

verstehen, and favors an inductive research methodology based on semi-structured,

in-depth interviews focused on peoples opinions of news in the U.S., their ability to

use the news to understand the social world, and the processes they use to establish

their news realities. An inductive methodology also lends itself to locating and

identifying symbolic meanings, recognizing their application in peoples news talk,

and revealing the underlying lay theories and schemata that guide cognitive

processing and justify news opinions and realities. Investigating collective symbolic

meanings, their shared uses, lay theories and schemata require allowing people to

draw on their own logic to discuss and explain phenomena (Cerulo, 2001). As

Livingstone stated in her 2007 International Communication Association presidential

address in San Francisco, we can only reach the text through an analysis of the

users selections, sequencing, generic classification and interpretation of contents

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Inductive approaches to data collection also allow for greater clarification and

mutual understanding. Perhaps an example can best demonstrate the value of an

inductive approach to understanding news narratives. In this example Shana, a white

woman in her twenties, and I discussed the quality of mainstream news coverage as

we sat in a packed coffee shop on a weekday evening. I began with a common

survey style question and asked her to judge on a scale of 1-10, with 10 as the best,

how well she thought the mainstream media covers global warming.

Shana: Four.

Interviewer: Four?

Shana: Four.

Interviewer: Ok, how come?

Shana: Well if youre talking about environmental issues, environmental concerns, then I

would say four, but it youre talking about environmental tsunamis and hurricanes

and stuff like that, like global crises then I think its a little differentHeres the

thing, I think, I think that in terms of a lot of these things probably, long-term,

long-standing social issues like homelessness, environmental issues, I dont think

they get covered at all because theyre not technically newsworthy, theyre not

immediate, theyre notyou know nobody wants to read about the crisis of

homelessness, but they would read about the homeless guy that got shot because

thats newsworthy.

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This response to a simple question about the medias coverage of global warming

allowed the respondent to reveal several important assumptions about the news media.

She first broke my intentionally vague question about the medias coverage of global

warming into two meanings and conceptual uses, thus making a distinction between two

very different positions on news coverage. Secondly, allowing her time to elaborate and

work through her response yielded other pertinent and insightful information. For

example, the respondent also discussed the audience you know nobody wants to read

about the crisis of homelessness thus making assumptions about who composes the

audience (i.e., people who dont care about homelessness), the audiences power over

news content (if the audience cared about homelessness then itd be a news topic), and

the significance of homelessness as an issue deserving public sphere attention.

As Schroder and Phillips (2007: 894) argue [s]ince discourses enable us to talk

about the worldindividual discourses can be understood as resources. When given the

time to elaborate, people will reveal the symbolic nature and cognitive structures that

underlie the depths of media power in their own ways. To adequately study symbolic

meanings, schemata, lay theories and media power, I need to question what people think

and feel about the media, and I need to let them express it in their own ways (Mason,

2002).

While many of my qualitative and quantitative predecessors struggled to define an

audience in light of numerous criticisms (Ang, 1991; Seiter, et al., 1991), my research

treats the relationship between media message and consumer substantially different. This

research grows out of the third generation of reception studies (Alasuutari, 1999; Bird,

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2003) and conceptualizes media discourses as diffuse and part of social reality. As a

result, media scholars can break down the walls we constructed in trying to define an

audience as a separate social category (Alasuutari, 1999; Livingstone, 2007). We all

participate in a society where the media and its meaningful discourses are omnipresent,

and its content informs some part of what we know about a great variety of social

phenomena. As such, we are all audiences to the extent that we know of media and have

opinions of its messages and outlets. To be a participant in my research then, all one

needs is an opinion of news media and a willingness to spend an hour talking about it

with me5.

Recruitment and Sample

To publicize my research and recruit participants I posted flyers in several small

to mid-sized cities in Connecticut, and their surrounding towns. I visited local grocery

stores, restaurants, coffee shops, lunch spots, diners, and bodegas, among other places

and asked to post flyers about my research. I invited people to tear off a tab with my

phone number and email address and contact me if they wished to talk about the news

media. I also visited numerous suburbs and rural areas to post flyers, and I periodically

returned to these sites to repost flyers. I posted flyers near bus stops, on telephone poles,

on light poles, vacant buildings, and other similar places that see heavy foot traffic. The

places I posted flyers see a diverse mix of people. Some of the city-centers where I

posted flyers attract a variety of people representing different races, classes and genders.

I estimate that the bus stops in particular attract a largely poor and working-class Black

5Participants must also satisfy the age requirement (18 years of age or older).

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and Hispanic population, as well as some working-class and poor white people. Some of

the diners and bodegas are frequented by a similar population, while some of the lunch

spots and coffee shops attract a business clientele who tend to be middle and upper class,

and are often white men and women.

I estimate that I posted approximately 400 flyers over roughly a year and a half. I

would frequently walk by my posted flyers and find several tabs torn off. Yet, the gap

between tearing off a tab and actually contacting me was broad. I estimate a small

percentage of people who actually tore off a tab actually called me (about 15 percent),

and of those who actually called me to set up an appointment, roughly 65 percent actually

followed through (i.e., the showed up for our appointment and completed the interview).

Posted flyers were the most successful recruitment tool, but I also recorded an

announcement that aired on a local radio station that frequently broadcasts news and

public affairs programming. This station reaches roughly 1 million listeners. Likewise, I

posted an announcement on the local public service television station with a similar

reach, and I advertised in two newspapers reaching an estimated 100,000 people

combined (one that serves a wealthy, largely white suburb and the other that serves

mostly Black and African American people in several urban centers). I frequently asked

my participants how they found out about my research and many (around 90 percent) said

they saw a posting for it somewhere, often a coffee shop or restaurant, and usually in

either the city-centers or the downtown section of the surrounding suburbs. A few people

read about my study in the newspaper (primarily the suburban paper) and nobody

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mentioned the television or radio announcement, nor the African American centered

newspaper.

collected data for appro+imately a year and a half 8)arch 2EE1 through August

2EE>9, and in all, => people contacted me and completed an interview 8see Appendi+ 29.

The people contacting me were largely white, middle to upper class, men and women, of

ages mostly ranging from the early Es % upper 1Es. They consisted of computer

technicians, business owners, lawyers, students, financial analysts, carpenters, and

national and international corporate managers, among other occupations. )ost had at

least a high-school education, many had some college e+perience if not a bachelor"s

degree, and a handful had an advanced degree 8usually a )aster"s degree9. interviewed

2/ white men and white females. The remaining participants were racial minorities of

whom three identified as blackAfrican Americans 8two men and one woman9, two as

ndian 8both men9, two as Asian American 8both men9, one as black African 8a male from

7hana9, one Hispanic male, and two male American ndians 8who can easily pass as

African American9.

As has been well documented, white, middleupper class, men constitute a

privileged social group and scholars should not feel comfortable generali#ing across

broader populations based on how they necessarily perceive the world 87amson, 0029.

Though knowing how people representing the upper levels of the hierarchy of credibility

8Becker, 01>9 think about and use the news media to understand their larger social

environment is certainly useful if we wish to harness their power and inform meaningful

social policies and change. 4hile data largely from white, middleupper class, men and

women has such advantages and disadvantages, did actively try to recruit more people

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of color, women, and workinglower class participants. To do this took out ads in a

newspaper that services the African American communities in several onnecticut cities

and one city in )assachusetts. also personally approached men and women of color

during social events at local venues 8e.g., a music festival in a local park that drew

several thousand visitors9. $inally, posted flyers in the highly African American and

Hispanic sections of two cities. 4hile these efforts yielded some results, have yet been

able to draw an ade:uate sample to e+amine the intersections of people of color, women,

and people in the workinglower classes and how they discuss contemporary .3. news

media. do draw some rough discussions about how the few racial minorities that did

speak with talked about and engaged with their news environment. $rom want can

gather, the basic structure of how this sub-population engages with the news media is

similar to the rest of my population, but some of the content and stressors differ, as do

some of the symbolic meanings. The racial minorities spoke with recogni#ed the

mainstream news media as an environment that did not represent or reflect them as a

social group and they"d often consult the 5Black maga#ines6 to learn about news that"s

relevant to their lives. elaborate on this in chapter .

)y current sample is clearly disadvantaged in its homogeni#ation and inability to

tease out how people of different statuses, particularly marginali#ed statues, engage with

their news environment and create their news realities. Cet, my sample population is also

an advantage in that the heavily white, middle and upper class, men and women with

whom spoke resemble those who in many ways occupy the power structure in the .3.

)oreover, given their lucrative marketability to advertisers, they are also those most

5served6 by the news media 8Froject for 9, and are the

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people most likely to occupy social and political positions where they can effectively act

on their socially constructed news realties in real and concrete ways that have

conse:uences for most people in society. This is similar to the reason


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framed my :uestions in open-ended ways that were most inviting to my respondents"

comments. )oreover, believe the conversational nature of many of my interviews

worked to encourage a more open and honest dialogue between two people rather than

between 5researcher6 and 5researched.6 (ur discussions would wander off on side-notes

that helped create a more comfortable and non-judgmental environment, and hopefully

allowed for more honest discussions.

n a sense, many of my participants were 5news fans6 because of the voluntary

nature of my recruitment design. They were engaged with the news media to degrees that

are likely uncommon among many .3. citi#ens. )any of my respondents wanted to

know the news! they cared about and wanted to know what was happening in the social

and political arenas, and were actively engaged with their news-world. These issues may

mark my participants as different from many other people in the .3. yet their news

engagement or 5fandom6 speaks to their participation in the social and political worlds,

their agency in everyday life, and their power 8to whatever degree it e+ists9 in the social

and political fields and over their friends and family. 4hile my sample may be unusual

in their news engagement, because of the social and political capital allotted to them

given their positions on the hierarchy of credibility, and their active interest and concern

about news issues 8particularly that of public affairs and political topics9 they carry with

them a disproportionate amount of power over the sociali#ation of others, particularly

friends and family. )oreover, as a collective unit, they can e+ercise some power over

their representatives and the policies created and enforced at various levels of

government. Therefore, what they have to say about the news and their ability to

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generate and sustain lines of thought about the news-world may indeed have implications

for many.

n any event though, it is important to keep in mind throughout this dissertation

that my analyses and discussions are based on information from people who wanted to

talk to me and tell me about their thoughts on the news media. do not know how my

data would differ if were able to offer financial compensation for people"s time, or if

were a fly on a wall when people are talking about the news among friends. Ferhaps if

could offer participants money for taking part in an interview those who felt in any way

intimidated to speak with me might have been more likely to contact me for an interview.

)oreover, "m not sure how my data would change if spoke with people who really

don"t care much about the news. These are :uestions to consider while reading this

dissertation.

met with those who were interested in my flyers, who contacted me, and showed

up for their interviews, in public places, such as coffee shops, bars, bookstores, libraries,

or restaurants. (ccasionally "d meet the participants at their residence, however this was

not common. conducted many of my interviews during my respondents" lunch breaks

or after they finished their workday. was hesitant to make too many demands in regards

to interview-setting or time since felt obligated to honor my respondents" generosity and

willingness to talk with me without receiving any financial compensation. (ur

interviews usually lasted about one-hour depending on my respondents" answers and how

much time they were willing to dedicate to the interview. often began the interview

session by asking people where they go to get their news about national and world events.

$rom here, we"d discuss why people chose those news providers. 4e then moved on to

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discuss how my respondents defined news and how they recogni#ed it when they saw,

listened to, or read it, and why they consumed the news. (ur conversations were fairly

open and only guided by a few topics wanted to address 8see Appendi+ A bold

:uestions9. hoped to allow my respondents to elaborate as we discussed the news, their

opinions of the news, and their opinions of their knowledge on the news. As is the case

in much :ualitative research, my later interview sessions were more conversational and

flowed more smoothly because was more familiar with the trends that were emerging

from previous interviews and learned how to better frame my :uestions in ways the

reflected the issues hoped to address.

Conclusion

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This dissertation fits the realm of interpretive cultural sociology and the qualitative

methodology I use searches to understand how people use the news media to

construct and maintain their social realities. I investigate media power, cognitive

schemata, lay theorizing and the uses of symbolic meanings, while treating media as

a lived, embodied part of everyones social being (i.e., practiced). As a whole, this

research takes part in the infinitely incomplete task of thick description (Geertz,

1973), by trying to not only classify peoples news talk, but also by attempting to

understand the meaningful reasons why people talk about the news as they do.

While this is part of a much broader scholarly project in understanding how people

socially construct their realities, the medias role in their constructions, and the

consequences for dominant wielders of symbolic power, I hope only to chip away at

understanding the medias ever-present and seemingly expanding (Gitlin, 2002) role

in the social world and ignite greater interest in media scholarship.

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SECTION II

Commercialized Mainstream News Media

I organize the following three chapters (chapters 2-4) around three broad

questions. These questions are: 1) How confident are my respondents in their ability to

establish grounded and secure senses of reality through the news? 2) How do my

respondents establish their confident and grounded news realities? 3) How do my

respondents justify their news opinions and anchor their news realities? These foci

illuminate the processes involved in peoples socially constructed news realities. They

reveal the cognitive practices that people use to think about and know the world outside

their living-rooms. By asking these questions, I hope to demonstrate the utility of media

research for those interested in social control and social change, and for scholars whose

interests may not at first glance appear related to media. This is because the questions I

seek to understand with this dissertation reveal how people ground their understandings

of the vast social phenomena with which media help to define. I develop this point more

in the concluding chapter, but wish the reader to consider that this research and the

theoretical framework around which its structured has implications for those interested in

ideology, hegemony, power, social control and social change, because it speaks to how

others access and negotiate in their minds eye, the larger world around them.

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CHAPTER 2: Knowing the Social World through the News

To understand and respect the implications of peoples news narratives for their

socially constructed realities, I consider the following interrelated questions and issues in

chapter 2. What does the news represent to people, and how do people define and

recognize news when they see it? I then discuss what people say about the role of news

in society, their reasons for consuming the news, and, if they do, why they perceive news

as important? Finally, I ask how confident my respondents are in their ability to

understand the world given the news they consume. These questions seek to understand

peoples ideas of news as a cultural phenomenon, their uses of news in their lives, and the

extent to which they believe their uses of news meet the expectations they have of it as a

cultural phenomenon. Addressing these issues allows me to establish a basic conceptual

understanding of where my respondents position the news in their everyday lives and

their sense of security in knowing about the news world and establishing a grounded

news reality. The questions I address in chapter 2 establish a foundation upon which my

respondents news narratives (covered in chapters 3 and 4) rest.

Introduction

Cultural sociologists and cultural studies scholars have recently started asking

different questions about the media. While historically, media scholars directly focused

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on media, a newer school of scholarship is questioning the broader role of media in

peoples lives. Ron Lembo (2000), for one, has de-centered the study of media as he

considered television viewing as a situated activity that we perform among a variety of

other activities. Lembo invites us to think about our engagement with television and

consider how we introduce what we have consumed on television into our everyday lives.

In Europe, scholars have started conceptualizing both media text and signs as social

objects, and began asking what they represent as cultural objects, (Coudry, 2000b;

Glevarec, 2005). These new theoretical developments have encouraged scholars to start

questioning peoples engagement with culture in broader and more nuanced ways. Doing

so demonstrates the vast range of everyday places and situations where people practice

and perform the cultural products with which they interact based on their associated

social meanings. Such a line of research is particularly useful for scholarship on news

media, especially audience-centered work. Understanding what the news represents as a

social and cultural object will surely have implications for its public uses and practices.

As I argue throughout this dissertation, one such implication involves its use in peoples

understandings and constructions of social reality. Surely, how people define and

understand the news as a social object relates to the uses they envision for it in

understanding both the world and their everyday lives.

What is News?

Media scholars have asked questions about the nature of news since the 1920s

(Lippman, 1922; Park, 1940; Tuchman, 1978; Gans, 1979; Tumber, 1999; Dickinson,

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2007). Definitions of news tend to focus on four themes. These are the same four

themes that Gans (1979) identified nearly three decades ago. They are: 1) news as

journalist-centered; 2) news as event-centered; 3) news as a result of external

determinants (e.g., technological or economic), and; 4) news as organizationally-

centered.

Some emphasize news as the product of journalists professional news judgments

(Gans, 1979). In this journalist-centered approach, news bias and content is said to

reflect the journalists collective or individual ideological biases and decisions. In a 2007

PBS Frontline special about news titled News War, Walter Cronkite echoed a

journalist-centered approach when asked what is news. Cronkite responded by stating,

We [i.e., journalists and reporters] make the judgment

as to whether something is important or not. Thats how

things get in the newspaper. Thats how things get on

the evening news broadcastWhen we judge it [news], were

not judging it from on high, but through the journalism

standards, on what interests most of the people at any

given moment in time, and that which is important to

most of the people gets on the air.

Journalist-centered theories celebrate the journalists and the press as they imply

an inherent quality of newsworthiness and stress the journalists training in being able to

recognize something as newsworthy and process it through journalistic standards of

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integrity. Journalists-centered theories also tend to underlie common claims about the

liberal media (Goldberg, 2002). Such positions usually claim (though at times

erroneously) that journalists liberal perspectives are due to their east-coast upbringing

or schooling. Here, the argument goes, the culture of journalism as a practice reflects its

liberal journalists and yields a leftist media which misrepresents the reality of social and

political issues, including news reports. This argument implies that the solution to media

bias is to encourage more conservative and right-leaning journalists if we are to

balance the news media (McChesney, 2004).

Event-centered theories are similar to journalists-centered theories and they

suggest that the news is determined by the events occurring in society. Event-centered

theories are popular among journalists because they emphasize the role of the news as a

mirror of society, and journaliststhrough their reportingreflect the image of society

onto the readers and audiences (Gans, 1979). Event-centered approaches reflect the

idea of journalism and its role in informing and educating a citizenry. By truly

reflecting whats happening in news reality, journalists and the press remove all forms

of opinion in their presentation of a story and offer a truly objective picture of the news.

Those emphasizing the news as a consequence of events occurring outside the

news organization often consider the power of technology in capturing these events and

constructing the news message. Others argue that journalists select stories that align with

the national culture and that relate most closely to their personal lifestyles and habits

(Gans, 1979).

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The most popular position among social scientists, however, is that of

organization-centered theories of news. Here, the news is a product of a complex social

organization; its constructed through the institutionalization of news conventions that

result from external pressures and inform what constitutes news. Organization-centered

theories emphasize ritualized organizational factors, such as news collecting routines,

reliance on traditional news sources, time/space allocations for news content, and beats

(Tuchman, 1978; Golding and Elliott, 1979; Fishman, 1980), the relationship between

news sources and journalists (Gans, 1979; Entman, 2004), and the need for content to

adhere to specific format logics (Altheide, 1991). As formal and complex organizations,

the news media is constantly concerned with reducing risk and ensuring that they make a

reliable product daily. Many of the news routines that ground the organizational-centered

theories of news production emphasize that the need to reduce risk while ensuring

financial stability and profit structure the creation of news and reproduce dominant, status

quo voices and news frames (Tuchman, 1978). Usually social scientists emphasize the

news organization as a business enterprise when explaining organization-centered

theories (Bennett, 1983; McChesney, 2004; Klinenberg, 2007), however, they also

emphasize journalistic values (Benson, 1998), and other issues that question a political

economy of news approach (Schudson, 2003; Entman, 2004).

Recently, Dickinson (2007) argued that social scientists examine journalistic

mistakes (such as the case of Jayson Blair of theNew York Times), and how journalists

control and regulate each other from within media organizations. Drawing from Hughes

(1964) and Beckers (1970) organizational sociology, Dickinson (2007: 202) reasoned by

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understanding media work as resulting from collective behavior, involving social actors

in a process of occupational accomplishment media scholars can better understand how

journalists regulate and constrain each other in processes of control and the production of

media. Dickinsons work is the latest organizationally-centered approach to news

production in a long range of research on the process of making news.

The production of news approach reaches back to Walter Lippman (1922).

Lippman claimed that news was the result of a series of selective decisions determined by

the conventions of news organizations. He argued that [N]ewspapers do not try to keep

an eye on all mankind. They have watchers stationed at certain places, like Police

Headquarters, the Coroners Office, the County Clerks Office, City Hall, the White

House, the Senate, House of Representatives and so forth (Lippman, 1965 [1922]: 214,

cf. Tumber, 1999: 5). These news-gathering practices resulted in the advent of the press

agent, hired to serve as middleman, and to negotiate the relationship between newspaper

reporter and the organization. As Boorstin (1987 [1961])) later argued, the press agent

plays a primary role in creating the pseudo-event, or the planted report intended to

become the focus of public attention, through intentionally placed news leaks.

Roughly a decade and a half after Lippmans work, Robert Park (1940), a

journalist turned sociologist, argued that the news is that which constitutes the unusual.

According to Park, news must excite, amuse or shock its consumers; eliciting the popular

phrase, Dog bites manthat is not news. But Man bites dogthats news. Hinting

at news a sensational, Park continued to say [i]t is not the intrinsic importance of an

event that makes it newsworthy. It is rather the fact that the event is so unusual that if

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published it will either startle, amuse, or otherwise excite the reader so that it will be

remembered and repeated. (Park, 1940; cf. Tumber, 1999: 13). Park also emphasized

the importance of news by stating that [N]ewsis nevertheless, the stuff which makes

political action, as distinguished from other forms of collective behavior, possible.

(Tumber, 1999: 13).

More recently, research on internet news is finding that as news-makers and

news-receivers are increasingly wearing each others hats. Reports and stories about

various issues and events are growing in ways that transcend the common content found

in mainstream news media (Dessauer, 2004). Additionally, stories are beginning to build

upon each other and readers are beginning to see historical and social context within

reports. How the internet alters communication possibilities in ways that allow many

people to both produce and receive messages has fundamentally altered what constitutes

news on the internet. I elaborate on this point in chapter 6, but for now I highlight this

point because my respondents comments on what constitutes news more closely

resembles the news thats being produced and consumed on the internet than what exists

in traditional news outlets, such as television, newspapers, and radio.

While these theories help us understand what becomes news, one angle thats

missing is a definition of news from the consumers point of view. Understanding what

constitutes news from the consumers perspective will help clarify the extent to which my

respondents believe they know about the news world given their news consumption.

What is News? An Audience-Centered Approach

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I began my research by asking my respondents what they consider news, or how

they know news when they see, read, and listen to it. This approach marks a substantial

detour from the traditional approaches to defining news that Gans pointed out in 1979.6

Yet, it is essential to understanding how people use the news media to know the social

world outside their immediate local contexts. My questions were designed to investigate

the news as a social object (Couldry, 2000;bGlevarec, 2005), and to question its shared

identifying and essential characteristics, or what the news is as an ideal type (Weber,

1949). Cultural theorists Chris Jenks interprets Webers writing on ideal types as the

significant and characteristic features of [a] phenomenon, they are those features

that produce it as meaningful and relevant within its specific historical context

(Jenks, 2005: 52). For example, Weber (1947) said that a bureaucracy as an ideal type is

characterized as a large, informal organization with clearly marked positions organized in

a hierarchy each with its own rules, regulations, and expectations. What are the defining

characteristics of news? Instead of defining news as an outcome of organizational

routines or journalistic standards like my predecessors, I want to know how those who

the news allegedly serves characterize it.

This is an important question for several reasons. Most notably, it reveals the

perceived disjunction between the news people consume and the news they want. It

relates to peoples confidence in knowing about the news world and establishing a

grounded news reality. And, it helps explain why people seek out public broadcasting

and use the internet to consume news (as I discuss in chapters 5 and 6).

6These include news as journalist-centered, event-centered, a result of external

determinants, and news as organizationally-centered.

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My respondents defined news in terms that mostly resembled the journalist-

centered and event-centered definitions of news that Gans (1979) provided. For example,

Henry, a lawyer in his mid 40s offers his conceptualization of news in the following

quote, and its indicative of what many of my respondents think about when ask to define

the news,

there are discussions and information about various

topics of public concernwhat they [news media]

are attempting to do is there are issues of public concern

or public disputes, and theyre discussing it, analyzing

it, evaluating it, and presenting the facts, trying to present

opinions on all sides of the issue.

Others made similar claims about what constitutes news. Another participant

stated that the news is, information about happenings in the worldits about things that

change peoples lives. Or, according to this respondent, news is a statement of fact

about what happened during the immediate prior period. I dont like stuff that said its

news that is very strident, one sided. Its a matter of absent strident and one-sidedness.

Finally, this person claimed that news is something that is important to a lot of people.

Its usually current or newly discovered. As in the last two examples, some of my

respondents noted that news is timely, or that it addresses current issues. However, they

did claim that news reports can be on historical events, if they relate to something thats

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current. For example, historical reports that focus on Vietnam can be newsworthy if they

relate to the current war in Iraq.

I also asked my respondents about the role of news in society. Many responded in

ways similar to Sharon, whos a white female social worker in her upper 20s. Sharon

said the news is to inform and educate, raise awarenessgive people opportunity to

raise their voice about things, to make decisions on how to feel and act; or as others

stated, news is to inform [and] gather information; to expand our horizons on the

issues; and to report events that are of consequence, what is important and what is

happening. Shawn, a white, free lance writer in his 60s focused specifically on the

relationship between news media and the federal government. He said the news is to

keep us informed and keep the government in check because its a fundamentally

corrupting force. From the respondents perspective the news is characterized as a

source of information about the social world through which they can develop

understandings of entities and phenomena7

and construct informed lines of action.

Although rare, some respondents made clear connections between watching news

and potential consequences far away in time and space. Sharon makes this point in her

statement above, she said, I think [the role of news in society is] to inform and educate,

raise awareness in peoples lives that are particular to them but also things that may not

apply to them, but have that ripple effect. Ryan, a white male in his mid 30s made a

similar connection. Over a beer at a local bar Ryan said I pay taxes to the federal

government, they do a lot with those taxes but they do a lot of things that directly affect

the U.S. Few respondents, though, acknowledged effects outside of their personal

7Think nouns: persons, places, and things.

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network of friends and family. This phenomenon hints at what Zerubavel (1997) calls

our mental horizons. Mental horizons impose visual closure on our physical

surroundings, they close our minds by helping delineate what we consider relevant

(Zerubavel, 1997: 37). Rarely did the mental horizons of those with whom I spoke

expand beyond the immediate here and now. Such bounded mental horizons in many

ways may reflect a weakened sociological imagination (Mills, 1959) in that people are

unlikely to think beyond their personal environments or link their lives to broader social

forces. Such limited mental horizons may be a factor of the medias thought control,

which is often practiced through agenda-setting and distractions that keep peoples

attention directed toward specific areas that are non-threatening to the dominant political

and economic players whose actions may indeed have a ripple effect (Herman and

Chomsky, 1988). As a result, people are unable to place into proper context the things

they see and recognize happening around them (Johnson, 2000).

Again, for my respondents the news is a venue for identifying and debating ideas

that are of public concern. The news also represents a source of information that people

use to discover and learn about the social world so they can make accurate and informed

decisions. For some, the news plays an important and explicit democratic role in that it

provides information on what a representative government is doing in their names. For

others, the news is more of a place where people can learn about the social world and

make personal life decisions.

My respondents argued that the news defining characteristics include its services

as a mediated source of information regarding public issues and its services as a place of

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public debate. As a place where people discuss issues of public importance, the news

media represents a common sphere, much as Glevarec (2005) found in France. Gelvarec

(2005) studied the social meanings of free radio for French youth (15-16 years old) and

asked, what kind of social object is radio for young people? [italics in original]8.

Using an interpretive epistemology Glevarec uncovered four different, although often

interrelated meanings that youth free radio represented to French 15-16 year olds.

French youth characterized youth free radio as 1) a common sphere; 2) a quasi-

institution; 3) a social occasion; and 4) a device.

Glevarec argued that, as a common sphere, French youth free radio serves as a

place where youth can take part in a conversation in a group of friends (341), and thus,

it provides a public sphere microcosm for French youth. Those who characterized French

youth free radio as a common sphere claimed it represents a friendly sphere of sharing

experiences and opinions and the game of question and answer between presenters and

callers (342). In some ways the news represents a common sphere to my respondents

because its understood as a place where people can discuss and debate issues that are of

shared, public concern. However, while a common sphere implies information flowing

in multiple directions (i.e., news organization to consumer and consumer to news

organization) my respondents imply that the news is unidirectional. The news represents

a supply of information regarding publicly shared concerns for public consumption.

8Glevarec refrains from question

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