Journalistic Practice and the Cultural Valuation of New Media: Topicality, Objectivity, Network

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, American journalism is undergoing an existential crisis provoked by the emergence of digital and networked communication. As the economic model of producing journalism is undergoing significant changes, this study argues that the crisis of journalism is primarily a cultural crisis of valuation. Because the practices that traditionally defined the exclusivity of journalism as a form of public communication have been transposed to the online and digital environment through social media and blogs, such practices no longer value journalism in the same terms like in the age of mass media. The key to understanding the cultural crisis of journalism in the present, this study argues, is to revise the traditional narrative and its associated terminologies of the institutionalization of journalism. Journalism is thus defined as a structure of public communication, which needs to be enacted by producers and audiences alike to become socially meaningful. The consequence of seeing journalism as a structure sustained through social practices is that it allows to see the relation between audiences and their journalistic media as constitutive for the social function of new media in journalism. Through the analytically central dimension of practice, the study presents key moments in the history of modern journalism, where the meaning of new media was negotiated. These moments include the emergence of topical news media oriented toward a mass market (the penny press in the 1830s) and the definition of a schema of objectivity which valued journalistic practice in professional and scientific terms around the turn of the twentieth century in analogy to photographic media. In each phase, material, cognitive and social practices helped to define the value of a given new medium for journalism. Through the schemas of topicality and objectivity, journalistic practice institutionalized a privileged structure of public communication. The legacy of defining these schemas is then regarded as the central reason for the cultural crisis of journalistic practice in the present, as practices have been transposed and re-valued to sustain either forms of alternative journalism (as peer-production) or forms of self-communication in network media like blogs. Neither the form nor the technology of the blog alone can explain this differential social relevance but only the different ways in which social practices integrated and value new media. The study synthesizes an interdisciplinary array of concepts from cultural studies, sociology and journalism studies on subjects such as public communication, interaction, news production and cultural innovation. The theoretical framework of practice theories is then applied to an extensive body of primary and secondary source material, in order to retrace the cultural valuation of new media in a historically-comparative perspective. The study offers a theoretical and empirical contribution to the analysis of cultural innovation, which can be adopted to other cultural forms and media

Anchoring Practices for Public Connection: Media Practice and Its Challenges for Journalism Studies

This article develops a typology of anchoring practices of public connection to systematize how new forms of interaction, participation, and articulation in networked media now challenge the primacy of journalism to offer exclusive and authoritative representations of society. The first part offers a brief summary of core contributions and assumptions in practice theory, highlighting differences between strong and weak programs of practice-based research. The second part presents the concept of public connection and how it can be expanded to include media practice on a more general, analytic level. The third part discusses four sets of anchoring practices, which allow for very different intensities of public connection to emerge: practices of information retrieval, social orientation, (self-)representation, and public intervention. The concluding outlook section addresses challenges for the study of journalism, focusing on the relations between professional and nonprofessional practices of articulation, in which speaker and audience positions can alternate dynamically between different “layers of publicness.

From banal surveillance to function creep: automated license plate recognition (ALPR) in Denmark

This article discusses how Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) has been implemented in Denmark across three different sectors: parking, environmental zoning, and policing. ALPR systems are deployed as a configuration of cameras, servers, and algorithms of computer vision that automatically reads and records license plates of passing cars. Through digital ethnography and interviews with key stakeholders in Denmark, we contribute to the fields of critical algorithm and surveillance studies with a concrete empirical study on how ALPR systems are configured according to user-specific demands. Each case gives nuance to how ALPR systems are implemented: (1) how the seamless charging for a “barrier-free” parking experience poses particular challenges for customers and companies; (2) how environmental zoning enforcement through automated fines avoids dragnet data collection through customized design and regulation; and (3) how the Danish Police has widened its dragnet data collection with little public oversight and questionable efficacy. We argue that ALPR enacts a form of “banal surveillance” because such systems operate inconspicuously under the radar of public attention. As the central analytic perspective, banality highlights how the demand for increasing efficiency in different domains makes surveillance socially and politically acceptable in the long run. Although we find that legal and civic modes of regulation are important for shaping the deployment of ALPR, the potential for function creep is embedded into the very process of infrastructuring due to a lack of public understanding of these technologies. We discuss wider consequences of ALPR as a specific and overlooked instance of algorithmic surveillance, contributing to academic and public debates around the embedding of algorithmic governance and computer vision into everyday life

What smartness does in the smart city: From visions to policy

This article examines what smartness does on the ground by examining how its anticipatory media visions have been interpreted and acted on in policy decisions and local implementations since the early 2000s. Using a comparative-historical analysis that draws on fieldwork in aspiring smart cities in the United States and Europe, we argue that the visions of smartness are neither singular nor fixed across time and space. Instead, the role of smartness in diffusing new technologies is recruited and reshaped in the present to lend legitimacy to future public and private interventions. We first demonstrate that the narrative of crisis, often associated with smartness, shifted from a pre-2008 emphasis on sustainability and climate change to a post-financial crisis engagement with entrepreneurship and platformization. We then discuss how the development of smart city initiatives has followed divergent paths in the United States and Europe, with big tech companies dominating in the former and the ‘living lab’ model prevailing in the latter. Our analysis highlights the importance of investigating the complex relationships between anticipatory media visions of smartness and their varying, down-to-earth implementations in the built environment rather than solely focusing on the discursive appeal of techno-idealism. It also explains the enduring appeal of smartness as an urban vision, despite its various shortcomings, by revealing its adaptability to the changing social and political–economic shifts

Wider die Simulation : Medien und symbolischer Tausch ; Revisionen zum Frühwerk Jean Baudrillards

Zugleich gedruckt erschienen im Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin unter der ISBN 978-3-7983-2126-7Der französische Soziologe und Medientheoretiker Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) avancierte in den 90er Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts zu einem der profiliertesten und schärfsten Kritiker der Mediengesellschaft. Seine Begriffe der Simulation und Hyperrealität sind zum festen aber umstrittenen Vokabular der Analyse post-moderner Gesellschaften geworden, in denen das Spiel mit Zeichen den gelebten Konflikt abgelöst hat. Über eine Textanalyse des Frühwerks – von den konsumkritischen Schriften zu „L‘Echange Symbolique et la Mort“ (1976) – wird der Weg Baudrillards zur Simulation nachgezeichnet und kritisch in einen medienwissenschaftlichen Rahmen eingebettet. Symbolischer Tausch als Mittel der Verhandlung von gesellschaftlichen Hierarchien wird aus dem hermetischen Werk Baudrillards heraus entwickelt und für eine kulturvergleichende Analyse von Netzwerkmedien nutzbar gemacht. Diese kurze Einführung bietet durch ihre kritische Distanz zum Autor und eine umfangreiche Bibliographie neue Perspektiven auf die entscheidende Phase im Werk Jean Baudrillards. „Kommunikation gründet auf einen Mangel, der nicht zu beheben ist.“ Gedruckte Version im Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin (www.univerlag.tu-berlin.de) erschienen

Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign

This article analyses the changed structures, actors and modes of communication that characterise 'dissonant public spheres.' With the #120decibel campaign by the German Identitarian Movement in 2018, gender and migration were pitched in a racist tune, absorbing feminist concerns and positions into neo-nationalistic, misogynist and xenophobic propaganda. The article examines the case of #120decibel as an instance of 'affective publics' (Lünenborg, 2019a) where forms of feminist protest and emancipatory hashtag activism are absorbed by anti-migration campaigners. Employing the infrastructure and network logics of social media platforms, the campaign gained public exposure and sought political legitimacy through strategies of dissonance, in which a racial solidarity against the liberal state order was formed. Parallel structures of networking and echo-chamber amplification were established, where right-wing media articulate fringe positions in an attempt to protect the rights of white women to be safe in public spaces. #120decibel is analysed and discussed here as characteristic of the ambivalent role and dynamics of affective publics in societies challenged by an increasing number of actors forming an alliance on anti-migration issues based on questionable feminist positions

From Data to Discourse: How Communicating Civic Data Can Provide a Participatory Structure for Sustainable Cities and Communities

This study explores how Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have leveraged civic data to facilitate democratic participatory structure for sustainability transitions around the case of bicycle counters in three US cities over a ten-year period (Seattle, San Francisco, Portland). We identified that CSOs have played crucial roles in public discourse by (1) sustaining long-term public issues through shaping affective as well as analytical discourses and (2) fostering citizens’ sense of ownership and contributions toward sensor devices and the data they generate by contextualizing them through local civic life as well as connecting issues to actors in other cities

Making (female) health care work matter: The performative publics of #systemrelevant during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Over the last two years, digital media have contributed significantly to increasing the visibility of those who are outstandingly challenged by the pandemic. In Germany, the Twitter hashtag #systemrelevant [systemically relevant] initiated a public debate on values and working conditions. Applying the practice-theory-based concept of performative publics, we analyze the formation of this specific public with a special focus on its gendered structure. Results of our mixed-methods approach show how health care work has become the dominant issue of #systemrelevant. Civil society actors and engaged health care workers set the agenda, and journalism primarily responds to these voices. Although care work is performed predominantly by women, most of the attention online is given to men. However, on the level of tweets and linked content, the discourse in #systemrelevant counteracts stereotypical images of women in health care. Overall, the ethnographic data on the most significant collective actor show a continuous tension between symbolic recognition and their struggle for improving working conditions

Praxisprofile als mixed-methods Ansatz zur Analyse performativer Öffentlichkeiten: Vorschlag für eine relationale Journalismusforschung

Der vorliegende Artikel begründet und präsentiert einen mixed-methods Ansatz als Beitrag zu einer relationalen Journalismus- forschung. Ziel des Ansatzes ist es, die Herstellung von Öffentlichkeit in digitalen Medienumgebungen als geteilte Herstellungsleistung heterogener Akteur:innengruppen nachzuvollziehen und dabei gruppenspezifisch performativ-dramaturgische Stilmerkmale herauszuarbeiten. Zugrunde liegt ein praxeologischer Zugang, der für eine relationale Journalismus-forschung «beyond the newsroom» weiterentwickelt wird. Die Kontingenz, Vielstimmigkeit und Unübersichtlichkeit digitaler Öffentlichkeiten macht es notwendig, die traditionell mikrosoziologischen Vorgehensweisen in diesem Bereich zu verbinden mit quantitativen Netzwerkanalysen und standardisierten Akteur:innen- und Praxisanalysen. Hierfür wird ein dreistufiger Ansatz vorgestellt, der schrittweise durch quantitative und qualitative Methoden die Erstellung von «Praxisprofilen» einzelner Akteur:innen wie auch -gruppen erlaubt. Mit diesem interdisziplinären wie methodisch innovativen Ansatz soll Wandel in Öffentlichkeiten und im Journalismus auch komparativ verstehbar werden. Exemplarisch zeigen wir anhand erster Befunde zum Hashtag #systemrelevant, wie eine solche Analyse aufgebaut ist. This paper develops and presents a mixed-methods approach as a contribution to relational journalism studies. The approach aims to retrace the making of publics in digital media environments through the performative contributions of heterogeneous groups of actors and to elaborate group-specific stylistic features of their communication. It is based on a praxeological approach that is further developed for relational journalism studies “beyond the newsroom.” The contin- gency, polyphony and complexity of digital publics makes it necessary to combine traditional micro-sociological approaches in this field with quantitative network analyses and standardized analyses of actors and their practices. For this purpose, a three-stage approach is presented, which allows for the sequential development of “practice profiles” for individual actors as well as groups of actors through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. With this interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative approach, the change of public spheres and journalism can be understood comparatively. Using the hashtag #systemrelevant as an example, we show how such an analysis is structured

Weaving seams with data: Conceptualizing City APIs as elements of infrastructures

This article addresses the role of application programming interfaces (APIs) for integrating data sources in the context of smart cities and communities. On top of the built infrastructures in cities, application programming interfaces allow to weave new kinds of seams from static and dynamic data sources into the urban fabric. Contributing to debates about “urban informatics” and the governance of urban information infrastructures, this article provides a technically informed and critically grounded approach to evaluating APIs as crucial but often overlooked elements within these infrastructures. The conceptualization of what we term City APIs is informed by three perspectives: In the first part, we review established criticisms of proprietary social media APIs and their crucial function in current web architectures. In the second part, we discuss how the design process of APIs defines conventions of data exchanges that also reflect negotiations between API producers and API consumers about affordances and mental models of the underlying computer systems involved. In the third part, we present recent urban data innovation initiatives, especially CitySDK and OrganiCity, to underline the centrality of API design and governance for new kinds of civic and commercial services developed within and for cities. By bridging the fields of criticism, design, and implementation, we argue that City APIs as elements of infrastructures reveal how urban renewal processes become crucial sites of socio-political contestation between data science, technological development, urban management, and civic participation