Exploring constructions of journalistic identity in a digital age has been a lively area of
scholarship as the field of digital journalism studies has grown (Franklin 2013, 2014; Steensen
and Ahva 2015). Yet despite many approaches to understanding digital change, key avenues
for understanding changing constructions of identity remain underexplored. This paper
addresses a conceptual void in research literature by employing semiotic and semantic
approaches to analyse performances of journalistic identity in narratives of newswork
facilitated by and focused on digital megaleaks. It seeks to aid understanding of the way
narratives describe changing practices of newsgathering, and how journalists position
themselves within these hybrid traditional/digital stories. Findings show news narratives
reinforce the primacy of journalists within traditional boundaries of a journalistic field, and
articulate a preferred imagination of journalistic identity. Methodologically, this paper shows
how semantic and semiotic approaches lend themselves to studying narratives of newswork
within journalistic metadiscourses to understand journalistic identity at the nexus of
traditional and digital dynamics. The resultant portrait of journalistic identity channels a sociohistoric,
romantic notion of the journalist as “the shadowy figure always to be found on the
edges of the century’s great events” (Inglis 2002, xi), updated to accommodate modern, digital
dynamics