The Fundamentals of Journalism

A Big Gem of Journalism and Indispensable Condition

De: Krishna Kumar Singh

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The book that you now have before you is a product of the conviction that we should care about journalism and its study. We should care about journalism because it’s central to democracy, citizenship, and everyday life, and we should care about journalism studies because it helps us understand this key social institution. We are not alone in holding this conviction: a Journalism study is one of the fastest growing areas within the larger discipline of communication research and media studies. As indicated by a serious, though not altogether coherent body of academic literature and ongoing scholarly work, the study of journalism has matured to become an academic field of its own right. We felt that the arrival of journalism studies ought to be both celebrated and solidified and to honor this ambition, The Handbook of Journalism Studies was conceived as a gathering place for the varied lasting and emerging preoccupations of scholars in the field. This handbook, therefore, bears witness to the rapid and exciting developments in this important area of research, as well as its complexity, richness, and promise in terms of theory and research. We hope the book can boost the intellectual foundations of journalism studies, providing the reader with an overview of journalism as a dynamic field of study across its diverse epistemological, theoretical and methodological traditions. Fundamentals of Journalism set out to comprehensively chart the field and define the agenda for future in an international context. It is our hope that the book, when taken as a whole, provides a sense of journalism on a global scale, covering not just the dominant Indian traditions but also looking beyond this context, to Africa, Latin America, Continental Europe, and Asia. Although we have sought to make journalism studies a broad church in including 15 different chapters, each covering an impressive breadth of subject matter, we do not claim to survey every key area and tradition of scholarship in journalism studies. We had to make tough choices about what we were able to include and, regrettably, what to leave out. Needless to say, it would be impossible to do complete justice to a rich, dynamic and ever-emerging field of research in only one volume, however bulky, and we are reassured that journalism studies continue to be a productive scholarly community where the debates that echo in this book and those we have been unable to reflect continue with unabated fervour. What we do hope is that Fundamentals of Journalism will be a useful fundamental resource for anyone trying to get a sense of an academic field of inquiry and its past, present, and future. The book is structured around a critical engagement with key theoretical and empirical traditions, fields of inquiry and scholarly detailed in journalism, laid out by the foremost experts in each area. Beginning with four introductory chapters which outline more general issues in the field, the organization of the book reflects the aim of covering the broad contours of journalism studies. The volume contains four thematic sections, covering scholarship on news production and organizations, news content, journalism and society, and journalism in a global context. Within these four sections, each chapter provides a systematic and accessible overview of the state of scholarship and defines key problems, but also advances theory-building and problem solving, and identifies areas for further research.