Deconstructing Digital Journalism Studies

Abstract

This chapter will discuss the formation and state of digital journalism studies as a field of research. Our point of departure is that journalism studies is an interdisciplinary field that draws inspiration and conceptual tools from many research traditions, most notably from those of political science, sociology, history, language studies as well as cultural analysis (Zelizer 2004); but increasingly also from fields like science and technology studies (STS) and economics. All these disciplinary traditions thus play a role in how journalism is being analyzed. With the increased need to understand the significance of “online, multimedia or cross-media, convergent, and otherwise distinctly digital journalism” (Deuze 2008: 199), the discrete field of digital journalism studies emerged at the start of the new millennium. The aim of this chapter is to offer an overview of the emergence of this field of research and discuss its interdisciplinarity as well as assess its current standing and possible blind spots.