Digital Collectives: Shifting Social Boundaries in an Emerging Digitalised Newsroom

Abstract

For decades, digitalisation in the news industry has altered boundaries for journalism: Not only the boundaries towards the public, but also the social boundaries between news workers in editorial offices. Based on nearly a year of fieldwork and ten years of ethnographic work in a Norwegian newsroom, this study explores how digital collectives are continuously negotiated and enacted through trust relations in the interplay between digital technology and sociality. By unpacking how digital technology and digital data contributes to reestablish, reshape, and rearrange boundaries of journalism in the era of digital transition, this article shows a shift from altered digital collectives in the newsroom to digital collectives including the public through trust in digital data. Since digital ways of performing journalism hold potential for maintenance and alteration of what is private and shared, negotiation of social boundaries is important for mediating and upholding trust, harmony, and professional autonomy in news work.