REVIEW OF TAKING JOURNALISM SERIOUSLY: NEWS AND THE ACADEMY BY BARBIE ZELIZER

摘要

Journalism has long lacked serious consideration as a topic of academic study, as an everyday field, and as a cultural practice, according to Barbie Zelizer, author of Taking Journalism Seriously (2004). She suggests that as a result of such disregard, a gaping chasm in journalism scholarship grows, bringing us no closer to understanding that which plays an integral role in creating meaning, facilitating shared information, and in positioning the world's events within a framework for our understanding. In order to address such concerns, Zelizer outlines the major deficiencies she has identified in the study of journalism. She suggests the connection of journalism's perceived importance and "nature" with how its study has traditionally been approached. Appropriately, Zelizer provides a substantial survey of journalism study, ranging across relevant academic literature to gaps in available knowledge between fields. Her goal, simpatico with a cultural studies audience, is to understand the study of journalism from an interdisciplinary perspective while paying mind to the issue of how "academic authority" asserts itself within various fields. This survey leads readers through the fields of sociology, history, language studies, political science, and cultural analysis. Topics covered within these fields include relevant literature, methods, various articulations of journalism as an academic object of study, and the possibilities open for future research. Zelizer's overarching goal is to propose a more evocative understanding of an important cultural phenomenon and the ways in which it refracts and creates meaning in the world. Inquiry including all these factors is essential to "taking journalism seriously," according to the argument outlined in Zelizer's book.