Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Journalism and the City

2014; Routledge; Volume: 15; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1461670x.2014.894354

1469-9699

Cristina Archetti,

Media, Journalism, and Communication History

AbstractPlace matters a great deal in journalism, even in the era of the "death of geography." Yet space never produces effects through its existence alone. To understand the relevance of location beyond its most immediate assigned role of "logistic constraint," we must rework not only our understanding of journalism, but of the whole social world. This article presents a comparative analysis of foreign correspondents' practices in London and Oslo. The foreign journalists' experiences in the case studies are analytically dissected through the lens of Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory (ANT). The analysis shows the utility of the application of Latour's framework to the study of international journalism in two respects. First, by mapping how local practices—identities, newsgathering routines and story outputs—are relationally constructed through the interactions of social actors, technologies and material infrastructures, ANT provides an understanding of the role of location that transcends the merely physical and geographical dimensions. Second, by showing how situated practices are the outcomes of unique network configurations, ANT questions the validity of any generalized one-size-fits-all statements about the current state of foreign correspondence.KEYWORDS: Actor Network Theory (ANT)foreign correspondenceforeign journalistsnetworksplacetechnology Notes1. Interview with Paulo Nuno Vicente, researching on the socio-demographics, professional culture and newswork of foreign correspondents working across sub-Saharan Africa.2. London's urban population is 9,787,000; Oslo has 951,581 inhabitants. The capitals cover, respectively, an urban area of 1737.9 and 289.84 square kilometres. The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in London counts about 500 members. The great majority of them are full-time journalists since, in order to qualify for membership, "a minimum of seventy-five per cent of accountable journalistic income must be derived from media abroad" (FPA Citation2013). Oslo's FPA, instead, has 88 members, of whom about 35 are journalists who "work every day" (Lindahl, interview). London is a hub within the North Atlantic or Liberal model of journalism while Oslo fits the North/Central European or Democratic Corporatist model (Hallin and Mancini Citation2004). The FPA in London was founded in 1888; Oslo's FPA a century later, in 1989.3. Seven correspondents from Oslo; three foreign journalists in the United Kingdom in addition to an interview with Christopher Wyld, director of the London FPA. These data are complemented by 25 interviews with correspondents in the British capital from a previous study (Archetti Citation2012).