The history of journalism in elective democracies around the world has been described as the emergence of a professional identity of journalists with claims to an exclusive role and status in society, based on and at times fiercely defended by their occupational ideology. Although the conceptualization of journalism as a professional ideology can be traced throughout the literature on journalism studies, scholars tend to take the building blocks of such an ideology more or less for granted. In this article the ideal-typical values of journalism’s ideology are operationalized and investigated in terms of how these values are challenged or changed in the context of current cultural and technological developments. It is argued that multiculturalism and multimedia are similar and poignant examples of such developments. If the professional identity of journalists can be seen as kept together by the social cement of an occupational ideology of journalism, the analysis in this article shows how journalism in the self-perceptions of journalists has come to mean much more than its modernist bias of telling people what they need to know.

Journalism has enjoyed a rich and relatively stable history of professionalization. Scholars coming from a variety of disciplines have theorized this history, forming a consistent body of knowledge codified in national and international handbooks and canonical readers. However, recent work and analysis suggest that the supposed core of journalism and the assumed consistency of the inner workings of news organizations are problematic starting points for journalism studies. In this article, we challenge the consensual (self-)presentation of journalism – in terms of its occupational ideology, its professional culture, and its sedimentation in routines and organizational structures (cf. the newsroom) in the context of its reconfiguration as a post-industrial, entrepreneurial, and atypical way of working and of being at work. We outline a way beyond individualist or institutional approaches to do justice to the current complex transformation of the profession. We propose a framework to bring together these approaches in a dialectic attempt to move through and beyond journalism as it has traditionally been conceptualized and practiced, allowing for a broader definition and understanding of the myriad of practices that make up journalism.

The internet - specifically its graphic interface, the world wide web - has had a major impact on all levels of (information) societies throughout the world. Specifically for journalism as it is practiced online, we can now identify the effect that this has had on the profession and its culture(s). This article defines four particular types of online journalism and discusses them in terms of key characteristics of online publishing - hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality - and considers the current and potential impacts that these online journalisms can have on the ways in which one can define journalism as it functions in elective democracies worldwide. It is argued that the application of particular online characteristics not only has consequences for the type of journalism produced on the web, but that these characteristics and online journalisms indeed connect to broader and more profound changes and redefinitions of professional journalism and its (news) culture as a whole.

Within media theory the worldwide shift from a 19th-century print culture via a 20th-century electronic culture to a 21st-century digital culture is well documented. In this essay the emergence of a digital culture as amplified and accelerated by the popularity of networked computers, multiple-user software, and Internet is investigated in terms of its principal components. A digital culture as an underdetermined praxis is conceptualized as consisting of participation, remediation, and bricolage. Using the literature on presumably “typical” Internet phenomena such as the worldwide proliferation of independent media centers (indymedia) linked with (radical) online journalism practices and the popularity of (individual and group) weblogging, the various meanings and implications of this particular understanding of digital culture are explored. In the context of this essay, digital culture can be seen as an emerging set of values, practices, and expectations regarding the way people (should) act and interact within the contemporary network society. This digital culture has emergent properties with roots in both online and offline phenomena, with links to trends and developments predating the World Wide Web, yet having an immediate impact and particularly changing the ways in which we use and give meaning to living in an increasingly interconnected, always on(line) environment.

Convergence, media cross‐ownership and multimedia newsrooms are becoming increasingly part of the vocabulary of contemporary journalism—in practice, education, as well as research. The literature exploring multimedia is expanding rapidly but it is clear that it means many different things to different people. Research into what multimedia in news work means for journalism and journalists is proliferating. In this paper the social and cultural context of multimedia in journalism, its meaning for contemporary newsrooms and media organizations, and its current (emerging) practices in Europe and the United States are analyzed. The goal: to answer the question in what ways “multimedia” impacts upon the practice and self‐perception of journalists, and how this process in turn shapes and influences the emergence of a professional identity of multimedia journalism. This paper offers an analysis of the professional and academic literature in Europe and the United States, using the concept of media logic as a theoretical framework

In a time of declining public trust in news, loss of advertising revenue, and an increasingly participatory, self-expressive and digital media culture, journalism is in the process of rethinking and reinventing itself. In this paper, the authors explore how journalism is preparing itself for an age of participatory news: a time where (some of) the news is gathered, selected, edited and communicated by professionals and amateurs, and by producers and consumers alike. Using materials from case studies of emerging participatory news practices in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the United States, the authors conclude with some preliminary recommendations for further research and theorize early explanations for the success or failure of participatory journalism.