Digital journalism : defined, refined, or re-defined

Abstract

Observing the limitations driven by a certain path-dependency in most scholarship on digital journalism, we argue for favouring a direction that privileges “digital” over “journalism”. Rather than seeing it as a digital iteration of journalistic principles, as has been a persistent theme in academia to date, it would see consider journalism as an embodiment of digital principles, one of the many domains of social life which is increasingly restructured around digital technologies. Digitisation sets the agenda for journalism to follow, rather than journalism setting the agenda for its digital incarnation to live up to—or not. Such an approach is a continuation of existing but limited scholarship which could open up new paths and expand current avenues of research, and reflects an emerging paradigm where digitisation is the dominant partner.