The PhD Colloquium Series is thrilled to welcome David Ryfe, who will discuss his fascinating work on digital journalism, identity and democracy. As always, lunch will be served.
The event is sponsored by the Sevellon-Brown Fund.
For decades, journalism studies has been riven by a paradox. On the one hand, the field is strongly motivated by a normative presumption that, if it does nothing else, journalism ought to inform the public about policy issues. On the other hand, decades of research, stretching back to the beginnings of modern journalism, indicates that, of all the things journalism accomplishes, informing the public is typically not one of them. Digital journalism studies is a relatively recent entrant into the field, but already it is clear that it risks reproducing this paradox. Indeed, much of the research on online news dedicates itself to discovering whether, how, and when digital journalism informs the public. As in decades past, researchers are discovering that digital journalism rarely achieves these goals.
As a way of moving beyond this cycle, I propose that scholars return to an old counter-tradition, one that places groups and group identities, and not information processing, at the center of democratic practice. It is groups, this tradition argues, that carry out democratic politics, and group identities from which citizens’ political views spring. Citizens are not rational, on this view, but social, more apt to base their political judgments on how “people like me” think. In this presentation, I discuss an alternative tradition and consider how a group-centered understanding of democracy may change the way we think about digital journalism’s contribution to democracy.
David Ryfe is a professor in and director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. He has published dozens of essays and three books in the areas of the history and sociology of news, political communication, and presidential communication. His most recent book, “Journalism and the Public” (Polity, 2017) explores the ways in which different forms of public life shape the meaning and practice of news. His current major project, “The History of the News Fact,” investigates the kinds of information deemed worthy of including as facts in the news by news producers in different eras—from 17th century England to the present.
