The Changing Context of News Work: Liquid Journalism and Monitorial Citizenship

In this paper, the relationships between theories of (new) citizenship and (new) journalism are explored. The meaning of citizenship has changed in the last few decades. People still tend to be seen by most politicians, scholars, and journalists alike as citizens that need to inform themselves widely about issues of general interest so that they can make an informed decision at election time. However, this model of the informed citizenry is a thing of the past — a prescriptive and rather elitist notion of both how people should make up their minds and what (political) representation means to them. Today’s citizen is not only critical, self-expressive, and distinctly anti-hierarchical (Beck, 2000), he is also what Schudson (1999) calls “monitorial”: scanning all kinds of news and information sources for the topics that matter to him personally. People are not necessarily disengaged from the political process, they just commit their time and energy to it on their own terms. This individualized act of citizenship can be compared to the act of the consumer, browsing stores of a shopping mall for that perfect pair of jeans — it is the act of the citizen-consumer. In journalism, a similar trend is emerging, where traditional role perceptions of journalism influenced by its occupational ideology — providing a general audience with information of general interest in a balanced, objective, and ethical way — do not seem to fit all that well with the lived realities of reporters and editors, nor with the communities they are supposed to serve. In the context of a precarious and, according to the International Federation of Journalists, increasingly “atypical” professional work life, ongoing efforts by corporations to merge and possibly converge news operations, and an emerging digital media culture where the consumer is also a producer of public information, the identity of the journalist must be seen as “liquid” (Bauman, 2000). Such a liquid journalism truly works in the service of the network society, deeply respects the rights and privileges of each and every consumer-citizen to be a maker and user of his own news, and enthusiastically embraces its role as, to paraphrase James Carey, an amplifier of the conversation society has with itself.