Article,
Rethinking News Access
Journalism Studies, (1 August 2000)
Abstract
At the heart of major theoretical approaches to the study of news and its relation to wider society are ideas about the mechanisms and meanings informing the patterns and processes of news access. This article reviews these efforts to theorize news access and notes the influence of two deep-seated paradigms - the sociological and the culturalist - that have helped orientate the research field. Sociological studies of news access approached as strategic action and definitional power help to situate historically and understand the grounded play of power informing the interactions of news producers and news sources, but these tend to under-theorize important processes of cultural mediation at work. Culturalist studies of news help to illuminate how cultural form - whether narrative, myth or ritual - condition and shape the symbolic entry of news actors onto the news stage but, in the absence of empirical work attending to the complexities and contingencies of news production, tend to over-estimate their determining role. This article reviews important theories of news access and reveals the undoubted insights and explanatory limitations of both sociological and culturalist paradigms. It identifies productive areas for future research drawing upon both of these, and concludes by identifying three theoretical levels of cultural mediation that condition and shape the play of strategic action and definitional power and which therefore deserve to be pursued in future empirical research. The cultural landscape of news is fast changing, but questions of news access remain as critical as ever. Only by attending to questions of news access can we understand better the role of the news media in the wider play of social and cultural power.
