Political Embeddedness: Boundary Processes in U.S. and German News Reporting

• In Event: 365 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Cultural Production

Abstract

News media are currently subjected to two interrelated crises: an economic crisis of plummeting revenues and a crisis of discursive influence in an increasingly digitized communicative environment. This is the historical context of this ethnographic study of state political press corps. Field research stretched from spring of 2008 to the summer of 2012, set at state governments in Albany, New York and Munich, Germany and encompasses 72 interviews with journalists (from 31 different news organization) and spokespeople (across all political parties and branches of government) as well as about 350 hours of observation.
This paper focuses on political reporters’ social drama of maintaining professional integrity, cultural resources and techniques they assert their autonomy and influence with against political pressures. This professionalism-in-practice is conceptualized as boundary performance, drawing conceptually from Lamont's notion of symbolic boundaries and Alexander's theory of cultural performance. While these practices are studied on a micro level, the analysis links them to collective representations of professionalism. One key contrast is how meticulous US journalists cultivate their appearance of impartiality to assert professionalism compared to German reporters. Even though German reporters likewise reject partisanship, the degree of symbolic pollution it incurs in the US demonstrates the strong connection of journalistic practice and the tradition of objective journalism.

Author

• Matthias Revers, University of Graz