New Media Actors Old Claims to Authority

• In Event: 228 - Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session. Cultural Production, Old and New

Abstract

How do different news media content producers claim authority online? In order to address this question I conducted an analysis of thirty prominent political blog sites during the month of October 2012. Adding a comparative framework, I collected digital biographies from two legacy newspapers during the same month. In the end, I collected, coded, and analyzed the biographical blurbs of 1,546 news media content producers represented by these posts and articles. The main focus of this paper is whether or not claims to authority were narrated through professionalization or personalization. Under the category of professionalization are journalistic logics, business logics, academic logics, legal logics and political logics. Each of these deeply routinized claims to authority are based on institutionally recognized credentials. While there are subtle differences between the symbols of distinction utilized by traditional journalists and political bloggers, professional authority claim logics deploy the rhetorical technique of critical distancing. Alternatively, under the category of personalization are citizen logics. Citizen logics are defined through a de-professionalization in which authors claim authority through personal experience. This claim to authority is narrated through a more diverse set of rhetorical techniques including humor, outrage and leveling. Through this analysis we can correlate political ideology and institutional affiliation (field position) with the use of different and particular authority logics. By analyzing these biographical blurbs we glean insight into the necessary cultural work enacted within the digital political news media field during a time of professional boundary liminality.

Author

• Ian Sheinheit, University at Albany SUNY