Boundary Work

Abstract

Boundary work describes the active process by various actors to define and delimit the contours of legitimate journalism. It stems from a sociological approach to the production of systematic knowledge that eschews an essentialist approach to knowledge or truth to instead accentuate ongoing discursive and material processes that construct and reshape what is deemed acceptable. The value of boundary work for journalism is clear in the constant questions surrounding what counts as journalism or who is a journalist. This entry considers a typology of journalistic boundary work built around Thomas Gieryn's three categories of expulsion, expansion, and protection of anonymity. It then confronts the particular usefulness of boundary work in response to digital media, and the opportunities and challenges facing future conceptual and theoretical development.

On the Mainstream/Alternative Continuum: Mainstream Media Reactions to Right-Wing Alternative News Media

“…First, the results are in line with previous studies conducted within the frameworks of boundary work and interloper media. The general mainstream media reaction to interlopers tends to be to reject them as outgroups by stressing their lack of belonging to professional journalism (Eldridge 2014(Eldridge , 2019a(Eldridge , 2019bBelair-Gagnon and Holton 2018;Carlson and Lewis 2020). This is evident in how mainstream journalists most often use vague labels like "website" and "online media" to describe them.…”

“…Previous studies have discussed how the general mainstream media reaction to interlopers tends to be to reject them as out-groups by stressing their lack of belonging to the profession (Eldridge 2014;Belair-Gagnon and Holton 2018;Carlson and Lewis 2020). In the digital context, boundaries have been demarcated as a response to, for instance, bloggers (Carlson 2007), user-generated content (Robinson 2010;Singer 2015) and initiatives like WikiLeaks (Coddington 2012;Eldridge 2014).…”

“…This article examines these questions through the concept of boundary work (Lewis 2012;Carlson 2015Carlson , 2019, which has been widely used by scholars to investigate how journalism as a profession reacts to new informational actors that are encroaching on its jurisdiction. The article then positions right-wing alternative news media under the umbrella of interloper media, which is understood as a subset of digitally native actors who originate from outside the boundaries of professional journalism but whose work still shares similar traits with journalism (Eldridge 2014).…”

Between Self-Regulation and Participatory Monitoring: Comparing Digital News Media Accountability Practices in Spain

“…Even so, there is certain organizational interest for accountability to occur within the media domain and not in external spaces where journalists do not have control over the information flows, which is distinctive from their occupational ideology (Lewis, 2012). According to the journalistic field theory, that understands the profession as an evolving social construction (Carlson, 2018), these findings present journalists as agents that try to preserve journalistic boundaries. In the opposite direction, it is openly recognized that professionals monitor and are more responsive on social media than on the outlet's website, something that contrasts with the short-termist organizational strategy on those platforms, characterized by a diffusion logic and a focus on web traffic generation over any attempt to consolidate bonds with the audience.…”

Reddit news fandoms as digital news literacies: structuring the evaluation of information sources in a challenging information ecosystem

“…Journalistic institutions defend the boundaries of journalism using varying defining characteristics such as institutional affiliations and news gathering routines (Carlson & Peifer, 2013;Coddington, 2012). Boundary work takes on three forms with differing primary functions -it contracts to expel bad actors from the field, it expands the boundaries of the field to include more actors, and it maintains the autonomy of journalists within the field (Carlson, 2019(Carlson, , 2019. Journalists and audiences can engage in all three forms of boundary work within digital spaces.…”