Where Do We Draw the Line? Interlopers, (Ant)agonists, and an Unbounded Journalistic Field

Abstract

Journalism’s once-neglected periphery has been a focus of academic research in recent years and the urge to make sense of interlopers from the periphery has brought about many approaches to understanding these changes. In this essay I reflect on an ongoing research agenda examining one particular category of interlopers: provocative media actors who have openly challenged the boundaries of the journalistic field. These actors raise questions as to how to account for interlopers at the edges of the journalistic field, including whether we should extend the field to include them. In this essay I argue we should continue to see the field as complex, and maybe now a bit more so. Reflecting on field and practice theories and understandings of boundaries, I reengage the complexity that is a core demand of conceptualizing the journalistic field, while offering ways to consider interlopers’ journalistic identities within its boundaries. Emphasizing similarities over differences, I argue we can move beyond binary distinctions between a field’s core members and interlopers on the periphery by focusing on the nature of interloper work.

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.…”

“…Several scholars have argued that mainstream journalists might be predisposed to rejecting interlopers as journalistic actors to protect their own journalistic identity (Lewis 2012;Eldridge 2019b) and the credibility of the profession from what they perceive as unqualified laypeople encroaching on their turf. As the use of labels is not the only way to make distinctions between in-group and out-groups, future research should conduct qualitative interviews with mainstream journalists to examine what specific strategies they use to demarcate boundaries for right-wing alternative news media.…”

“…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). Eldridge (2019b) argued that such reactions are based on the perception of interlopers as an existential threat to the profession. Therefore, traditional journalists might be hesitant to accept them as fellow journalists to avoid diffusing the strength of their own journalistic identity.…”

“…As Lewis (2012, 845) argued, journalists try to preserve the "collectively shared and taken-for-granted assumptions underlying the belief that journalists, acting in their normative roles, ought to wield gatekeeping control over news content on behalf of society." It should be noted that I share Eldridge's (2019b) argument of being cautious against a reliance on journalists' perspectives alone because traditional actors might be predisposed to drawing a boundary between a core and a periphery of the profession. Still, I argue that research on how the mainstream media react to right-wing alternative news media is lacking in general and that comparative research in particular is necessary to enhance our understanding of right-wing alternative news media's position in the wider digital media landscape across countries.…”

“…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). Interlopers are further defined by their engagement in critical metadiscourse about the mainstream media, and they sometimes use the guise of journalism to promote political and ideological agendas (Eldridge 2019b). Because it is expected that not only the journalistic performances of right-wing alternative news media but also their controversial ideological positions will be the target of mainstream media reactions, the article also draws on Hallin's (1986) three-sphere model, which is an often-used analytical tool for analysing how the mainstream media react to different actors and their ideological positions.…”