Constructing the Legitimacy of Journalists’ Marketing Role

ABSTRACT

U.S. journalists work in a digital environment in which they actively promote their news stories – and themselves – via social media. Prior research has identified an emergent marketing function, albeit one that journalists seemed hesitant to embrace in normative terms. This study seeks to understand how the legitimacy of this marketing function has been discursively constructed in the U.S. over 25 years. In line with discursive institutionalism – which sees institutional discourse as sites for normative contestation, (re)creation, and (re)interpretation – we seek to understand the ways in which a marketing function is being legitimized as a morally viable social role. This study analyzes 1978 examples of journalistic discourse from 20 online sites where primarily (but not exclusively) U.S.-based journalism is discussed and debated. We find the marketing function gaining traction as a normative role but falling short of formalization. Journalists continue to see a tension between emerging marketing work and longstanding journalistic norms.

KEYWORDS:

• Discursive institutionalism
• journalistic roles
• marketing role
• marketing function
• audience engagement
• metajournalistic discourse
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, who provided thorough and constructive feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Advertising Age is admittedly different from the other sites in subject matter, perspective, and audience, but it does address journalism topics. We included a few items from this site that were written by or cited journalists.

Additional information

Funding

The Discourses of Journalism database was developed by Hekademeia with funding from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism and from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.