Metajournalistic Discourse as a Stabilizer within the Journalistic Field: Journalistic Practice in the Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 Pandemic created a two-fold challenge for journalists: first, the task of gathering and distributing information vital to the responses of the public, and second, the challenge of mitigating the complexities of the journalism field. The purpose of this study is to connect the theoretical frameworks of metajournalistic discourse and field theory, using the touch point of journalistic practice. Prior research has postulated that metajournalistic discourse operates as a stabilizing force in the journalistic field. Using the timely test of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study seeks to explore the discursive construction of journalistic practice during a pandemic through the lens of both metajournalism and field through metadiscourse (n=141) gathered from the United States, United Kingdom, and Austria. This study will argue that metajournalistic discourse stabilizes the field by affirming the tools western journalists use in order to make sense of a crisis like COVID-19, and by providing a discursive avenue between the ideals of the journalistic field—in the journalistic doxa—and the habits of the field—as represented by journalistic habitus.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism
• pandemic
• field theory
• coronavirus
• crisis communication
• COVID-19
• metajournalistic discourse

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Fulbright Austria and the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies for making this collaborative research project possible.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Data was drawn from Der Österreichische Journalist, but we will consider the Austrian discourse presented here as emblematic for German-speaking discourse in Germany and Switzerland, given that the content collected is content-shared, and unaltered, within respective trade magazines of the countries.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: 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. This research project was developed through the financial support of Fulbright Austria and the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.