The ontology and research path of the journalism in the digital environment

Source: "Chinese Social Sciences Digest" 2022, No. 5 P149 — P150

Author: Wang Bin and Wu Qian

Unit: School of Journalism, Renmin University of China, Nanyang University of Science and Technology, from "News and Writing" 2021, No. 11, Wang Jianfeng

Digital technology penetration of news practice is the logical starting point of the reform of journalism research at this stage. In other words, starting from the ontology of journalism is a basic and fundamental academic innovation path. We first need to clear the new characteristics of journalism research objects to explore how to dig a new way to describe and analyze these new features. Essence

Understand complexity: digital news ecosystem participating in multiple subjects

The development of computers and Internet technology has greatly innovated traditional journalism. Emerging digital technology provides new information dissemination medium for journalism, and has also greatly changed the ecological structure of the journalist participation and the news industry. On the whole, the single linear mass communication model in traditional journalism is transforming, and the participating entities of digital journalism are more diverse and complicated. The diversity and participation of the main body are the key to the digital news ecosystem. The role of the three yuan news practice subjects dominated by journalists, news editing and news users is continuously transformed, and the initiative of news users has gradually increased. The characters in the process of news production and distribution are more complicated, and the traditional news editorial department has gradually decentralized under the impact of Internet technology.

Compared with traditional journalism, the digital news ecosystem has stronger tolerance and elasticity. In addition to its rapid iteration mechanism, it has put forward new challenges to how the professional border and professional authority of the journalistic industry and professional authority are re -established.

The understanding of the complexity of journalism in the Internet environment requires researchers to make corresponding changes to traditional journalism research paths. From the perspective of epistemology, an important strategy is to temporarily suspend deep concepts such as digital journalism boundary. Focus on the observation of the specific and daily activities in the digital news ecosystem, and deepen its grasp of time, space, and social and cultural interaction. From the perspective of methodology, the research concept guided by phenomenology is more in line with the anthropological research method. Based on the high complexity of the digital journalism industry, the digital news ecosystem can be regarded as a dual influence of internal and external factors. Social fields with structural elasticity are studied.

Examine materiality: news production and circulation under big data technology intervention

Big data technology is the infrastructure of digital journalism, the basic element of digital news flow, which supports and limits the development of digital journalism. Taking algorithm news distribution technology as an example, this technology improves the efficiency of news distribution on the one hand, but on the other hand, it improves the possibility of news evasion, and will cause certain damage to the credibility of the news. With the emergence of digital news technology, including news algorithms, big data news content tracking, and robot news, the development of digital news industry soft and hardware will deeply embed the news industry into the technology field. ) Gradually valued by scholars.

In recent years, the material sensitivity of journalists has been significantly improved. Material research is more concerned about the relationship between people and things in the journalism industry than traditional news industry object research, reflecting the social and technological steering of journalism research under digital technology.

The material steering of news research has driven the attention of scholars' conceptual concepts. Technical confession is the potential for realizing specific actions by people to give technology in the process of technology use. Starting from the materiality and confession of the digital journalism industry can better understand the logic of interactive behaviors including digital news related entities in different situations.

From the perspective of specific research paths, there are three main changes in the research methods of the materiality of journalism in the Internet environment.

First, from the perspective of digital journalist news production, the research of the news production habit of traditional news practitioners still uses traditional survey questionnaires, interview methods, focus groups, and anthropology related to the field of field observation and national history. The research method is mainly. Second, the research on the content distribution of digital journalists has more reference to big data research tools. The research of traditional content analysis methods has also been improved and innovated in this area. Third, the research methods of digital journalism users are more abundant, including quantitative research methods, big data analysis methods, and interview methods guided by behavioral psychology.

Foundation: Comprehensive interactive cooperation in digital journalism practice

Under the connection of Internet technology, the various elements and subjects of the digital news ecosystem are generally connected, so the logic of relations is of great significance in digital news research. Specifically, what digital news practitioners need to face in the process of production news are no longer a fixed source of message, but a networked source source that needs to be deeply embedded, including the public and peers, including the public and peers Essence At the same time, the model of news communication no longer follows simple linear rules. On the social media platforms that are highly connected with each other, related institutions and media, the agenda setting and news of the news practitioners have been greatly weakened. At the same time, the networked public can participate in news collaboration more comprehensively, so that the news content has more diverse emotions and identification and construction interactive value at the same time as information value.

Facing the interaction and relationalization of digital news practice, the existing theoretical perspective of the journalism and academic circles has certain limitations, and it is urgent to open new theoretical exploration based on the dimension of digital news practice. At present, the theoretical exploration of the dimension of journalism relations focuses on the use of the perspective of news fields and journalism ecology. News ecological research uses an ecosystem metaphorical news media environment, and understands how news content is created and transmitted collectively in a specific media space by exploring the network of human and non -human subjects. The research on the digital news field focuses on the power relationship of news practice in specific social spaces. In the Internet environment, the news field is composed of complex relationships between multiple subjects such as traditional news agencies, news practitioners, and artificial intelligence such as network data technology companies. At the same time, digital news fields are embedded in more macro areas such as politics and economy, and there is a confrontation and cooperative relationship with other information fields. Therefore, higher requirements have been put on the situation sensitivity of journalists. From the perspective of research methods, in the face of digital news research objects with strong interaction and great influence, traditional news research methods have a large deficiency in tracking records, research and analysis technologies and behavioral subjects. The perspective of interactive relationships does not mean a complete denial of traditional research methods. In fact, combined with innovative research design, traditional research methods still play a core role in digital news ecology.

Ieralize strategy of journalism research path under digital environment

The digital journalism industry has a distinctive characteristics different from traditional journalism in terms of complexity, materiality, and relations. The new theoretical perspective, new epistemology, new research technology and means of journalism industry. On the basis of insight and clarification of the characteristics of the journalism's ontology, the adjustment of the research path has become a key issue that needs to be solved in front of the academic interface. Formation of cumulative results.

First of all, we should pay attention to the evaluation and adjustment and improvement of classic research methods and means, and activate the efficiency of the research path through the update of research issues. Secondly, we should combine the characteristics of the digital journalism to focus on some new research methods to enhance the compatibility of the research path and the research object. Finally, on the basis of trying and enriching specific research methods, digital news research carried out in recent years has also been calling methodology or research on the perspective and research positions. The increasingly fragmented and high complexity of the digital journalism industry makes researchers not only need to expand a solid and sufficient phenomenon description, but also to carry out in -depth theoretical interpretation on this basis. Researchers should not only stop at high differences in describing research objects, but also should also be committed to building theoretical dimensions that can distinguish the research objects. Even in digital news ecosystems with extremely high complexity, the ultimate goal of news research should still point to the discovery of universal laws and the output of systematic theoretical results.

It should be pointed out that there is a "path dependency" effect in the selection of news research paths. Most journalists tend to reuse the use of traditional and familiar research methods, which hinders the innovation of digital news research methods and calculating the society to calculate the society. The advancement of new research ideas and tools represented by science in digital news research. As an emerging field of research, the digital news ecosystem involves many aspects of news occupation, digital technology, user participation, social specifications, and government regulations. And encourage new research paths to deepen the exchange and mutual learning of related majors such as computer science, informatics, law, sociology, anthropology, etc., and promote digital journalism research across professional collaboration. We believe that in the study of digital news, the problem orientation is still the logical starting point of academic work. Therefore, it is necessary to explore what the new characteristics of the research objects are. Based on this To better present our understanding and analysis of digital journalism. In the face of timely, we faced the basic cognition of the new thing and its inquiry methods of digital news. From the sporadic and focus of the new phenomenon to a systematic inspection. This is the basic work and academic consciousness of pioneering journalism research Essence

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