In this article, Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen, Julius Reimer and Paul-Philip Solbach, together with their co-authors Laura Ahva, Mark Deuze and Lorenz Matzat, present the concept of “X Journalism”: a tool for observing the development of journalism by analysing the constantly changing concepts of journalism. The article was published in the journal “Journalism” by SAGE Publications.
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Abstract
In this article we propose the notion of X Journalism as an observational tool and concept. It owes its existence to a simple observation: the evolution of journalism is accompanied by the emergence of ever-new journalism-related terms, i.e. combinations of the word ‘journalism’ with a particular modifying term that represents and signals a certain specificity and novelty. Examples include ‘robot journalism’, ‘foundation-funded journalism’, ‘cross-border journalism’, or ‘solutions journalism’ – just to name a few. To date, we have collected and mapped 166 X journalisms and have ‘crowd-categorized’ them into clusters according to the different aspects they refer to. We explore X Journalism as a concept, present our mapping, and show how it can help to cope with journalism’s increasing complexity, grasp the diversity of the field, trace its constant evolution, as well as identify patterns and interrelations between these different movements and occurrences. Through a test case of audience-related X journalisms we demonstrate an empirical application before illustrating the theoretical compatibility of X Journalism and suggesting a research agenda that highlights potentials for X Journalism-driven studies.
Loosen, W.; Ahva, L.; Reimer, J.; Solbach, P.; Deuze, M.; & Matzat, L. (2020): ‘X Journalism’. Exploring journalism’s diverse meanings through the names we give it. In: Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920950090