Networked Press Freedom Creating Infrastructures for a Public Right to Hear

by Ananny, Mike

• ISBN13: 9780262549660
• ISBN10: 0262549662
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-10-31
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Reimagining press freedom in a networked era: not just a journalist's right to speak but also a public's right to hear.

In Networked Press Freedom, Mike Ananny offers a new way to think about freedom of the press in a time when media systems are in fundamental flux. Ananny challenges the idea that press freedom comes only from heroic, lone journalists who speak truth to power. Instead, drawing on journalism studies, institutional sociology, political theory, science and technology studies, and an analysis of ten years of journalism discourse about news and technology, he argues that press freedom emerges from social, technological, institutional, and normative forces that vie for power and fight for visions of democratic life. He shows how dominant, historical ideals of professionalized press freedom often mistook journalistic freedom from constraints for the public's freedom to encounter the rich mix of people and ideas that self-governance requires. Ananny's notion of press freedom ensures not only an individual right to speak, but also a public right to hear.

Seeing press freedom as essential for democratic self-governance, Ananny explores what publics need, what kind of free press they should demand, and how today's press freedom emerges from intertwined collections of humans and machines. If someone says, “The public needs a free press,” Ananny urges us to ask in response, “What kind of public, what kind of freedom, and what kind of press?” Answering these questions shows what robust, self-governing publics need to demand of technologists and journalists alike.

Author Biography

Mike Ananny is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the author of Networked Press Freedom (MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction 1
2 What Kind of Press Freedom Does Democracy Need? 11
The Idea of Democratic Autonomy 13
Free Speech and Democratic Autonomy 18
 The Argument from Truth 20
 The Argument from Democracy 23
A Structural View of the Press, Press Freedom, and an Affirmative
First Amendment 27
 The Institutional Press 29
U.S. Supreme Court Press Decisions 32
 Protecting Publics against Censorship 33
 Regulating Access to Information 35
 Regulating Press Structures in Public Interests 36
The Democratic Value of Listening 39
Conclusion 43
3 How Has the Press Historically Made Its Freedom? 45
The Press as a Field 47
 Bourdieu’s Field Theory 50
 Bourdieu’s Journalistic Field 54
 The New Institutionalist Press 59
Press Autonomy as Negotiated Separations and Dependencies 65
 Autonomy through Institutionalized Objectivity 65
 Autonomy through Organizational Routine and Ritual 76
 Autonomy through Bracketing Publics 85
Conclusion 95
4 How Is Networked Press Freedom a Question of Infrastructure? 99
Broadcast Era Press Freedom 100
Computational Influences on Press Freedom 102
Social Media and Press Freedom 104
Press Freedom as Sociotechnical, Infrastructural Work 110
Conclusion 117
5 How Free Is the Networked Press? 121
Dimensions of Networked Press Freedom 123
 Observation 125
 Production 127
 Alignments 129
 Labor 134
 Analytics 137
 Timing 142
 Security 151
 Audiences 155
 Revenue 162
 Facts 171
 Resemblances 177
 Affect 179
Conclusion 181
6 Conclusion 183
Appendix: A Discussion of Method 193
Notes 195
References 237
Index 285