What’s (The) News? Reassessing “News Values” as a Concept and Methodology in the Digital Age

Abstract

This themed issue provides a comprehensive overview of journalism scholarship that variously builds on, develops, and re-examines the conceptual and methodological framework of “news values” research in the digital age. As such, it purports to demonstrate, explore and reflect on its distinctive merits and limitations, both actual and potential, as a distinctive approach to understanding ideas, practices, and experiences of “newsworthiness”, and indeed “news”, in the contemporary media environment and society, where the vectors of change affecting “news” production, circulation and use have been manifold. In doing so, the special issue brings together contemporary conceptual, methodological and/or empirical studies that variously contribute to the outlined research agenda. It does so by presenting scholarly work (1) situated across the constituent dimensions of news values analysis, articulating interactions between material, cognitive, social, and discursive perspectives; (2) considering the diversity of news actors and normative conceptions that make up the fragmented field of journalism; (3) crossing disciplinary boundaries within the heterogenous domain of journalism studies by integrating theoretical perspectives and exploring multi-method approaches; and/or (4) engaging digital media(technologies) or tools either as an object of study or a methodological approach.