Journalism as a field of discursive production: Performativity, form and style

By focusing on the emergence and development of journalistic conventions and professional routines it is possible to understand the prominent role of journalism in the social construction of meaning. In this article, we theoretically examine journalism as a special field of discursive production. The field of journalism presents more than the facts it gathers and reports. The institutionalized retelling of events is a very distinct way to put meaning on them. We suggest journalism is a historically and culturally bounded discourse whose performative nature is at the core of its moral authority and social credibility. In addition, the performative discourse of journalism invites us to extend the concept to include, for example, the conventions of style and form. The historical transformations journalism took may, thus, be looked at as efforts in the battle for performative discourse involved in the process of a mimetic (re)construction of the social world.