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In:Participation, Engagement and Collaboration in Newsmaking: A postfoundational perspective
Edited by Jana Declercq, Geert Jacobs, Felicitas Macgilchrist and Astrid Vandendaele
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 94] 2021
► pp. 1–16

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Chapter 1
Painting the postfoundational picture

Participation, engagement and collaboration as a new foundation for newsmaking

 | Center for Language and Cognition, University of Groningen
 | Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research
 | Leiden University
 | Ghent University
Published online: 10 November 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.94.c1
Abstract
This introductory chapter lays the ontological and epistemological groundwork for this book, by providing a review of its key themes and concepts, and outlining the book’s theoretical and methodological position. More specifically, the book’s topic is introduced based on a number of data points from the contributing chapters. These point to the ubiquity of participation, engagement and collaboration, but also to the tension they potentially create, including in the context of newsmaking. To understand the key concepts in this central argument, two bodies of literature are discussed. We first delineate how we understand newsmaking, and focus on a number of recent changes in this domain that are relevant for our central argument, such as that newsmaking is increasingly engaging with a number of communities and professional stakeholders, and that user-generated content and audience feedback have become central. Second, the literature on participation, engagement and collaboration is reviewed, exploring how predominant these concepts have become in many realms of life, and how they are often related to democratic ideals. Subsequently, we argue for the relevance of a postfoundational perspective, and for the value of fieldwork approaches.
Article outline
  • Introducing the book’s topic
  • The focus: Newsmaking
  • The key issues: Participation, collaboration, and engagement
  • The theoretical lens: A postfoundational approach
  • The methodology: Fieldwork
  • The contributions
  • References
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