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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. 99–128

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Chapter 5
“Somehow I'm Always Writing”

On the meaning of transdisciplinary analyses of text production in media change

 | Zurich University of Applied Sciences
Published online: 10 November 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.94.c5
Abstract
This paper shows the value that transdisciplinarity can add to media linguistics. It does so by analyzing – through a postfoundational lens – how journalistic writing changed during the last two decades, from the predominance of a writing mode that we have termed focused writing to a mode we have called writing-by-the-way. Large corpora of writing process data have been generated and analyzed with the multi-method approach of progression analysis to combine analytical depth with breadth. On the object level of doing writing in journalism, results show that the general trend toward writing-by-the-way opens new niches for focused writing. On a meta-level of doing research, findings explain why transdisciplinarity allows for deeper insights into the media-linguistic object of investigation.
Article outline
  • Research framework and question: Transdisciplinary investigation of how journalists really write
    • Research question
    • Academic discipline: Media-linguistics, linguistics, applied linguistics
    • Research Framework
  • Key concepts and state of research: Practices of collaborative text production in the journalistic workplace
    • Writing and text production
    • Practice, strategy, routine, and phase
    • Workplace as a multi-tiered context
  • Multi-method approach: To understand deeply and broadly what is happening and why
    • Social aspects
    • Material aspects
    • Mental aspects
  • Findings: Macro trend and counterflow
    • Incremental findings from the series of research projects
    • Constancy during the investigation period
    • Change during the investigation period
  • Conclusion: Vision and precision as enablers
  • Notes
  • References
References (65)
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