Cover not available

Article published In: Discourses of Fake News
Edited by Scott Wright
[Journal of Language and Politics 20:5] 2021
► pp. 803–823

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

Fighting an indestructible monster

Journalism’s legitimacy narratives during the Trump Era

ORCiD logo with link | Universität Hamburg
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 7 July 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21031.lis
Abstract
U.S. journalism during the Trump era has experienced numerous legitimacy attacks by the leading political figure. Building on the concepts of institutional legitimacy and intentional trust, this study analyzes legitimation narratives in projections of journalism’s future, using the Harvard University’s NiemanLab Predictions of Journalism from 2017 to 2021. Projectory narratives are meaningful constructions of a field’s future and provide guidance for its actors. The qualitative analysis of a Trump-related subset of predictions (ca. n = 130) convey (1) confrontational narratives of threat, self-reproach, and epistemological authority loss. Confrontational narratives serve to secure consent for suggested transparency and audience relationship building solutions. These (2) solution narratives represent trustification strategies. Lastly, (3) survival narratives aim at regaining authority and agency through legacy mythopoesis and the construction of a cautiously optimistic post-Trump outlook for journalism. Hence, the analysis of projectory narratives reveals how an organizational field collectively prepares for change to regain legitimacy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Legitimacy
    • 2.2Journalism legitimacy
    • 2.3Discursive legitimacy signaling
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Case selection
    • 3.2Material selection
    • 3.3Analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Confrontation
    • 4.2Solution
    • 4.3Survival
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (53)
References
Andrew, Blake C. 2007. “Media-Generated Shortcuts: Do Newspaper Headlines Present Another Roadblock for Low-Information Rationality?” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 12 (2): 24–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bitektine, Alex, and Patrick Haack. 2015. “The “Macro” and the “Micro” of Legitimacy: Toward a Multilevel Theory of the Legitimacy Process.” Academy of Management Review 40 (1): 49–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Broersma, Marcel. 2019. “The Legitimacy Paradox.” Journalism 20 (1): 92–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burrowes, Carl Patrick. 2011. “Property, Power and Press Freedom: Emergence of the Fourth Estate, 1640–1789.” Journalism & Communication Monographs 13 (1): 2–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carlson, Matt. 2016. “Metajournalistic Discourse and the Meanings of Journalism: Definitional Control, Boundary Work, and Legitimation.” Commun Theor 26 (4): 349–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carlson, Matt, Sue Robinson, and Seth C. Lewis. 2020. “Digital Press Criticism: The Symbolic Dimensions of Donald Trump’s Assault on U.S. Journalists as the “Enemy of the People”.” Digital Journalism, 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corbin, Juliet M., and Anselm L. Strauss. 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J. 1988. “Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory.” In Institutional Patterns and Organizations: Culture and Environment, edited by Lynne G. Zucker. 3–21. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48 (2): 147–60. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Domke, D., Mark D. Watts, D. V. Shah, and D. P. Fan. 1999. “The Politics of Conservative Elites and the ‘Liberal Media’ Argument.” J Commun 49 (4): 35–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Egelhofer, Jana Laura, Loes Aaldering, Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Sebastian Galyga, and Sophie Lecheler. 2020. “From Novelty to Normalization? How Journalists Use the Term “Fake News” in Their Reporting.” Journalism Stud. 21 (10): 1323–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gills, Barry, Heikki Patomäki, and Jamie Morgan. 2019. “President Trump as Status Dysfunction.” Organization 26 (2): 291–301. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hallin, Daniel C. 2019. “Mediatisation, Neoliberalism and Populisms: The Case of Trump.” Contemporary Social Science 14 (1): 14–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hamilton, James T. 2004. All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hanitzsch, Thomas. 2007. “Deconstructing Journalism Culture: Toward a Universal Theory.” Commun Theor 17 (4): 367–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hanitzsch, Thomas, and Tim P. Vos. 2017. “Journalistic Roles and the Struggle over Institutional Identity: The Discursive Constitution of Journalism.” Commun Theor 27 (2): 115–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackson, Jonathan, and Jacinta M. Gau. 2016. “Carving up Concepts? Differentiating Between Trust and Legitimacy in Public Attitudes Towards Legal Authority.” In Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Trust, edited by Ellie Shockley, Tess M. Neal, Lisa M. PytlikZillig, and Brian H. Bornstein. 49–69. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karlsson, Michael, and Christer Clerwall. 2019. “Cornerstones in Journalism.” Journalism Stud. 20 (8): 1184–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Sora, and Scott Rader. 2010. “What They Can Do Versus How Much They Care.” JCOM 14 (1): 59–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koliska, Michael, Kalyani Chadha, and Alison Burns. 2020. “Talking Back: Journalists Defending Attacks Against Their Profession in the Trump Era.” Journalism Studies 35 (2): 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Korkeamäki, Lauri, and Marko Kohtamäki. 2020. “To Outcomes and Beyond: Discursively Managing Legitimacy Struggles in Outcome Business Models.” Industrial Marketing Management 911:196–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ladd, Jonathan M. 2012. Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Landau, Dana, Israel Drori, and Siri Terjesen. 2014. “Multiple Legitimacy Narratives and Planned Organizational Change.” Human Relations 67 (11): 1321–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Taeku, and Christian Hosam. 2020. “Fake News Is Real: The Significance and Sources of Disbelief in Mainstream Media in Trump’s America.” Sociol Forum 35 (S1): 996–1018. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lischka, Juliane A. 2019. “A Badge of Honor? How the New York Times Discredits President Trump’s Fake News Accusations.” Journalism Studies 20 (2): 287–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2020. “Fluid Institutional Logics in Digital Journalism.” Journal of Media Business Studies 17 (2): 113–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maurer, John G. 1971. Readings in Organization Theory: Open-System Approaches: Random House (NY).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Messeri, Lisa, and Janet Vertesi. 2015. “The Greatest Missions Never Flown: Anticipatory Discourse and the “Projectory” in Technological Communities.” Technology and Culture 56 (1): 54–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1977. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” The American Journal of Sociology 83 (2): 340–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munger, Kevin. 2020. “All the News That’s Fit to Click: The Economics of Clickbait Media.” Political Communication 37 (3): 376–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myllylahti, Merja. 2020. “Paying Attention to Attention: A Conceptual Framework for Studying News Reader Revenue Models Related to Platforms.” Digital Journalism 8 (5): 567–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis. 2017. “The One Thing Journalism Just Might Do for Democracy.” Journalism Studies 18 (10): 1251–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perdomo, Gabriela, and Philippe Rodrigues-Rouleau. 2021. “Transparency as Metajournalistic Performance: The New York Times’ Caliphate Podcast and New Ways to Claim Journalistic Authority.” Journalism. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Picard, Robert G. 2004. “Commercialism and Newspaper Quality.” Newspaper Research Journal 25 (1): 54–65. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew S., and Damian J. Rivers. 2018. “Discursive Deflection: Accusation of “Fake News” and the Spread of Mis- and Disinformation in the Tweets of President Trump.” Social Media + Society 4 (2): 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruotsalainen, Juho. 2018. “Scanning the Shape of Journalism – Emerging Trends, Changing Culture?” Futures 1041:14–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. 1986. “Foucault and the Imagination of Power.” In Foucault: A Critical Reader, edited by Edward W. Said and David C. Hoy. 149–55. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shin, Wooyeol, Changwook Kim, and Jaewon Joo. 2020. “Hating Journalism: Anti-Press Discourse and Negative Emotions Toward Journalism in Korea.” Journalism, 146488492098572. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strauss, Anselm L., and Juliet M. Corbin. 1990. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suchman, Mark C. 1995. “Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches.” Academy of Management Review 20 (3): 571–610. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thorbjørnsrud, Kjersti, and Tine Ustad Figenschou. 2020. “The Alarmed Citizen: Fear, Mistrust, and Alternative Media.” Journalism Practice, 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tong, Jingrong. 2018. “Journalistic Legitimacy Revisited: Collapse or Revival in the Digital Age?” Digital Journalism 6 (2): 256–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vaara, Eero, and Janne Tienari. 2011. “On the Narrative Construction of Multinational Corporations: An Antenarrative Analysis of Legitimation and Resistance in a Cross-Border Merger.” Organization Science 22 (2): 370–90. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vaara, Eero, Janne Tienari, and Juha Laurila. 2006. “Pulp and Paper Fiction: On the Discursive Legitimation of Global Industrial Restructuring.” Organization Studies 27 (6): 789–813. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo, and Ruth Wodak. 1999. “Legitimizing Immigration Control: A Discourse-Historical Analysis.” Discourse Studies 1 (1): 83–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagemans, Andrea, Tamara Witschge, and Frank Harbers. 2019. “Impact as Driving Force of Journalistic and Social Change.” Journalism 20 (4): 552–567. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waisbord, Silvio, and Adriana Amado. 2017. “Populist Communication by Digital Means: Presidential Twitter in Latin America.” Information, Communication & Society 20 (9): 1330–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watts, Mark D., D. Domke, Dhavan V. Shah, and David P. Fan. 1999. “Elite Cues and Media Bias in Presidential Campaigns.” Communication Research 26 (2): 144–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whipple, Kelsey N., and Jeremy L. Shermak. 2020. “The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Tweet: How #NotTheEnemy Twitter Discourse Defended the Journalistic Paradigm.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 97 (1): 188–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, Majid Khosravinik, and Brigitte Mral, eds. 2013. Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Monica A., and Gerald J. Zeitz. 2002. “Beyond Survival: Achieving New Venture Growth by Building Legitimacy.” The Academy of Management Review 27 (3): 414–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Ganachari, Vinod & Rohan Gurav
2025. Modern Techniques for Fake News Detection in Social Media. Journal of Social Science and Humanities 7:3 ► pp. 60 ff. DOI logo
Cimaglio, Christopher
2024. False news claims as media criticism: Situating 1930s-1940s U.S. progressive critiques of “falsehood in the daily press”. Journalism DOI logo
Conrad, Maximilian
2024. Refusing to Be Silenced: Critical Journalism, Populism and the Post-truth Condition. In Post-Truth Populism [Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, ], ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo
Farkas, Johan
2023. News on fake news. Journal of Language and Politics 22:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Farkas, Johan
2023. Fake News in Metajournalistic Discourse. Journalism Studies 24:4 ► pp. 423 ff. DOI logo
Schapals, Aljosha Karim & Axel Bruns
2022. Responding to “Fake News”: Journalistic Perceptions of and Reactions to a Delegitimising Force. Media and Communication 10:3 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue