Abstract
This theoretical essay presents ethos as a conceptual framework to understand journalism’s authority and shifting epistemologies. We argue that ethos, the strategic self-image of the journalist in the text, is an essential part of the performative potential of journalism, even in detached “objective” journalism where journalists are seemingly absent in their articles. Analysing journalism from an ethos perspective, elucidates how journalists build on and rework epistemological frameworks while ensuring the performativity of their text. Drawing on narratological theory, we show that ethos is ambiguous and that the possible disparate evaluations of the journalist’s reliability by audiences impact the possibility of news stories to enact their performative potential. Ethos offers an integrated framework for studying relationships between news texts and news production, contexts and audiences, highlighting how values such as reliability, authenticity or objectivity are projected, circulated and attributed in the journalistic field and the information ecology at large.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 214-222 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Communication Theory |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 3-Nov-2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov-2023 |
Keywords
- Journalism
- Ethos
- Epistemologies
- Personalization
- Objectivity