Networked Press Freedom

Mike Ananny

Reimagining press freedom in a networked era: not just a journalist's right to speak but also a public's right to hear.In Networked Press Freedom, Mike Ananny offers a new way to think about freedom of the press in a time when media systems are in fundamental flux. Ananny challenges the idea that press freedom comes only from heroic, lone journalists who speak truth to power. Instead, drawing on journalism studies, institutional sociology, political theory, science and technology studies, and an analysis of ten years of journalism discourse about news and technology, he argues that press freedom emerges from social, technological, institutional, and normative forces that vie for power and fight for visions of democratic life. He shows how dominant, historical ideals of professionalized press freedom often mistook journalistic freedom from constraints for the public's freedom to encounter the rich mix of people and ideas that self-governance requires. Ananny's notion of press freedom ensures not only an individual right to speak, but also a public right to hear.Seeing press freedom as essential for democratic self-governance, Ananny explores what publics need, what kind of free press they should demand, and how today's press freedom emerges from intertwined collections of humans and machines. If someone says, “The public needs a free press,” Ananny urges us to ask in response, “What kind of public, what kind of freedom, and what kind of press?” Answering these questions shows what robust, self-governing publics need to demand of technologists and journalists alike.

Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction 1 2 What Kind of Press Freedom Does Democracy Need? 11 The Idea of Democratic Autonomy 13 Free Speech and Democratic Autonomy 18  The Argument from Truth 20  The Argument from Democracy 23 A Structural View of the Press, Press Freedom, and an Affirmative First Amendment 27  The Institutional Press 29 U.S. Supreme Court Press Decisions 32  Protecting Publics against Censorship 33  Regulating Access to Information 35  Regulating Press Structures in Public Interests 36 The Democratic Value of Listening 39 Conclusion 43 3 How Has the Press Historically Made Its Freedom? 45 The Press as a Field 47  Bourdieu’s Field Theory 50  Bourdieu’s Journalistic Field 54  The New Institutionalist Press 59 Press Autonomy as Negotiated Separations and Dependencies 65  Autonomy through Institutionalized Objectivity 65  Autonomy through Organizational Routine and Ritual 76  Autonomy through Bracketing Publics 85 Conclusion 95 4 How Is Networked Press Freedom a Question of Infrastructure? 99 Broadcast Era Press Freedom 100 Computational Influences on Press Freedom 102 Social Media and Press Freedom 104 Press Freedom as Sociotechnical, Infrastructural Work 110 Conclusion 117 5 How Free Is the Networked Press? 121 Dimensions of Networked Press Freedom 123  Observation 125  Production 127  Alignments 129  Labor 134  Analytics 137  Timing 142  Security 151  Audiences 155  Revenue 162  Facts 171  Resemblances 177  Affect 179 Conclusion 181 6 Conclusion 183 Appendix: A Discussion of Method 193 Notes 195 References 237 Index 285