摘要
The essays that follow in this Special Section were initially formulated as contributions to a forthcoming book, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered： Cultural Power （Alexander et al. 2015）. They are its three pivotal essays, presenting the most theoretically developed and empirically grounded exemplifications of the cultural- sociological approach that makes the volume distinct. As the reader will see, it is because these essays are cultural-sociological that they are able to bring a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary crisis of journalism. Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, each essay draws special attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Each links the professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, insisting that new digital technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than undermining them. In this brief introduction to the Special Section, I provide a broader context for the distinctive perspective that informs these three essays. First, I contrast the cultural-sociological approach with the reductionism that marks other contemporary approaches to journalism. Second, I situate cultural sociology theoretically in the broad historical arc of social thought.
