Amy's Comments on Bourdieu

Benson, R. and Neveu, E. (2005). Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field. Polity Press: Cambridge, England.

I’ve really enjoyed this book so far (I do have one chapter left to read)! This book expands on Bourdieu’s concept of field theory as it relates to journalism—the structure of the relationships among the actors of journalism (journalists, editors, readers/viewers) and other fields (politics, economy, religion, etc.). It’s essentially a structural ecology of journalism that takes into consideration (as Monge and Contractor would like) the entire nature of the public sphere—from the internal structure of individual newsrooms (micro level) to journalism’s relationship to other fields (macro level). I think a real strength to this book are in some of the supporting chapters. We are given very concrete examples of HOW to apply this concept to a research question (whether it be an account of the development of youth activism in journalism or a comparison of the journalistic practice in different countries. What comes to the fore for me is the how field theory looks for patterns and consistency but also allows for the fact that media messages do not impact every person in the same way at the same time.

Question: Does field theory sufficiently account for (all?) macro and micro level factors?