par De Maeyer, Juliette ;Le Cam, Florence
Référence Digital journalism, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2014.928021
Publication Publié, 2014-07
Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : This paper explores how the study of objects of journalism, retraced through the materialtraces left in metajournalistic discourses, might constitute a robust basis to investigate changeand permanence in contemporary journalism. We delineate a research program focusing onmateriality that requires foremost that objects should not be taken for granted and, therefore,that each object’s social history be minutely retraced. Stemming from two specific objects (theblog and the hyperlink), the paper argues that beyond their idiosyncrasies, both follow a similarrationale that could be extrapolated to other objects and lead to a materially focusedsocial history of journalism in a digital age. The paper first clarifies how we approached thenotion of “objects of journalism” and which objects we chose to study. Then, we show how differenttheoretical frameworks led us to adopt a similar research stance and a shared hypothetico-inductive path: determining how objects are parts of a series and analyzingmetajournalistic discourses to retrace each object’s history on an empirically grounded basis.The resulting attention to filiations and context ultimately produces a contextualized socio-historyof objects.