为什么经典不再继续？--兼论新闻生产社会学研究的转型

Why ‘the Golden Age' Discontinued? The Transformation of the Sociology of News Production

上个世纪七八十年代,新闻生产社会学第一波高峰过去,此后偶尔有佳作,却难现昔日辉煌。本文尝试着从研究方法的困难入手,解释经典难重现的原因。由于进入限制越来越多、传统媒体面临危机、学术生产的压力以及研究伦理考验,参与观察式的民族志越来越受到冷落,取而代之的是以文本为基础的文化取向的媒介生产研究,在研究地点、研究内容、研究对象、研究方法等方面,新的文化取向都跟第一波高峰里的组织取向拉开了距离。伴随着互联网对传统媒体的冲击,媒介生产社会学也从过程转向意义,从组织取向转向文化取向,在此背景下,我们的任务是,重新回到媒介生产的现场,寻找媒介生产与其他生产活动的差异性与趋同性,跨越生产研究与内容研究效果研究之间的壁垒,发展更富弹性和解释力的理论概念。

In the 1970s, it appeared ＇the golden age＇ of the sociology of news production. After the first wave, there lacked distinguished studies in this field. This paper aims to explain whyrelated studies seldom appeared after the 1980s based on the impossibility of research methods. Due to the limitation to access, the crisis of traditional media, the pressure of academic production, as well as the ethic paradox, participatory ethnography has been replaced by the text-based news production study with a cultural approach. Facing with the challenge from the Internet, news production studies turned away from the organizational approach to the cultural approach. At last, this paper suggests that in the new media era we need to go back to the site of media production, seek for the similarity and difference between media production and other production, develop more flexible and valid theoretical concept.