Aporias of Digital Journalism

I. The emergence of the Internet has in many ways facilitated the work of journalists. Informations have become more accessible. It is possible to distribute information and stories with minimal delays in time. New platforms of publication have come about. At the same time, however, journalism as a profession is threatened. The internet has lowered the bar of entry to publishing information and stories. Any individual with internet access can create her own blog. Furthermore, you can subscribe to Google-news, where google-bots trawl the web for news, and present them in an accessible manner. It is true that even Google-news are dependent on the work of a journalist (who writes the news being trawled), but at the outset this is not a necessary circumstance, because the newsmakers increasingly publish the stories independently of journalistrun media. In the long run the importance of journalists will thus be challenged. Journalists thus need to reconsider their profession. In this paper I will suggest a Derridean reading of journalism, in which it is being argued that the importance of journalism in a traditional setting has been founded in an aporia. Aporias on the one hand represents a paradox or tension, while on the other hand being the very source of the productivity or significance of certain fields. I will suggest that journalism should be thought through the aporia that journalists on the one hand make room for certain voices in the public spheres – while on the other hand shaping this room, and hereby in a certain sense withdrawing the possibility of the free speech of the interviewees. The journalist operates by letting others speak – but only in certain (to some extent: pregiven) narratives. The work of the journalist is important because it gives voice to certain agents – by preventing it from being the interviewees own voice. The microphone of the journalist is essentially a tensed openness. The microphone is technologically unidirectional. In the traditional setting the journalist thus lets the interviewee speak to the public. The new Internet mediated setting is, however, essentially bidirectional. The new media thus potentially facilitates the newsmakers and the public talking with each other. The separation between newsmakers, journalists and the public thus changes (as demonstrated in Gillmor 2004). Drawing on the hermeneutical insight that answers only make sense on the background of questions (Gadamer 1990, pp.368-84) one could say that the voice of the interviewee got its significance by being questioned by the journalist. The questioning of the journalist is therefore challenging, and thereby giving voice to the interviewee. The dialogical setting of the Internet based media mean that this aspect of the journalist practice is no longer as urgent. It is no longer necessary that the journalist mediates a field of questioning between newsmakers and the publicity. I have, however, demonstrated that one should be cautious to assume that the bidirectional constitution of the technology necessarily entails a proper and unimpeded interactivity (in Hansen 2010xxxxx(actuvirtuality)xxxxx). This also affects the point about fruitful dialogues. The bidirectional media also carry tensions that are based in the very dialogical setting: In order for dialogues not to deteriorate into chaotic chatter and fragmented exchanges it is important that they are framed in certain ways – it is decisive that there is a certain narrative that connect the various contributions. A dialogue can only happen on the background of a general agreement that certain contributions and subjects are not accepted. Aporetically stated, dialogues are based upon the prevention of dialogues. Dialogues are only fruitful if the participants on the one hand listen to and recognize the contributions of the others, while at the same time not letting themselves be determined by the agenda of the others. In traditional media for dialogue there are typically a limited number of participants. This makes it, to some extent, possible to control how fruitful the dialogue develops. The agents know, to some extent, who the potential participants are, how they react to certain statements, and it is thus possible to take these aspects into account when contributing to the dialogue. This is, however, decisively different with dialogues on the Internet. On Internet-based fora with open access,