Call for Papers: Observing the Everyday: Journalistic Practices and Knowledge Production in the Modern Era
Type: Call for Papers
Date: August 31, 2016
Location: District Of Columbia, United States
Subject Fields: American History / Studies, Communication, European History / Studies, German History / Studies, Journalism and Media Studies
Call for Papers – Workshop (GHI Washington, D.C. - March 2–4, 2017)
Deadline for submission: August 31, 2016
Organizers:
Dr. Kerstin von der Krone / German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Hansjakob Ziemer / Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Observing the Everyday: Journalistic Practices and Knowledge Production in the Modern Era
Fueled
by the innovation of the mass press, the decades before and after 1900
witnessed a golden age of journalism both in terms of sheer quantity of
press products and the professionalization of the vocation. It was
during this period that journalists emerged as professional interpreters
of the social world. Recent studies have shown that by the 1920s the
periodical press did not simply attempt to reproduce “raw information,”
but they also claimed to represent a “knowledge in itself” that was
largely independent of other discourses (D. Matheson, 2000). While
journalists used observational techniques before and after, they now
applied their skills not only to record the phenomena of the world but
also to create hierarchies of knowledge and to claim authority on what
they wrote. What people knew about the world they often learned through
newspapers and magazines. An exceptionally influential space was created
by the emergence of the feuilleton in Central Europe and feature
stories in the Anglo-American sphere that allowed readers to reflect on
social issues and the state of society: it became—in the words of Emil
Löbl (1902)—an “encyclopedia of the day.” On a daily (or weekly) basis,
the newspapers and the feuilletons in particular fulfilled a substantial
need for sustainable analysis which had been traditionally been offered
/ supplied by the book. Journalists were the chief agents involved in
this transformation of the public sphere and created a new set of
practices and skills. They observed and captured the often immaterial
and invisible phenomena of the everyday world: the culture of the
metropolis and its atmosphere, social life, psychology of human being,
natural phenomena, developments in the arts; they all became subject of
journalistic attention which depended on a professional consensus on
values such as scrutiny, objectivity, and novelty. Journalists invested
in new techniques such as the interview and the report, and their
practices—note-taking, writing, creating types, organizing and
classifying observations, and others—helped to establish them as
producers, gatherers, and transmitters of the social knowledge of their
time. This brought them into an alliance with the emerging social
sciences and humanities, in particular with sociology, anthropology or
contemporary history. Their work was supported and often shaped by
editorial decision-making and the material culture of the newspaper
business such as front-page layouts, paper size, and printing
techniques.
Even though there has been a considerable amount of
studies on the feuilleton as a genre along with some fruitful approaches
towards a history of reporting and interviewing, journalistic work as a
practice of knowledge has rarely been analyzed. Hence, this workshop
will stimulate an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to new
kind of sources and ask how and why these knowledge practices
emerged. This workshop focuses on the emergence of these new knowledge
practices and the formation of a more or less tightly knit epistemic
community of journalists on both sides of the Atlantic under their
historically specific local and regional conditions. It will be held on
March 2-4, 2017 at the German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.) in
cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
It attempts to bring together work in progress from various disciplines
by scholars interested in placing the history of journalistic practices
within a history of knowledge.
We encourage the submission of papers, especially of those sharing work in progress. Guiding questions could be:
- Why did new journalistic genres evolved in this period? How were they connected to specific types of knowledge? How was journalistic knowledge gathered and shaped? How was it then adapted and transformed into other kinds of knowledge such as sciences, politics, etc.?
- Who were these journalists? What were their interests? How did they form an epistemic community that began to share similar values, virtues, and practices?
- In what ways did journalists position themselves among social scientists and novelists? Did they intermingle or did they distance themselves from them?
- How can we write a history of journalistic practices that includes journalistic note-taking, writing, traveling, and observation techniques?
The workshop will be
conducted in English. The organizers will cover travel and accommodation
expenses for invited participants. Please send a short abstract of a
proposed contribution (no more than 400 words) and a brief academic CV
with institutional affiliation as one PDF file to journalism-workshop@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
Deadline for proposals is August 31, 2016.