Audiences and Journalistic Capital

Journalists have found themselves in a complex relationship with audiences as they help gather and distribute news. Audiences represent a new type of entrant into the journalistic field, possibly bringing with them new forms of journalistic capital. This survey-based study sets out to explore how ordinary Americans assess traditional and emergent normative journalistic roles. The study also examines how citizens (N = 2058) and journalists (N = 414) compare in their assessment of this range of journalistic roles and finds that the two groups diverge significantly on assessments of most roles.