Practice profiles as a mixed-methods approach to retrace performative publics: A proposal for relational journalism studies

This paper develops and presents a mixed-methods approach as a contribution to relational journalism studies. The approach aims to retrace the making of publics in digital media environments through the performative contributions of heterogeneous groups of actors and to elaborate group-specific stylistic features of their communication. It is based on a praxeological approach that is further developed for relational journalism studies “beyond the newsroom.” The contingency, polyphony and complexity of digital publics makes it necessary to combine traditional micro-sociological approaches in this field with quantitative network analyses and standardized analyses of actors and their practices. For this purpose, a three-stage approach is presented, which allows for the sequential development of “practice profiles” for individual actors as well as groups of actors through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. With this interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative approach, the change of public spheres and journalism can be understood comparatively. Using the hashtag #systemrelevant as an example, we show how such an analysis is structured.

Abstract licence: CC BY-SA

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