Revisiting the Ethnography of Digital Journalism

Abstract

The digital age has transformed news production, distribution, sharing, and engagement into fluid, multi-layered processes that do not all conform to traditional journalism. Understanding news production practices under these new complexities demands reimagined forms of ethnography that stretch beyond the physical newsroom and place processes of newsmaking in crowded, multi-sited, and heavily mediatised contexts. This chapter draws on the authors’ newsroom ethnographies in East and Southern Africa to affirm ethnography’s continued relevance as a methodological approach even as it incorporates and adjusts to new developments in journalism.