Jane Singer


Jane B. Singer is research lead and Professor of Journalism Innovation at City, University of London. She previously held academic staff posts at the University of Iowa and Colorado State University in the US, and served for three years as Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. A former print and online journalist, her research has traced the evolution of digital journalism since the mid-1990s, with a focus on journalists’ changing roles, perceptions, norms and practices.

DJRG Fellow, March 2020

Title and abstract

The Social Construction of Journalism Studies

Twenty years ago, within months of each other in early 2000, two new journals – Journalism Studies and Journalism – published their first issue. The field of journalism studies, integrated with but distinct from those of mass communication and media sociology, had been born.

Like all disciplines, of course, it was born into a specific cultural time and intellectual space. Journalism studies offers a particular social construction of what constitutes journalism – its institutions and social structures, the forces that legitimate (and de-legitimate) it, and the activities through which its products, practitioners and processes are constructed. In her presentation, Dr. Singer proposes to explore the overlapping sociological, normative and technological forces that have shaped the social construction of journalism studies as a distinct academic discipline. These forces collectively define the questions that scholars raise, the methods they bring to bear, and the answers they collectively validate.

Selected publications