Slides for a presentation to the American Political Science Association Political Communication Section Annual Preconference, 2014, George Washington University, Washington DC, August 2014. Download the published paper at http://j.mp/IJOC-Snowden-2

1. Boundary-Drawing Power and the
Renewal of Professional News
Organizations: The Case of the Guardian
and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak
Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister
andrewchadwick.com
@andrew_chadwick
APSA Political Communication Section Preconference,
The George Washington University, August 27, 2014
simoncollister.com
@simoncollister

2. Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister (2014).
‘Boundary-Drawing Power and the Renewal of
Professional News Organizations: The Case of the
Guardian and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak’
International Journal of Communication 8: 2420–
2441.
Download: http://j.mp/IJOC-Snowden-2

3. Undisclosed locations,
June 2013

4. Boundary-drawing power
By boundary-drawing power we mean the
capacity of an organizational actor to
reconfigure the context of its own actions by
using resources and strategies that are
intrinsic to itself but which also involve
interfacing with other actors in a hyper-
networked environment.

5. Digital Media, Journalism, and Power
The Narratives

6. Institutional Decline?

7. Institutional Decline?
•Decentralization and diffusion of the production of
socially-useful information
•Hypercompetition and compressed news cycles
•Audience fragmentation
•Erosion of older business models
•Decline of civic role
•Transition from “trustee model” to “market model”
•Erosion of professional identities and elite
gatekeeping practices
•Rise of semi-automated digital content and the
“algorithmic audience”

8. Institutional Adaptation and Renewal

9. Institutional Adaptation and Renewal
•Rebirth of journalism and reconnection with civic mission
through the rejection of a previous era of relative insularity
and elitism
•New optimism: “networked journalism” (Beckett, Jarvis);
“news-making assemblages” (Anderson); “hybrid media
system” (Chadwick); “social discovery” (Newman); and even
the “fifth estate” (Newman, et al)
•The “former audience”
•Integration of new digital online activist networks in news
production
•New norms for journalists: “mutual journalism”; “data
journalism”
•And older professional practices evolve through symbiosis

10. Boundary-drawing power
•Older studies of “boundary work” in professions
•Emerging research on boundary work in journalism
(Lewis; Carlson)
•Ethnographic work on bloggers, online activists, and
professional journalists: boundary-drawing, boundary-
blurring, and boundary-crossing (Chadwick)
•Hybrid news spaces, both institutionally-anchored and
free-floating, can provide an organizational focus for
networked action.
•Go beyond the “expulsion” and “protection of
autonomy” approaches

11. Boundary-drawing power
The Guardian displays an approach to
boundary work that expands and extends the
conventional limits of contemporary news-
making into the complex, heterogeneous, and
hybrid spaces of the networked media
environment. In ceding professional
journalistic ground in some areas, while
renegotiating and extending it in others, the
Guardian is able to exert boundary-drawing
power to strengthen its position and retain
control of its own destiny.

12. From WikiLeaks to the Snowden Leak

13. A partial rejection of the WikiLeaks model

14. Integrating newer online news norms

15. Managing our “source”

16. While collaborating with others

17. Interfacing with distributed online networks

18. While occupying the center

19. Strategic Action
•Exploiting reserves of professional
investigative experience
•Legal expertise
•Crafting news for maximum clarity
and news value
•Personalized narratives and human
interest angles
•Timing for impact on political actors
and competitor media organizations
•Exploiting connections with political
and bureaucratic insiders and other
professional journalists
•Secret cultivation of a source in
trusted environments
•Use of still-prestigious publishing
mechanisms (printed newspaper)
and historical genres of
investigative prowess

20. • Use of social media by
journalists, to curate, promote,
and intervene in
hypercompetitive news
environment
• New genre of the “live blog” to
position the news organization’s
web page in a hybrid curatorial-
yet-agenda setting role at the
center of a story as it unfolds
• Strategic management of
interdependent relationships
with distributed networks of
globally nomadic online activists
and advocacy groups
• Extraordinary #AskSnowden live
chat
Occupying the Center:
Tweeting, Live Blogging,
and Live Chat

21. Boundary-drawing power
This is not, however, a case of the
uncomplicated revival of older newspaper
media logics. Rather, it is a process of
strategic and considered renewal—of sense
making, learning, and system building. It is
about the construction of systemic resources
—social relations and technologies—by groups
of actors who are then able to capitalize on a
system’s capacities and affordances.

22. Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister (2014).
‘Boundary-Drawing Power and the Renewal of
Professional News Organizations: The Case of the
Guardian and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak’
International Journal of Communication 8: 2420–
2441.
Download: http://j.mp/IJOC-Snowden-2