The professional backstaging of diversity in journalism

Abstract

This study examines how diverse US-based journalists—both Black, Indigenous, and people of color and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer [or sometimes questioning] and others—perform their diversity within newsrooms. Applying Goffman’s theory of dramaturgy, the study illustrates the nuanced differences in terms of how journalists perform their diverse identities differently on both the frontstage and backstage. These differences are explained through the proliferation of historical norms such as objectivity in journalism in the United States, norms that curtail how diversity can be enacted. The study introduces the concept of professional backstaging, a concept that describes how professional norms can bypass organizational and individual agency to force certain actions off the frontstage. Finally, the discussion theorizes how these findings—and particularly the concept of professional backstaging—can contribute to future work across studies of media organizations and within the discipline of organizational communication.