Dialogical networking as a journalistic practice: The case of Czech television news production

Abstract

As a journalistic work routine, ‘dialogical networking’ typically consists in approaching relevant ‘stakeholders’ and later presenting their ‘voices’ in media products, often in a dialogical manner (e.g., as claims and counterclaims). The aim of this paper is to describe the practices of journalistic dialogical networking and elucidate, from a praxeological perspective, how they are embedded in other journalistic practices, e.g., sourcing or writing, and how they reflect technical as well as semiotic conventions, constraints and affordances of situated journalistic work. It is argued that dialogical networking is a members’ phenomenon and is treated as such by both the journalists and the ‘stakeholders’. The paper is based on ethnographic research at Czech Television, the public service media outlet in Czechia. The study suggests that practices of news production are based on typifications of news reports in terms of communicative genres and genre repertoires. Dialogical networking represents an operationalisation of a particular piece of genre-related knowledge with an inherent bias towards dialogism. Accordingly, journalists report on actual social interactions, but also initiate dialogues by mediating exchanges among stakeholders, acting as go-betweens. Sometimes they merely juxtapose the ‘voices’ of the stakeholders, implying dialogical engagements among them, or ‘dialogise’ a press release, as the analysis here shows. The orientation to relevant dialogical networks is also an integral part of news story planning.