A Historical Overview of Approaches to Journalism Studies

Supporters or opponents of journalistic professionalism cannot ignore the fact that journalistic studies are a pluralistic, differentiated, and dynamic field of research, with no commonly accepted conceptual framework of journalism. Different academic traditions and diverse cultural and social foundations of journalism have led to different aspects of the definition and research journalism. The authors critically and comparatively evaluate the key approaches with the most typical and influential journalistic theories. Historically, the first theory was normative individualism that understands journalism as the work of talented individuals. Then, when empiricism was discovered, theories of the middle range appeared, while the subsequent theories dealt with journalism as an organized system and popular culture. At the end of the article, many other theories are mentioned (psychological, linguistic, political approaches and theories of gender) and main challenges for the journalism studies are presented.