News Production

Abstract

News production refers to the process of developing knowledge about current events or issues that draws upon a range of newsgathering, selection, and formatting logics and techniques to produce a distributable product designed to inform others. The output of this process—news—is therefore socially constructed in important ways, namely by being imbued with characteristics external to the event or issue the news item aims to inform people about. News is today produced by both humans and algorithms who engage in myriad activities, and is interacted with by active audiences. Scholars have introduced several theories to explain production processes and hypothesize the effects of journalism across multiple levels of analysis. Notable developments within economic, social, and technological realms have required scholars to revisit those theories in recent years, though, and many of today’s journalists operate within increasingly adversarial and constrained political environments.