Practice scholars of news production generally imagine news practices as symbolic resources that exist external to reporters and prior to reporters’ actions. This understanding has been incredibly productive for scholars, but it elides an important question. How do news practices actually get into reporters’ heads? The lack of answers to this question has created a persistent gap between the study of news practices and examination of reporters’ actions. In this essay, I build on recent advances in cognitive cultural sociology, especially the dual-process theory of social cognition, to offer an account of how reporters internalize culture. I argue that this account is especially helpful for analysis of situations in which what journalists can say about what they do is only loosely associated with what they do, or know how to do. In my estimation, such situations are increasingly common in journalism. A clearer understanding of processes of internalization will lead to more accurate assessments of reporters’ actions, especially in situations in which their words and their deeds are not aligned.
AbelsonRP (1981) Psychological status of the script concept. American Psychologist36(7): 715–729.
2.
AhvaL (2017) Practice theory for journalism studies: operationalizing the concept of practice for the study of participation. Journalism Studies18(12): 1523–1541.
3.
AlexanderJColomyP (eds) (1990) Differentiation Theory and Social Change: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press.
4.
AlexanderJC (2003) The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
5.
AntillaL (2005) Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change. Global Environmental Change15: 338–352.
6.
BarsalouLW (2008) Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology59, 617–645.
7.
BenderJRDavenportLDDragerMW, et al. (2019) Writing & Reporting for the Media. 12th edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
8.
BenklerYFarisRRobertsH (2018) Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
9.
BensonR (2013) Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison. New York: Cambridge University Press.
10.
BensonRNeveuE (eds) (2006) Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field. Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press.
11.
BourdieuP (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
12.
BourdieuP (1990) The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
13.
BoutylineA (2017) Improving the measurement of shared cultural schemas with correlational class analysis: theory and method. Sociological Science4: 353–393.
14.
BoykoffM (2007) From convergence to contention: United States mass media representations of anthropogenic climate change science. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers32: 477–489.
15.
BoykoffMBoykoffJ (2004) Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press. Global Environmental Change14: 125–136.
16.
BoykoffMBoykoff (2007) Climate change and journalistic norms: a case-study of US mass-media coverage. Geoforum38: 1190–1204.
17.
BreedW (1955) Social control in the newsroom: a functional analysis. Social Forces33(4): 326–335.
18.
BrüggemannMEngesserS (2017) Beyond false balance: how interpretive journalism shapes media coverage of climate change. Global Environmental Change42: 58–67.
19.
CarlsonM (2017) Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era. NY: Columbia University Press.
20.
CarlsonMRobinsonSLewisSC (2021) News after Trump: Journalism’s Crisis of Relevance in a Changed Media Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
21.
CassonR (1983) Schemata in cultural anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology12: 429–462.
22.
ChambersDSteinerLFlemingC (2009) Women and Journalism. New York: Routledge.
23.
CollinsAMLoftusEF (1975) A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review82(6): 407–428.
24.
D’AndradeR (1995) The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
25.
De NeysWPennycockG (2019) Logic, fast and slow: advances in dual-process theorizing. Current Directions in Psychological Science28(5): 503–509.
DimaggioP (1997) Culture and cognition. Annual Review of Sociology23: 263–287.
28.
DunlapR.McCrightA (2011) Organized climate change denial. In: DryzekJSNorgaardRBSchlosbergD (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and SocietyNew York: Oxford University Press, 144–160.
29.
EvansJBT (2008) Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annual Review of Social Psychology59, 255–278.
30.
EvansJBT (2018) Dual-process theory: Perspectives and problems. In De NeysW (ed.) Dual Process Theory 2.0. New York: Routledge, 137–155.
31.
FinkKSchudsonM (2014) The rise of contextual journalism, 1950s-2000s. Journalism15(1): 3–20.
32.
FligsteinNMcAdamD (2012) A theory of fields. New York: Oxford University Press.
33.
GansH (1979) Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Random House.
34.
GhazianiABaldassarriD (2011) Cultural anchors and the organization of differences: a multi-method analysis of LGBT marches on Washington. American Sociological Review76(2): 180–206.
35.
GiddensA (1984) The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
36.
GoldbergA (2011) Mapping shared understandings using relational class analysis: The case of the cultural omnivore reexamined. American Journal of Sociology116: 1397–1436.
37.
HallinD (1992) The passing of ‘high modernism’ in American journalism. Journal of Communication42(3): 14–25.
38.
HemmerN (2016) Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
39.
HilesSSHinnantA (2014) Climate change in the newsroom: journalists’ evolving standards of objectivity when covering global warming. Science Communication36(4): 428–453.
40.
IgnatowG (2007) Theories of embodied knowledge: new directions for cultural and cognitive sociology?Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour37(2): 115–135.
41.
JohnstoneJ (1976). Organizational constraints on newswork. Journalism Quarterly53: 5–13.
42.
KahnemanD (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
43.
KellerJD (1992) Schemes for schemata. In: SchartzTWhiteGMLutzCA (eds) New Directions in Psychological Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 59–68.
44.
KingA (2000) Thinking with Bourdieu against Bourdieu: a ‘practical’ critique of the habitus. Sociological Theory18(3): 417–433.
45.
LawJ (2008) Actor network theory and material semiotics. In: TurnerB (ed) The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Wiley & Sons, 141–158.
46.
LizardoO (2004) The cognitive origins of Bourdieu’s Habitus. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior34(4): 375–401.
47.
LizardoO (2017) Improving cultural analysis: considering personal culture in its declarative and nondeclarative modes. American Sociological Review82(1): 88–115.
48.
MartinAChaoLL (2001) Semantic memory and the brain: structure and processes. Current Opinion in Neurobiology11: 194–201.
49.
McLeodJMHawleySE (1964) Professionalization among newsmen. Journalism Quarterly41(4): 529–577.
50.
MelladoCVan DalenA (2014) Between rhetoric and practice. Journalism Studies15(6): 859–878.
51.
MilesACharron-ChénierRSchleiferC. (2019) Measuring automatic cognition: advancing dual-process research in sociology. American Sociological Review84(2): 308–333.
52.
MooreR (2017) Fast or slow: Sociological implications of measuring dual-process cognition. Sociological Science4: 196–223.
53.
NewkirkP (2000) Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media. New York: New York University Press.
54.
NishidaH (2005) Cultural schema theory. In: GudykunstWB (ed) Theorizing about Intercultural Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 401–418.
55.
PattersonO. 2014. Making sense of culture. Annual Review of Sociology40: 1–30.
56.
QuinnN (2005) How to reconstruct schemas people share, from what they say. In: QuinnN. (ed) Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 35–82.
57.
RobinsonS (2018) Networked news, racial divides: How power and privilege shape public discourse in progressive communities. New York: Cambridge University Press.
58.
RumelhartDE (1980) Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In: SpiroRJBruceBCBrewerWF (eds) Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 33–58.
59.
RumelhartDEHintonGEMcClellandJL (1986) A general framework for parallel distributed processing. In: RumelhartDEMcClellandJL (eds) Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of CognitionCambridge: MIT Press, 45–76.
60.
RyfeD (2012) Can Journalism Survive? an inside Look at American Newsrooms. London: Polity.
61.
RyfeD (2018) A practice approach to the study of news production. Journalism19(2): 217–233.
62.
RyfeD (2020) The role of self-reports in the study of news production. Journalism21(3): 349–364.
63.
RyleG (2002) The Concept of Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
64.
SchatzkiT (1996) Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. New York: Cambridge University Press.
65.
Schmid-PetriHAdamSSchmuckiI, et al. (2017) A changing climate of skepticism: the factors shaping climate change coverage in the US press. Public Understanding of Science26(4): 498–513.
66.
SchultzI (2007) The journalistic gut feeling: journalistic doxa, news habitus and orthodox news values. Journalism Practice1(2): 190–207.
67.
SewellWH (2005). Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
68.
ShoreB (1996) Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture and the Problem of Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.
69.
SigalL (1973) Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of News Reporting. Lexington: Heathe & Company.
70.
SigelmanL (1973) Reporting the news: an organizational analysis. The American Journal of Sociology79)1): 132–151.
71.
SlomanSA (1996) The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin119(1): 3–22.
72.
StrackFDeutschR (2004) Reflective and impulsive determinants of social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review8(3): 220–247.
73.
SwidlerA (1986) Culture in action: symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review51(2): 273–286.
74.
SwidlerA (2001) What anchors cultural practices. In: SchatzkiTRCetinaKKSavignyEV (eds) The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. New York: Routledge, 74–92.
75.
TandocE (2019) Routines in journalism. In: NussbaumJ (ed) Oxford Research Encyclopedia. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.870.
76.
TuchmanG (1980) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press.
77.
TurnerS (1994) The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions. Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press.
78.
VaiseyS (2009) Motivation and justification: a dual-process model of culture in action. American Journal of Sociology114(6): 1675–1715.
79.
WhiteDM (1950) The ‘gate keeper’: a case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quarterly27(4): 383–390.
80.
WilligI (2013) Newsroom ethnography in a field perspective. Journalism14(3): 372–387.
81.
WilsonM (2002) Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review9(4): 625–636.
82.
WitschgeTHarbersF (2018) Journalism as practice. In: VosTP (ed) Handbooks of Communication Science: Journalism. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
83.
WoodMEStoltzDSVan NessJ, et al. (2018) Schemas and frames. Sociological Theory36(3): 244–261.
