Nothing So Practical as Good Theory, Indeed

Election 2016 and its aftermath was a wakeup call for me that I need to teach more about what we know from decades of research into journalism and mass communication

“There is nothing so practical as a good theory.”social psychologist Kurt Lewin

For most of my academic career, I’ve been preoccupied with the battle to ensure that journalism students are getting the relevant digital skills they desperately need to succeed in the workplace and help us all create a sustainable future for journalism.

Nowadays, I’m wondering how I can best pelt my poor students with nerd-bombs about what decades of cross-disciplinary research and theory-building have taught us about the factors that influence news production as well as how people perceive and act on different forms of information.

Well, when I started teaching in 2006 or so, journalism curricula was often far behind the curve, and in many cases it still is. I remember all too well when having students blog and tweet was considered radical. I taught the core values from Elements of Journalism, of course, but I was always about preoccupied by the need to expose students to new tools and ways of engaging their audiences. I wanted them to get not just any job but a great one, and also keep journalism relevant and, hell, alive.

I also generally find it a little easier to identify as a journalist rather than as an academic, because I’m often frustrated with the lack of effort many journalism and mass communication researchers put into translating their work into accessible language, and their failure to meaningfully interact with people in the profession. As Rome burns and journalists are getting laid off by the hundreds, academic conferences are too often dominated by entirely predictable research piling evidence on already well-established theories or topics that have already been extensively covered. Not to mention that we often continue to study mass media’s influence as though it was not waning in every way imaginable, to the point where somebody in some bland hotel conference room with weirdly-patterned carpeting will be worrying about how some metro daily framed the issue of climate change after the paper ceases to exist at all.

Donald Trump was elected. As a native Midwesterner, I was less surprised than some, but it clearly caught many pollsters, mainstream pundits and news organizations by surprise. It eroded the already fragile trust journalists still held among a frustrated and fragmented citizenry. “Fake news” and “alternative facts,” better known as “propaganda” to even most casual students of history, became unfortunate household terms. False equivalencies abound as the press is stymied by a POTUS that tells flat-out lies on a regular basis.

It seems like every other day now there’s a conference or event among justifiably terrified journalists discussing what in the hell we should do about this.

While I enjoy all of these gatherings and learn something from the many smart people that participate in them, I’m often flabbergasted by the often simplistic and dualistic understanding of objectivity on display and the complete lack of awareness that decades of research do have something to offer us in understanding the factors that underpin credibility.

A primary notion among many mainstream journalistic leaders seems to be: “If we can just convey our neutrality HARDER or MORE AGGRESSIVELY, then, well THEN, people will trust us again,” even if part of our job, if we adhere to a fact-based universe, may involve calling out a lot of false statements that people of a particular political persuasion will NOT like at all.

How one can see this line of argument as anything beyond defensiveness and wishful thinking is beyond me. Sadly, journalists can’t just click their heels like Dorothy and will trust back because it *should* be so. That’s not to say there’s no liberal media bias, but I have no idea what this doubling-down on neutrality looks like in practice or how it will convince people deeply invested in an alternate version of reality that we are the so-called good guys and gals after all.

Social journalism students! Gotta liven up this theory post a little bit, you know.

Philosophers have grappled with the nature of truth vs. human perception for centuries; as have scientists, who came up with, you know, a whole method (cough, you may have heard of it) for dealing with this issue, although even most scientists acknowledge how easily human misperceptions and biases still seep in, some of which we don’t discover till decades or even centuries later

For example, read Natalie Angier’s book “Woman: An Intimate Geography” to learn how sexist assumptions led to mistaken scientific conclusions about female reproductive systems for decades. Or the book 1491, where you learn that most of what we once thought about the pre-Columbus Americas was based on racist beliefs pervading various scientific disciplines. Just for starters.

Social scientists may not always have clear, black-and-white “answers” for journalists, but there is a rich body of research, writing and thinking on the complexity and practice of objectivity in journalism, much of it distilled accessibly in Elements of Journalism, where Kovach and Rosenstiel talk about objectivity as a method of testing and transparently presenting information, as opposed to some kind of all-encompassing ability of journalists as individuals to somehow dissociate from their own experiences and views.

And while we always need more research and better understanding of damn near everything, the more essential attributes and communication needs of human beings tend to change more slowly than technology does, and academic work from psychology, sociology, history, communication studies, political science, anthropology and more gives us applicable information on how people perceive, understand, and act on different kinds of information.

Indeed, the study of mass communication was boosted by World War II, when people were wondering how the hell Hitler had weaponized media to turn people into depraved madmen. A whole host of studies on dangerous media effects was born. But although researchers quickly found that various persuasive techniques are powerful, receivers of information are also complicated creatures with their own biases and predispositions, too, which mitigate their response to different kinds of content.

Of course, we no longer live in a “mass” communication culture, and a number of researchers are trying to figure out what our social media-driven, fragmented news landscape means for citizenship and public life, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about it.

I don’t want this to be a gargantuan post in which I enumerate all of the theories and research on mass communication. But my larger point is this:

Skills matter. I am proud to direct a graduate program that is dedicated not to research but to to giving students a host of new technical and social proficiencies as well as a new commitment to serving communities in new ways. But all journalists and the professors like me that teach them need to recommit to finding ways to foster informed critical thinking about journalism that rejects simple dualisms and allows us to take action to restore public trust. Before it’s really too late.

Social journalism director at Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in NYC. Runner; beer & Packers enthusiast.