The Somatechnics of Journalism: Applying an Embodied Perspective to Enduring Issues in Journalism Studies

This research applies Somatechnics to the study of journalism and contributes to an emergent epistemological “bodily turn” in the discipline of Journalism Studies. This is a turn toward the body, embodied experience, and the inevitable emotionality of journalism and the journalist as brought forth by Chantal Francoeur and Belinda Middleweek, among others. We invite journalism scholars (and practitioners) to understand journalists’ bodies as sophisticated organic technologies—and to subsequently understand how those bodies are further transmogrified by, and collapsed into, the ever-changing world of news media. We deploy a process of retheorising as a qualitative method in which researchers apply new theoretical frameworks to existing studies or data to provide fresh insights and perspectives. By doing so, we offer a Somatechnics of Journalism as one of several emerging conceptual frameworks to help us turn to the body in Journalism Studies.