Public Engagement as Communication Design Work: How Journalists Use Professional and Market Logics

Due to the digital media revolution, journalists have had to develop new communication norms for engaging with the public, beyond the work of research and reporting. Focusing on logics of communication design, we interviewed working journalists to learn how they navigated pressures and expectations for engaging with audiences. We found that participants’ justifications sometimes created zones of convergence between professional and market values. Other times, they used cautionary examples or extreme hypotheticals to reify professional boundaries. Regarding threats to safety, journalists invoked another form of logic: self-preservation. The study’s findings exemplify how collective communication design can engage competing logics and generate designs that accommodate fragmented interests. Such strategies may help distressed professions retain their legitimacy amid changing norms.