A Complex New Media Ecology: Mapping Shifting Digital Players and Evolving Boundaries in Lifestyle Journalism

Guided by boundary work, this study aims to investigate how lifestyle journalism’s boundaries are changing in response to the rise of creator culture. Specifically, this study seeks to understand how lifestyle journalists define and perceive new creators in their profession and what kind of boundary-making strategies they enact in reaction to such new actors. Through 31 interviews with Singaporean lifestyle journalists, the findings show that there is currently a dynamic and evolving ecosystem of distinct digital lifestyle players comprising lifestyle journalists, digital natives, bloggers, key opinion leaders and influencers, and that the journalists perceive a complex ‘frenemy’ relationship with these actors. Lifestyle journalists engage in a combination of expansion, expulsion and protection of autonomy boundary strategies to guard their profession’s boundaries against the incursions of these new lifestyle actors, but there is a clear shift towards expansion-led strategies. Lifestyle journalists seem to be increasingly welcoming of both newer social media actors and practices into their profession, signalling that lifestyle journalism now exists in a digital reputation economy where online visibility, above all else, serves as the foremost marker of professional success.