Shifting fields of discourse…
Daniel Weintraub considers the de-centering of the press on PressThink:
If our world is changing, we simply have to change with it. We have to write stories that are more compelling, more stories about what the politicians and the government are doing and fewer, perhaps, about what they are saying, or why they are saying it. We have to engage more with our readers, become more a part of the conversation and less of a lecturer at the front of a great hall. We have to reconsider the way we think about scoops and competition, and think more about “open-source” journalism that truly seeks answers through cooperative information gathering, and not just gotchas that we can spring on the politician in a kind of gameboard journalism.
What he’s describing here is a changing rhetoric of journalism–a rhetoric indicating, and indicated by, shifts in the noetic field that I describe here. Here’s a list of the changes in professional practice that Weintraub wishes to see and how they map onto the elements of a noetic field:
- More stories about governance = a shift of point of view, i.e. what is the known.
- Fewer stories about what politicians say about politics = a shift in who can know and how they can know it.
- Become a part of the conversation with citizens = telling the story of new protagonists, i.e. a shift in the nature of language and the relationship between knower and audience.
- Lecture less, engage more = a shift in the relationship between knower, the known, and the audience.
- Change how the profession thinks about scoops = a shift in what can be known and how we know it.
- Open-source journalism and cooperation = a shift in what can be known, how we know it, and who can know it.
These changes are already taking place. The questions are these: Will the changes complete and, if so, when? I think we will see a change in the field if for no other reason than we have not reached the end of history. Few rhetorics have survived more than a few decades. And changes in the socio-political fabric of a nation have always indicated, and been indicated by, a change in a culture’s rhetoric. Rhetoric is bound to all that a society does or attempts to do, i.e. central to its activities and its epistemology.
Another must-read from PressThink.
Thanks for the x=y breakdown of the Weintraub essay and your noetic field theory. I understood the Weintraub piece very well, but could not have tied it to the noetic field theory without your useful comparison. I’m sure I’m the only Rhetorica reader requiring remedial help, and I do appreciate your efforts!
RH– Not remedial help–merely bringing theory and practice together. I need to to that more often.