Placing Facebook

Facebook is challenging professional journalism. These challenges were evident in three incidents from 2016: the allegation that Facebook privileged progressive-leaning news on its trending feature; Facebook’s removal of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Napalm Girl” photo from the pages of prominent users; and the proliferation of “fake news” during the US presidential election. Using theoretical concepts from the field of boundary work, this paper examines how The Guardian, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review and Poynter editorialized Facebook’s role in these three incidents to discursively construct the boundary between the value of professional journalism to democracy and Facebook’s ascendant role in facilitating essential democratic functions. Findings reveal that these publications attempted to define Facebook as a news organization (i.e., include it within the boundaries of journalism) so that they could then criticize the company for not following duties traditionally incumbent upon news organizations (i.e., place it outside the boundaries of journalism). This paper advances scholarship that focuses on both inward and outward conceptions of boundary work, further explores the complex challenge of defining who a journalist is in the face of rapidly changing technological norms, and advances scholarship in the field of media ethics that positions ethical analysis at the institutional level.     

当代自由主义的困境——论哈耶克、约翰·顿、罗尔斯和罗蒂

非常感谢高瑞泉教授的邀请,使我十分荣幸能有机会来华东师范大学主持第九期大夏讲坛。今天我演讲的题目是“当代自由主义的困境——论哈耶克、约翰&;#183;顿、罗尔斯和罗蒂”。正如在座诸位知道的那样,这个演讲其实是我这次在华东师范大学系列演讲的第三讲。前两讲的题目分别是“人类学文化观念中的知识论意蕴”和“文化观念中的知识论意蕴：中西哲学的讨论”,其出发点就是去探讨如何以哲学思辩的方式来会通中西。