Institutional Memory of Journalism

ABSTRACT

The research considered the principles of institutional analysis of journalism. The study is particularly relevant in terms of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social institutions and media consumption practices, formation of new approaches to the definition of the institution, weakening of globalization trends, sovereignization of local world-systems and media spaces. The stages of professional development differ based on the prevailing thinking styles of team of authors, organizers, regulators, researchers and teachers of journalism. The parameters of the definition of the institution are determined accordance to the levels of analysis of the social system. The individual level corresponds to the status-role parameter, the level of professional activity corresponds to the organizational, the level of mass profession corresponds to the socio-institutional, the level of mass activity corresponds to the practical and normative. Based on the principles of analysis, we determined the stages of the evolution of journalism as a social institution. We employed institutional and historiosophical approaches to the analysis of journalism. At the first stage, journalism is organized as an individual activity and is characterized as a system of roles and statuses. At the second stage, journalism acquires the properties of professional activity and is formed as a developed organizational structure. At the third stage of widely accepted profession, a system of professional functions is formed, including personnel training. In addition, the structural organization of journalism acquires the characteristics of a media system. At the fourth stage, journalism becomes a mass activity and manifests itself as a set of practices. The institutional parameters of journalism are misshaped, the principles are questioned, and the need of its regulation comes forward. At each stage, journalism acquires new properties, while keeping essential characteristics and forming institutional memory as a means of preserving professional ideology and identity. In the theory of journalism, institutional memory takes the form of historical self-knowledge, professional ideology and paradigmatic consensus.