Journalism Metadiscourse on Professional Identity and Verification in UAE

ABSTRACT

This paper examines journalistic metadiscourse on verification and professional identity in the UAE. Using in-depth interviews with journalists from various UAE institutions, the study interprets journalism as a culture of practice where journalistic roles and practices are discursively constructed as a "part of a wider framework of meaning” within the parameters and conditions where news are produced and circulated. Drawing on the hierarchy-of-influences model, the paper analyzes the epistemological, institutional and professional factors shaping journalists' construction of journalism as a field of practice and professional identity. It also examines how journalists in the UAE interpret the notion of verification and apply it in their work, especially in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. The paper argues that journalists' professional identity in the UAE is marked by an exclusionary boundary discourse legitimizing the social role of journalists within a loyalist press model that is increasingly challenged by a fast changing communicational ecosystem at the regional and global levels. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.