NCTM Y PROYECTO GAISE

This study involves six Malaysian newspapers, namely The New Straits Times (the NST), Berita Harian (BH), The Sun (TS), Sinar Harian (SH), Harakah (Hh) and XX (the newspaper

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requested to remain anonymous) as well as their online versions. These print newspapers, together with the online versions of the newspapers, are in the first focal points of this study. The online versions are particularly important for understanding different configurations of readerships as part of the accreditation processes of the newsworthiness construction of online newspapers (see Chapter 7). Other objects include ‘news’ being studied in this research, including other heterogeneous actors involved in the news-making process, primarily the news angle, pictures, headlines and words.

In terms of newspaper selection, these newspapers are chosen mainly based on the availability and their willingness to grant permission for me to conduct this study. Two other well-known newspapers, although approached, did not grant their permission, hence they are not included in this study. In terms of the way of the first selection of the newspapers, it was not based on their inherent identity. Instead, it was based on the notion of free association advocated by Michel Callon (1986) that emphasises the rejection of pre-determination of the identity, size and scale of a particular actant that leaves the choice of the newspaper open and based on the permission granted and willingness to cooperate. By free association, Callon (1986) demonstrates that the roles of each of the actors in the study (researchers, scallops and fishermen) are the results of negotiating their roles with each other (rather than being pre-existent).

Identity should be seen as the result rather than the cause of social action. As this is apparent in Van Loon and Hemmingway’s (2005) study, which suggests organisational identity is the result of reification of practice, Candea (2010) specifically scrutinised identity on the basis of the work of Gabriel de Tarde and demonstrated that the identities of Corsicans are a

‘connection’ rather than a ‘category’ because of the way “the” identity of “the” Corsican is constructed by the people themselves. Corsicans are mainly identified as being very attached to each other, and by refusing to accept strangers. By acknowledging themselves as closely connected, Corsicans deploy practices of “naming” to suggest that they are ‘possessed’ by each other. The possession of identity among French Corsicans also reflects the fact that the issue of identity is very much affected by the ‘inside’ as opposed to the ‘outside’. The outside of “the Corsican” is another abstraction of externally attributed qualities that are usually associated with identity, such as “the general traits of the French”. The practice of anonymous introduction is

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thus seen as differentiating the Corsican from the French. The difference of “being Corsican” is thus actively performed over and over again. I want to suggest that this is similarly done by the newspapers who find it easier to articulate what they are not, than what they are.

Thus, from this standpoint, this study does not predetermine which newspapers will be examined, because to ANT this is also the result of the investigation, rather than fixed by the researcher in the first place. As Latour (1990: 56) has said, “the scale of an actor is not an absolute term but a relative one that varies with the ability to produce, capture, sum up, and interpret information about other places and times.” Similarly, this study also does not predetermine the hierarchy of journalists in the news organisation that will be chosen for the ethnographic interview and observation. Those selected are based on the availability of the journalists and their willingness to cooperate with me.

Thus, the research methods deployed in this study are observations and ethnographic interviews. These were conducted in the six newsrooms of the available newspapers from February until April 2009. The newsrooms are located in Kuala Lumpur (the NST, BH, XX, Hh), Petaling Jaya (TS) and Shah Alam and Seremban (for SH, Seremban is one of the regional newsrooms). The main method proposed for this study was observation, where this was in line with what ANT advocates in studying “science while it is in action” (Latour 1987) and to follow the actors (Latour 1987; Latour 1999). As Latour states:

ANT is simply a way of being faithful to the insight of ethnomethodology: actors know what they do and we have to learn from them, not only what they do, but how they do it and why they do it. It is us, the social scientists, who lack the knowledge of what they do, and not they who are missing the explanation of why they are unwittingly manipulated by forces exterior to themselves and known to the social scientist’s powerful gaze and methods (Latour 1999: 19).

The ethnographic method becomes important in ANT because it emphasises studying an object while it is in action, or while the networking is being performed. Networking is

“continuous practice of enrolment, translation and redefinition” that “analyses actions” (Van Loon, 2008: 114). Thus, Van Loon added that ANT is rather radical because it does not provide explanations about the social based on beliefs or opinions. Its analysis is based on practical observations that suggest why ethnographic methods are important (Latour 1987). They make it easier to identify which entities make a difference and become actants.

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However, due to resistance from many journalists, reasoning that they are uncomfortable being observed and asked questions while they are at work, and the hesitation of many newsrooms to allow for such (in-situ) observation, I have had to change the main method of the study to ethnographic interviews that emphasise the investigation of the interview based on the process experienced by research informants (Spradley 1979), as it is the closest method to gain insights about what journalists did when they were in action. This method also provides in-situ data about newsworthiness construction, both in terms of the ‘place’ of the interview, and the types of data collected—supporting this study which attempts to produce process-oriented data.

This is also in line with the purpose of the study, which is to find the ‘real voices’ of the actors involved in newsworthiness construction.

This method, however, is argued to still help to achieve intensive contextualisation (Strathern 2002) rather than extensive contextualisation, because to achieve this a researcher needs to “track people’s activities and narratives as they cross domains, and thereby unpack the heterogeneous social worlds people pile up for themselves” (Strathern 2002: 309). This proximity leads me to see this study as ‘influenced’ by ANT, rather than to claim the status of a pure ANT study itself. This is mainly because this study presents data from ethnographic interviews which were in-situ in nature, but it does not reach the level of in-situ observation as it is done by ANT theorists (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Latour 1987; Hemmingway 2007; Van Loon and Hemmingway 2005).

There is a huge difference when we are talking about data about practices that are derived from ‘discourse’ and those from ‘actual practice’. The distinction has been mentioned by Tarde in describing his experience of examining social acts:

When I enter into verbal communication with one or more of my fellows, […] this relation is the relation of one social element with other social elements, considered individually. By contrast, when I observe, listen to or study my natural environment, rocks, water, plants even, each object of my thought is a hermetically sealed world of elements which may indeed know or possess each other intimately, like members of a social group, but which I can only embrace globally and from the outside (Tarde, quoted in Leach 2010).

Realising this, as this study is “influenced” by ANT, there is no essential difference between this study and other qualitative analyses of media production. Through observations and ethnographic interviews, I still see these efforts as to gather narratives of the actors that can still

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be unpacked and their heterogeneity revealed. The only difference that ANT makes to this study is that my ethnographic work attempts to work with intrinsic contexts only.

Pertaining to the standpoint of this thesis - treating ANT as a supplement to previous ways of researching news - this is significant not only to overcome the access problem highlighted just now, but also to provide a platform for ANT to be discussed in a less polemical way, as Latour always did. Such arguments by Latour can be associated with the fact that ANT has been harshly rejected by certain scholars even in the STS field itself, which has turned Latour into a scholar who has the tendency to defend ANT ‘over’ other research paradigms, rather than integrate it with other research methods/approaches.

As a start, this is an early study to provide such attempt, this discussion provides the advantages of using ANT concepts as the supplement to the inherent approach, but yet to provide the integration between ANT concepts with other research paradigms. Thus, by maintaining the ethnographic interview as the main method, and observation as the second method, I have observed some events and interviewed 29 of journalists and the list of journalists as attached in the Appendix. In this study, the strengths and weaknesses of ANT in news study are discussed in the next section, where the strengths are the basis of this study taking up ANT to influence its methodological and analytical tool.

4.8 Conclusion

This chapter discusses the strength of ANT and suggested that it be utilised as a supplement in news studies, to counter the weaknesses of previous studies presented in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 that mainly reside in the issue decontextualisation (Chapter 2) and of relying on invisible contexts to explain social actions and ignoring real news-making practice in understanding newsworthiness construction (Chapter 3). This thesis, however, is influenced by ANT in discussing its empirical findings, rather than providing ANT analysis, due to the limitations faced in the course of the fieldwork that meant I was unable to gather in-situ data from observations.

This discussion starts with the background of ANT that emphasises a different way of understanding ‘reality’ and which stresses that the universe is established from associations, rather than existing ‘out there’ as it is (Latour 2005). From here, ANT sees that reality can be

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understood from five controversies that include the different ways of understanding the establishment of reality and that stress that an object does not already exist, but rather through the process of performative enactment comes into being; actions are not pre-determined by the actors, but can change unpredictably; objects also ‘act’ in the process of composing reality; that there are heterogenous actors (Law 1987) involved; facts must always be under investigation (matters of concern) and the rendering of accounts must take into account how the objects have been made.

It is from these ideas that I was led to the understanding that identity is never a pre-determined concept, but rather the result of various networks that do not depend on external forces to be formed (Callon 1986; Van Loon and Hemmingway 2005). This then becomes an important notion that ANT advocates, which emphasises the study of ‘process’ while it is in the making (Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979).

This process can be examined by investigating the moments of translation that Michel Callon (1986) identified as ‘problematisation’, ‘interesessment’, ‘enrolment’ and ‘mobilisation’.

Thus, identity is always ‘in action’ because it is in a state of ‘emergence’ and in negotiations.

This can be related to Latour’s (1988) principle of irreducibility which posits that a scientist can explain complex phenomena by a single account, not through a universal explanation. From here, Latour (1988) suggests that every piece of knowledge constructed is immersed in a network that is constantly making and remaking itself, that is, it can extend the network (Latour, 1988: 226).

Thus, "Nothing is known--only realised" (Latour, 1988: 159) from a scientists’ laboratory rather than investigating from nature (Latour, 1988: 214). Latour then describes the principle “nothing is, by itself, either reducible or irreducible to anything else” (Latour, 1988: 158).

This suggests that societies are the result of a reification of ‘practice’ rather than existing as such. This can also be related to the philosophy of a French philosopher that has a heavy influence on ANT. Gabriel Tarde views society as being formed by irreducible entities that associate with each other to realise their existence. This is opposed to Durkheim’s view that societies exist “as such” and are composed from fixed ‘social aggregates’. Instead, we always need to be mindful of how associations are being performed and ask what allows them to become durable.

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From these views, what is important to ANT is to understand how an object (which includes a fact) is established. Facts should not be simply accepted as already there, and capable of being trusted without further investigation. From the ANT point of view, how facts come into being will enable a researcher to come closer to the object and understand the object under investigation very well, as compared to simply accepting an object as it is (Latour 2004). Thus, an object is established from a series of translations that not only include personal achievements but also other external forces, such as political, ideological and commercial interests that happen in its process of becoming established (Latour and Woolgar 1979). This can be investigated through the accreditation process in order to change the state of affairs from matters of fact to matters of concern (Latour 2004; Latour 2008). Thus, the establishment of fact includes various series of translation processes that turn facts into a hybrid form of object, and which also take into account the non-human actors.

To further understand the role of non-human actors in the translation process, enrolment can be taken as a concept that is pertinent in making the translation process and changes that occur in a network visible for researchers to examine. Callon (1986) observes that enrolment is never a guaranteed success, but one way to understand successful enrolment is via assessing and collecting (assembling) different interests among actors (Callon and Law 1982). In terms of creating the collective identity of the newspaper, which takes place through enrolment, I want to show how newspapers impose their identity on their readers through specific practices of angle construction.

This suggests the importance of non-human actants in rendering accounts in the networks. Here, the account itself can also be considered as a virtual object (Law 1996; Mol 1998; Van Loon 2002) where the emergent nature of the object is emphasised rather than its existence as such. In understanding a virtual object and the link to the actual object where it derived, mediators, or the connectors within and among the networks become important actants to reduce the distance between them.

This thus turns ANT theorists to argue that the reality is made of associations and it is not contexts or inherent identity that can be used to simply explain the social. From this point of view, there is no separation between the micro and macro contexts. Rather, what really makes the associations should be seen as the source of understanding how something happens.

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These are examples of the concepts of ANT that are found useful to supplement the weaknesses of previous news studies paradigms (discussed in Chapters 2 and 3) which are able to demonstrate the exact, micro and taken-for-granted practice of news-making (Hemmingway 2005; Hemmingway 2007; Hemmingway and Van Loon 2011; Plesner 2009; Plesner 2010;

Turner 2005; Van Loon 2008; Van Loon and Hemmingway 2005). This brings us into one of the important aspects that ANT advocates, which is the establishment of facts in news-making—that, in news study, I pose the question of how news values come into being.

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CHAPTER 5