Rodney Benson
Rodney Benson is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and affiliated faculty member in the Department of Sociology at New York University.
He is the author of Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge, 2013), winner of the 2020 APSA Doris Graber Outstanding Book of the Decade Award, 2015 International Journal of Press/Politics Best Book Award, 2014 AEJMC Tankard Book Award, and 2014 NYU Daniel Griffiths Research Award.
Silvio Waisbord, editor of the Journal of Communication, has praised the book as “a sophisticated, elegant, and evidence-packed cross-national analysis that will be a go-to reference for comparative media research.” In 2018, Shaping Immigration News was translated by Bruno Poncharal into French and published by Presses Universitaires de Rennes as L'immigration au prisme des médias.
Benson is also editor (with Erik Neveu) of Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Polity 2005; Chinese translation forthcoming 2016) and co-author (with Matthew Powers) of Public Media and Political Independence: Lessons for the Future of Journalism from Around the World (Free Press, 2011).
He is currently working on a new book, How Media Ownership Matters (Oxford, under contract), with Mattias Hesserus, Tim Neff, and Julie Sedel. Drawing on interviews and organizational data from Sweden, France, and the United States, the book goes beyond the standard media concentration debate to explore how different forms of media ownership (commercial, civil society, and public) facilitate different types of journalism.
Prior to joining the NYU faculty, he was assistant professor of international communications and sociology at The American University of Paris. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California-Berkeley. His articles and essays have appeared in many publications, including the American Sociological Review, Journal of Communication, Political Communication, Press/Politics, Poetics, Theory and Society, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera.com, and the Miami Herald.
Address: Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
239 Greene Street
7th Floor
New York, NY 10003-6674 USA
He is the author of Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge, 2013), winner of the 2020 APSA Doris Graber Outstanding Book of the Decade Award, 2015 International Journal of Press/Politics Best Book Award, 2014 AEJMC Tankard Book Award, and 2014 NYU Daniel Griffiths Research Award.
Silvio Waisbord, editor of the Journal of Communication, has praised the book as “a sophisticated, elegant, and evidence-packed cross-national analysis that will be a go-to reference for comparative media research.” In 2018, Shaping Immigration News was translated by Bruno Poncharal into French and published by Presses Universitaires de Rennes as L'immigration au prisme des médias.
Benson is also editor (with Erik Neveu) of Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Polity 2005; Chinese translation forthcoming 2016) and co-author (with Matthew Powers) of Public Media and Political Independence: Lessons for the Future of Journalism from Around the World (Free Press, 2011).
He is currently working on a new book, How Media Ownership Matters (Oxford, under contract), with Mattias Hesserus, Tim Neff, and Julie Sedel. Drawing on interviews and organizational data from Sweden, France, and the United States, the book goes beyond the standard media concentration debate to explore how different forms of media ownership (commercial, civil society, and public) facilitate different types of journalism.
Prior to joining the NYU faculty, he was assistant professor of international communications and sociology at The American University of Paris. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California-Berkeley. His articles and essays have appeared in many publications, including the American Sociological Review, Journal of Communication, Political Communication, Press/Politics, Poetics, Theory and Society, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera.com, and the Miami Herald.
Address: Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
239 Greene Street
7th Floor
New York, NY 10003-6674 USA
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Books by Rodney Benson
Avec une préface de Érik Neveu.
Policy Reports by Rodney Benson
Papers by Rodney Benson
• Full citation: “La estructura define la estrategia: el manifiesto de la sociología de los medios.” In Maira Vaca and Manuel Alejandro Guerrero, eds., La comunicación y sus guerras teóricas. Vol.I. (New York: Peter Lang, 2021): 55-80.
Journalism is said to exist to serve the public, the implication being “all the
public.” This normative vision of journalism’s civic purpose is inclusive.
And yet all too often, journalism serves as a powerful force for exclusion,
for keeping quality information away from those who need it most, and
for discouraging anyone but the richest, most educated citizens from
participating in the public conversation
well as benefits of urging audiences to pay for the news? The upside of the subscription model is that readers are only going to pay money for
something they really want or need. This provides a strong incentive for news organizations to produce the highest quality journalism. The downside, though, is that subscriber-funded news caters to relatively high income, high-education elites. Even if subscriptions contribute to higher quality news, if that news fails to reach a broad audience, it’s not really a solution to the civic crisis of an uninformed, often misinformed, and distrustful citizenry.
studies as a whole. In homage to Schudson’s classic alliterative model of “How Culture Works,” through five magic “R” words (rhetorical force, resolution, retrievability, retention, and resonance), I argue that the letter “C” unites the five reasons why Schudson is reluctant to overemphasize commercialism’s negative effects on journalism. It’s Complicated. There are Countervailing forces outside of the market and even when there are not, the market itself is self-Contradictory. Don’t underestimate the power of Contingency. And if all else fails, blame it on Culture.
Avec une préface de Érik Neveu.
• Full citation: “La estructura define la estrategia: el manifiesto de la sociología de los medios.” In Maira Vaca and Manuel Alejandro Guerrero, eds., La comunicación y sus guerras teóricas. Vol.I. (New York: Peter Lang, 2021): 55-80.
Journalism is said to exist to serve the public, the implication being “all the
public.” This normative vision of journalism’s civic purpose is inclusive.
And yet all too often, journalism serves as a powerful force for exclusion,
for keeping quality information away from those who need it most, and
for discouraging anyone but the richest, most educated citizens from
participating in the public conversation
well as benefits of urging audiences to pay for the news? The upside of the subscription model is that readers are only going to pay money for
something they really want or need. This provides a strong incentive for news organizations to produce the highest quality journalism. The downside, though, is that subscriber-funded news caters to relatively high income, high-education elites. Even if subscriptions contribute to higher quality news, if that news fails to reach a broad audience, it’s not really a solution to the civic crisis of an uninformed, often misinformed, and distrustful citizenry.
studies as a whole. In homage to Schudson’s classic alliterative model of “How Culture Works,” through five magic “R” words (rhetorical force, resolution, retrievability, retention, and resonance), I argue that the letter “C” unites the five reasons why Schudson is reluctant to overemphasize commercialism’s negative effects on journalism. It’s Complicated. There are Countervailing forces outside of the market and even when there are not, the market itself is self-Contradictory. Don’t underestimate the power of Contingency. And if all else fails, blame it on Culture.
ABSTRACT Par sa couverture particulièrement intense au début, la presse américaine a donné beaucoup d'importance aux attentats de Madrid. Le cadrage dominant est un parallèle avec le 11 septembre, justifiant une approche faite d'empathie et un sentiment fort de solidarité dans l'épreuve. Mais, après les résultats des élections législatives espagnoles, quand il est devenu évident que la population espagnole a élu un chef ouvertement hostile à la participation de son pays à la guerre en Irak, la couverture change. La presse américaine passe de la solidarité à la censure. Surtout dans le New York Post, la victoire de Zapatero est présentée comme la preuve que les terroristes ont réussi. Cette orientation anti-Zapatero est justifiée par un cadrage patriotique articulant de façon indissociable la lutte globale contre le terrorisme et la guerre menée par les États-Unis en Irak, conformément à la doctrine de l'administration Bush. Néanmoins, les autres journaux (The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor et USA Today) laissent s'exprimer des critiques contre la rhétorique simpliste de Bush.
Éric Darras, Sociétés Contemporaines: You say it's more important to study ‟forms of ownership” than ‟concentration of ownership.” Why?
[Author's note: In the published version of Figure 3, under "Stock Market" ownership, two outlets originally listed were cut off in the reproduction: ABC News #12 and USA Today #14; under "Stock Market with Dominant Shareholder", one outlet originally listed is cut off in the reproduction: Wall Street Journal #11.]
By Max Benavidez
Journalism is at a major crossroads. The digital revolution has turned print and broadcast upside down and although the media are more successful than ever on many levels, the traditional role of journalism as democracy’s watchdog is at risk. Rodney Benson is a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University who has studied the interaction between journalism and democracy. I asked him to comment on where journalism stands today based on his study of how the media cover immigration and explain why some of the best journalism in the U.S. is that with the most civic-cultural capital and what American journalism can learn from the French practice of debate ensemble journalism.
https://doi.org/10.1086/697442
Contemporary Sociology 47, 1: 38-40
The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered:
Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital
Future, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander,
Elizabeth Butler Breese, and Marı´a
Luengo. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2016. 298 pp. $34.99 paper. ISBN:
9781107448513.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42:4 (2016)
Jean Burgess and Nancy Baym. 2020. Twitter: A Biography.
Angèle Christin. 2020. Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested
Meaning of Algorithms. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stuart Cunningham and David Craig. 2019. Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: NYU Press.
Magda Konieczna. 2018. Journalism without Profit: Making News when the Market Fails. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Paul Lopes. 2019. Art Rebels: Race, Class, and Gender in the Art of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Reece Peck. 2019. Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class. Cambridge University Press.
Jen Schradie. 2019. The Revolution that Wasn't: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Press.
Baym, Nancy. 2018. Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection. New York: NYU Press.
Childress, Clayton. 2017. Under the Cover. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Christian, Aymar Jean. 2018. Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television. New York: NYU Press.
Cunningham, Stuart and David Craig. 2019. Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: NYU Press.
Rusbridger, Alan. 2018. Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Wen Lai, Ya. 2017. The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts. 2018. Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Konieczna, Magda. 2018. Journalism without Profit. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Pickard, Victor. 2020. Democracy without Journalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Dijk, José. 2019. The Platform Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wihbey, John. 2019. The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Required Books (pdfs of articles are indicated with * in syllabus and are available on NYU Classes)
Simone Browne. 2015. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bruno Latour. 2005. Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
José Van Dijck. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raymond Williams. 2003 [1973]. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Routledge Classics.
Recommended Books
Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.