"When in doubt, draw a distinction." Not sure where he got it, but in grad school one of my teachers told me that. Some of the best advice I ever received. This THREAD is about some of the key distinctions I draw on to do my work. If you're into that kind of thing.😎 Ready? 1/
For distinctions to do work, the terms have to be sufficiently close that prying them apart clears space for thought. If I write, "bending is not the same as breaking," well, who said it was? That one is going nowhere. But "naked is not the same as nude" is an idea with legs. 2/
These notes about some of the distinctions I draw in order to do my work were written under the influence of two masters of the form: the French critic Roland Barthes, and the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, known for her striking distinctions— such as labor vs. work. 3/
For those who don't know me, I'm a J-school professor and press critic who writes about the media and politics, and journalism's struggle for survival in a digital world. I have a PhD in media studies, and 35 years experience in puzzling through problems in press behavor. 4/
Here we go with some key distinctions I use to do my work. An audience is not a public. "Audience" = people attending to a common object, typically a performance or spectacle. A public is people with different interests who live in the same space and share common problems. 5/
Audience vs. public, cont. When people share common problems but don't realize it, they are an "inchoate" public. (John Dewey.) One reason the presidential debates are such a big deal is that they are one of the few occasions when the audience is the public and vice versa. 6/
Key distinction number two: journalism vs. the media (vs. the press) I think of the media as the attention business, an industry whose product is audiences. Journalism is a social practice, the purpose of which is to keep publics informed and hold power to account. However— 7/
Most journalists are employees of the media, and thus part of the attention business. This creates endless problems and compromises, which I hear about nonstop. The press — to my way of thinking — is the institution that endures over time as journalists come in and out of it. 8/