| Among several crises that contemporary journalism is facing, the authority of journalism as the major producer of social knowledge is also at stake. This study attempted to discern empirically Hong Kong journalism's reconstruction of its cultural authority via the practice of witnessing. Witnessing was approached through the lens of social practice theory in order to understand both the continuity and transformative possibilities---embedded in witnessing---of journalistic norms and routines. Witnessing has been referred to as "a paradigm case of medium" (Peters, 2009, p. 171) and it is often employed to establish a person's authority over social reality based upon his/her privileged proximity to certain happenings. However, in various sociocultural domains, witnessing has been constituted differently. This study proposed three ideal types of witnessing: (1) factual witnessing, (2) affective witnessing, and (3) ritual witnessing. Each type is constrained by the conditional factors of event contingency, the witness-event relationship, and witnessed facts. As the cultural authority of contemporary Hong Kong journalism is largely established upon the modern values of professionalism based on objectivity, factual witnessing, sharing similar epistemological ideals of rationality and objectivity, has been highly valued in journalism and institutionalized in work routines such as live broadcasting or highlighting eye-witness accounts, which have been referred to as journalistic keywords (Zelizer, 2004). This study did not, however, assume factual witnessing to be the only type practiced in journalism. Instead, it examined the actual practice of witnessing in Hong Kong journalism through case studies and found that all the three types have been practiced under certain circumstances. Tension and negotiation were observed between witnessing and professional journalistic practices. This showed that under certain conditions, witnessing could provide journalism with cultural recourses and legitimacy to reconstitute its own cultural authority that was originally embedded in ideals of professionalism. |
