Profiling the Civil Diminishment of Journalism: A conceptual framework for understanding the causes and manifestations of risk to journalism

This thesis provides a roadmap for developing a risk profile which encapsulates a comprehensive and holistic understanding of civil diminishment as a consequence of risk to journalism. It does so through developing a risk profile that encapsulates the understanding of causes and manifestations of risk to journalism. This roadmap begins with establishing an understanding of the deficiencies of current empirical analysis of risk to journalism through the issue of violations of the safety of journalists. It then outlines the inadequacies of methodological approaches to risk to journalism which stem from a narrow and one-dimensional understanding of the societal role of journalism. To address such inadequacies, it is argued that a theoretical turn toward understanding risk to journalism through the use of Alexander’s Civil Sphere Theory (2006) and Harrison’s (2019) understanding of the civil ideal of the news is required. Combined these steps reveal that there is a need for a multi-dimensional risk profile that captures how civil diminishment occurs when the civil role of journalism is itself diminished. Developing a risk profile, it is argued, provides for a new approach to understanding risk to journalism. In developing this risk profile the following arguments are made: that risk to journalism can be used to understand and indicate how fragile a particular civil sphere is; and therefore how civilly diminished such a civil sphere is or can become; and that it is necessary to profile the causes and manifestations of risk to journalism in order to understand civil diminishment as a consequence of such risk. The thesis concludes that such a risk profile reveals how risk to the civil role of journalism generates various forms of civil diminishment of societies through the reduction of the discursive capacity of the civil sphere. Civil diminishment is defined throughout this thesis in terms of the way diverse forms of anti-civil power dominate the associative and communicative conditions of civil life which occurs as a direct consequence of risk to journalism.