Monday, March 1, 2010

Journalism as Social Institution

An institution can be seen as a sort of ‘super-custom’, a set of mores, folkways, and patterns of behavior that deals with major social interests; law, church, and family etc. Thus Social institution can be defined as definite, formal and regular way of doing something and is organized to meet the need of people. Here journalism acts as a mediator or translator between public and social institution. The journalist became the middleman. Journalist listened and recorded the information, distilled it and passed it on to the public. The public is not smart enough to understand complicated, political issues. Therefore public needed someone to make information simple. That is the role of journalist. Journalism is serving society as social institution like environmental Journalism prefers to cover issue related to the environment and its protection, conservation and protection. Business and Financial Journalism prefer to cover report about the latest business, launch of products, stocks markets etc. In this way, there are various types of journalism which serves as social institution. For example: Fashion Journalism, News Journalism, Celebrity Journalism, Investigative journalism, Sport Journalism, Citizen Journalism etc.

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