Introduction

Abstract

In this article we briefly review past and present ethnography of journalism in order to explain the timing and significance of this special issue, ‘Worlds of Journalism’. We make the case for the ethnography of journalism as a key lens for better understanding four sets of research problems facing contemporary social science: (1) the involvement of media professions like journalism in processes of social mediation and cultural production more broadly, (2) the opportunity of reflexive social science to ‘study sideways’ other professional groups through ethnography, (3) the contemporary transformation of institutions and practices of political communication, democracy and citizenship, and (4) the emergence of new modes of translocal social experience such as those experienced by mobile, cosmopolitan professional groups