"Journalism In Dispersion": "Exploring the blurring boundaries of newsmaking through a controversy"

International audienceThe dynamics of digital news production and distribution challenge the definitions of what is news and who is supposed to produce it. Actors producing relevant information for the debates in the public sphere multiply and the relationships they establish in online spaces such as social media, among them and with journalists and the public, shape what is considered to be news and journalism in any given moment. This article traces the positions in the field of journalism in the city of Brussels, putting professional journalists in the context of the broader community, in order to identify the diversity of actors active in the production of information. A controversy concerning multiculturalism in Brussels serves as a case study. Discourse analysis of the news about the topic and interviews with professional journalists were used to trace the diversity of actors involved in producing narratives about that specific event. Journalists in mainstream media defend a hegemonic position in the construction of the news narrative of the event by dismissing alternative voices to the trusted institutional ones and not recognising the role of community media