Legitimating new media actors:Unwelcome strangers to the journalistic field

In our contemporary societies, our understanding of journalism rests broadly on two visions of the field. The first is based on journalists and how they understand their identities and their roles in societies. The second is based on what societies at large understand journal- ism to be, and what they expect of journalists. Such visions shape expectations of what journalism contributes to our social worlds and also how journalists see themselves as contributing. While historically these visions were crafted around traditional journalists and institutions, they have now been confronted by uniquely capable (and motivated) digital actors offering competing interpretations of both the internal and external visions of journalism. These actors adopt non-traditional approaches to gathering, verifying, and communicating information, and succeed in bringing information to public light. This leaves journalism research facing a challenge: How to make sense of new interpretations of these visions of journalism, and the new actors bringing them about.