The contested boundaries of photojournalism in the changing Swedish newspaper media field

In a changed media landscape, where anyone with an internet connection and a smartphone can become a journalist or a photojournalist, the professional boundaries of journalism and its practitioners have increasingly attracted the attention of media scholars in recent years. Although comprehensive, this body of research has mostly focused on the boundaries of journalism and the reactions towards the encroachment of outside forces. It would benefit from the analysis of how practitioners, especially the often-overlooked group of photojournalists, in digital media are struggling over boundaries. By combining Gieryn’s and Bourdieu’s analytical frameworks and analysing 40 interviews with agents in the Swedish newspaper media, this study seeks to contribute to existing research by showing how professional boundaries and the logic of photojournalism practice are being reshaped. The results show that while photojournalism has become an increasingly valuable product for the field, it has also become a contested boundary object. This has increased the exclusion of photojournalists and expanded photojournalistic practices into other agents’ professional roles. In particular, multiskilled journalists backed by media managers have, in recent years, successfully conducted boundary work, redrawing the professional boundaries of the Swedish newspaper media