Aspirational lifestyle journalism: The impact of social class on producers’ and audiences’ views in the context of socio-economic inequality

Sandra Banjac,Folker Hanusch

doi:10.1177/1464884920956823

Abstract

A growing amount of scholarship on lifestyle journalism and role conceptions has shown its relevance in the context of consumption cultures and societal changes. However, the existing literature has tended to focus on countries with relatively prosperous economies, neglecting to explore those with greater socio-economic inequality. Likewise, scholarship has offered some insight into what audiences expect of political journalists, but we know little about expectations of lifestyle journalism. Exploring role conceptions and expectations in socio-economically unequal societies gives rise to the question: How may social class shape these? To examine this, our study draws on 22 in-depth interviews with lifestyle journalists and three focus groups with audiences from different class backgrounds in South Africa. Findings suggest that lifestyle journalists’ awareness of class disparity and the country’s history of racial segregation and oppression shapes their roles in three ways. First, journalists expressed strong support for roles typically associated with political journalism, albeit interconnected with lifestyle roles. Second, journalists acted as ‘ responsible’ cultural intermediaries, mediating the worlds of luxury and inequality. Third, journalists expressed a strong role orientation toward providing aspiration, as did audience expectations, indicating a level of congruence. Applying a Bourdieusian framework, we argue that lifestyle journalism allows audiences who live under ‘conditions of scarcity’ and who have been conceptualized as having a ‘taste of necessity’, to perform a ‘ taste of aspiration’. We suggest a need to reconceptualize scholarship’s approach to studying journalistic roles by moving beyond a politics-lifestyle binary, and to more closely examine the role of aspiration in lifestyle journalism.

Highlights

Journalism research has tended to prioritize political journalism as playing the only role in democracy and citizenship, at the expense of considering the societal contribution of softer forms of journalism
Much like journalism scholarship’s North American and European bias, literature on lifestyle journalism has typically focused on consumption cultures in Minority World Countries,1 such as Australia, Denmark, Germany, and the USA (e.g. Fürsich, 2012; Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013; Kristensen and From, 2012; McGaurr, 2012)
Lifestyle journalism literature has focused on production and content, and less on audience expectations and perceptions (Hanusch, 2019), these affect how journalists understand their roles (Donsbach, 2008)

Summary

Introduction

Journalism research has tended to prioritize political journalism as playing the only role in democracy and citizenship, at the expense of considering the societal contribution of softer forms of journalism. The development of consumption cultures globally and societal shifts seen in Western countries toward individualization, detraditionalization, and value change, have led scholars to explore other types of journalism, such as lifestyle journalism more deeply (Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013). Lifestyle journalism literature has focused on production and content, and less on audience expectations and perceptions (Hanusch, 2019), these affect how journalists understand their roles (Donsbach, 2008). To address these gaps, this article explores lifestyle journalists and audiences in South Africa, where inequality is high and the media target specific economic, language, and racial groups (Schieferdecker, 2017). Drawing on interviews with 22 lifestyle journalists and focus groups with 25 audience members from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, we focus on these actors’ role conceptions and expectations, respectively

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