Newsmaker's Tool: 35mm Camera and Journalistic Epistemology

What is it about?

This paper offers a technical and cultural history of the 35mm camera to unpack the rules of knowledge production that integrate devices and technologies into the practice of journalism. Based on Latour's theories, it argues that the 35mm camera emerged amid a fitful professional epistemology, whose conflicts are apparent in the device's uptake across the field of journalism.

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Why is it important?

New technologies and their impact on journalism have been a constant source of analysis, anxiety, and commentary for the past decade. This paper historicizes these concerns to show how journalism's larger cultural and social stability has always integrated the iterative changes devices embody.