• DOI:10.1177/1464884911427797
• Corpus ID: 145169074

Interpretive journalism: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

@article{Salgado2012InterpretiveJA,
  title={Interpretive journalism: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings},
  author={Susana Salgado and Jesper Str{\"o}mb{\"a}ck},
  journal={Journalism},
  year={2012},
  volume={13},
  pages={144 - 161}
}

• Susana Salgado, J. Strömbäck
• Published 1 February 2012
• Business
• Journalism

The overall purpose of this article is to review theory and research on interpretive journalism, one of the key concepts in research on the style and character of news journalism. While it is often claimed that news journalism over recent decades has changed from being predominantly descriptive to becoming increasingly interpretive, our review suggests that there is a lack of systematic research in this area. The literature is furthermore characterized by different conceptualizations and operationalizations of interpretive journalism, as well as by different normative assumptions. Taken together, this suggests not only insufficient conceptual clarity, but also problems related to the comparability and cumulativity of findings. To remedy this, and based on our review of how interpretive journalism has been conceptualized and operationalized, this article suggests how interpretive journalism should be conceptualized and operationalized in order to increase conceptual clarity, comparability across studies, and ultimately research cumulativity.