Concept
news as a form of knowledge
Park’s 1940 idea: on the continuum formed by James’s acquaintance-with and knowledge-about, news is a distinctive kind of knowledge, transient and talk-provoking.
Robert Park’s “News as a Form of Knowledge” (1940) treats news as a form of knowledge. Park draws on William James’s distinction: “knowledge about” is formal knowledge, while “acquaintance with” is unsystematic, intuitive knowledge close to common sense. The two form a continuum, and news has a distinctive place on it with its transient, quickly ageing character.
For Park, news is something that “will make people talk”, is characteristically limited to events that bring sudden and decisive change, and has the function of orienting people and society in an actual world. How far news circulates determines how far the members of a society take part in common political action. Park’s earlier writings (1915, 1922, 1923) already treat news as a product of city life and of the immigrant’s need to adjust. The concept helps to read news not as an “effect” but as a “bond”.
Example
A neighbour says in the morning, “lightning hit the transformer, no electricity until evening”: knowledge to be talked about today, stale tomorrow, orienting people in the world they are in (a hypothetical example).