Actor‐Network Theory

This entry summarizes the main ontological and epistemological contributions from actor‐network theory (ANT) and how they have been applied to journalism studies. ANT describes the social as a connection between entities that can just be seen as social during the brief period when their associations occur. Those entities, however, are not just humans. ANT considers as social actors (or actants) everyone and everything that transform associations and make other actors do things. Human and nonhuman actants have a symmetrical relevance in associations. Such a concatenation underlines ANT's singular conception of a network. The actor is defined by its network and the network is defined by its actors. By adopting ANT's perspective, the anthropocentric approach to journalism and its aprioristic definitions are denied. Typically, nonhuman actants have been naturalized or overseen in journalism studies. However, technological artifacts are not mere instruments, as they also have agency in the creation of journalism.