Digital Journalism

Wiley, Sarah K.

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1893199pmid: N/A

Abstract Computational journalists who use new technological methods in news production face an uncertain legal and policy landscape. Through data collected from eighteen in-depth interviews with journalists and editors, this article analyzes the legal issues surrounding computational journalism and provides insight into how journalists who use such methods negotiate their autonomy and independence. By utilizing a theoretical framework based in practice theory, this article illustrates how computational journalists perceive their autonomy as both constrained and enabled by legal regulation, organizational policy, and professional journalism norms and values.

Koivula, Minna; Villi, Mikko; Sivunen, Anu

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2020.1788962pmid: N/A

Abstract This qualitative study examines creativity and innovation in dispersed, journalistic teams. Specifically, we study the factors enabling and constraining creativity and innovation in journalistic work in technology-mediated settings and explore how technology shapes these phenomena in dispersed journalistic teams. The study is motivated by the media industry’s heightened need for creativity and innovation as well as the changing nature of working life where an increasing amount of work is done via information and communication technologies. By closely examining two journalistic teams and their idea sharing and development processes, this study finds that successful creative work and innovation in dispersed journalistic teams is characterized by intentional idea sharing and development habits and tangible goals as well as a psychologically safe communication climate. Furthermore, team characteristics, such as geographical dispersion and team history also shape creativity and innovation. The findings indicate that communication technology gives journalists more opportunities for sharing ideas, but it also induces uncertainty into the idea development phase. The study extends existing knowledge on remote, technology-mediated work in media organizations and offers valuable practical implications as the findings can encourage new cultures of experimentation and innovation in media organizations.

Schjøtt Hansen, Anna; Hartley, Jannie Møller

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1988861pmid: N/A

Abstract This article presents the results of an in-depth ethnographic study of the development of a personalization algorithm in a large regional news organization in Denmark. Drawing on the concept of sociotechnical assemblage, we argue that in the process the news organization moves from distributing news to the users as segments of consuming collectives to algorithmically constructing individual users as aggregated data points. Second, we show how personalization disassembles the constitution of “the news” as a finite arrangement of articles, replacing one structural organization and routinization of news distribution with an algorithmic and numeric form of organizing the distribution. This disassembling leads to negotiations over loss of control, as editors realize that their publicist and democratic mission is at stake and as they struggle building news values such as timeliness and localness into the algorithm, thus “translating back” the agency from the algorithm to the journalistic staff. Finally, we discuss how the negotiations involved in this concrete case study has far reaching implications for the future of journalism, as this transformation further emphasizes the economic value of news for the individual, while putting the societal value of new journalism and audiences as democratic collectives at stake.

Lor, Zhieh; Oh, Hae Jung; Choi, Jihyang

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2022.2048187pmid: N/A

Abstract This study examines how people tailor their news environment in an era of news abundance. In particular, the researchers attempted to clarify the concept of news tailoring by identifying its structures in the context of digital news consumption. The study’s findings show that news tailoring takes place either through excluding (decreasing the quantity of news to process) or including (lowering the complexity involved in news processing) specific types of news. Specifically, two excluding behaviors (ignoring and filtering) and two including behaviors (customizing and saving) constitute the dimension of news tailoring. The results demonstrate that those who suffer from higher levels of news overload are more likely to adopt two types of exclusionary approaches (ignoring and filtering) and a saving strategy. However, news overload and news customizing were not significantly associated. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Kiesow, Damon; Zhou, Shuhua; Guo, Lei

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1989316pmid: N/A

Abstract Each medium of news delivery has a unique set of attributes that facilitate or impede consumption and learning. In this article, we examine what affordances of digital news sites are present or absent. Based on the perspectives of Gibson’s ecological psychology and his conceptualizations of affordances, as well as Norman’s theorizing of signifiers, we conducted an exploratory study with loyal digital news readers to query their reliance on a number of affordances. We compared those findings to the affordances realized in print and argued that many signals supporting sense-making of the print news are attenuated in digital. Implications are discussed.

Pjesivac, Ivanka; Wojdynski, Bartosz W.; Binford, Matthew T.; Kim, Jihoon (Jay); Herndon, Keith L.

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1897473pmid: N/A

Abstract This study examined the effects of directional cues in immersive journalism by conducting a randomized between-subjects three-condition lab experiment (N = 131) with community participants using three versions of an originally produced 360̊video news story. The study found that the presence of any directional cues in the news story significantly improved participants’ recall of statistics from the story, but did not improve recall of verbal information. The presence of directional cues also impacted participants’ perceptions of message credibility, but did not impact their narrative transportation, attitudes towards the 360̊ video news story, or sense of presence. The study findings are discussed in light of information processing theories.

Robotham, Andrew T.

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1988860pmid: N/A

Abstract Digital first strategies at newspapers raise complex questions of temporality and scheduling. Yet there is a lack of ethnographic accounts for web-to-print newsmaking. While research has long been concerned with time in analog newspaper production, and online news time has mostly been studied through the prism of immediacy, almost nothing is known about dual-platform workflows. What happens to temporalities when web and print production factors and logics collide? Ethnographic research at legacy Swiss daily newspaper Le Temps provides a novel insight. Using a newsmaking reconstruction approach, we conducted an in-depth case study of a single day’s news production with a view to understanding publication times and scheduling. Despite their much-publicized shift to web-to-print production, the impetus for producing stories largely remained subordinate to filling the print pages via backwards scheduling. Tools, meetings and temporal labels defined broad categories of stories that reflected temporal publication objectives and associated production requirements. Many outside forces restricted scheduling options, while publication frequency invariably accelerated late in the day. When publication times were not imposed by external forces, the logics key newsworkers applied to scheduling involved smoothing the output curve, building sequences with variation in form and content, and catering to reader habits and preferences.

Lischka, Juliane A.; Schaetz, Nadja; Oltersdorf, Anna-Lena

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1995456pmid: N/A

Abstract Editorial technologists, such as developers, designers, or data specialists represent novel interdisciplinary computational journalism positions in newsrooms. Drawing on field theory, this explorative study evaluates the character of the professional community of editorial technologists by analyzing their discussions in the peer conference “SRCCON” over four years (2016–2019). Findings indicate that editorial technologists are united by the goal to improve journalism. They critically reflect on their roles and strive to augment their agency in the field through normalizing their computational skills, accumulating social capital, e.g., by building enduring relationships in newsrooms, and gaining symbolic capital. Instead of pressing to enforce technological adoption at all costs, editorial technologists acknowledge their responsibility towards the editorial office, news organizations, audiences, and society at large. These responsibilities form the core of their doxa, which is why we conceive of editorial technologists as a community of accountable engineers of sociotechnical change in journalism. Editorial technologists’ collective professional imagination aims at overcoming the inert processes, hegemonic structures, and restrictive culture of journalism.

Ruotsalainen, Juho; Heinonen, Sirkka; Hujanen, Jaana; Villi, Mikko

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1996252pmid: N/A

Abstract The article investigates the futures of journalism that pioneering entrepreneurial journalists anticipate. This comprises the different imaginaries that journalists employ to make sense of journalism’s present potentials, anticipate its possible futures, and inform their decision-making. By analysing semi-structured interviews with Finnish entrepreneurial journalists, the article identifies a peer-to-peer imaginary on which the interviewees draw and construct to anticipate the potential futures of journalism. In this peer-to-peer imaginary, journalism is produced in journalists’ and audiences’ peer networks of affinity and shared interests. The imaginary promises elevated audience engagement and increased income from audience members. It also emphasises journalistic work that is often seen as ideal: autonomous, multi-skilled, self-expressive and non-routine. Despite these potentially preferred outcomes, the imaginary risks distancing journalism from its public roles and embracing more individualised and market-oriented approaches. The peer-to-peer imaginary can shape a journalism that is increasingly elitist by orienting it towards serving paying audiences, contributing to the fragmentation of public discussion by its focus on niche interests and playing into the power interests of global social media platforms that govern much of the digital media infrastructure. The imaginary, thus, mirrors the prevailing contemporary tendency to employ emancipatory visions of digital technologies for commercial objectives.

Arnold, Carol; Blackman, Shane

doi: 10.1080/21670811.2021.1880330pmid: N/A

Abstract The term ‘hyperlocal’ has become part of internet-era local news media vocabulary. In the UK, it symbolizes a twenty-first century style of community news provision which exists on the margins of the local media ecosystem. Mainstream media has lost traction in the ultra-local space, which has been increasingly populated by independent operators. This article proposes that independent hyperlocal publishing has borrowed elements from the mainstream, particularly the socially cohesive aspects. Applying subcultural theory to the working practices of 27 UK hyperlocal operators revealed that they were adopting a ‘make-do-and-mend’ bricolage culture (Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press) which both retrieved and repurposed aspects of the mainstream (Hebdige, Dick. 2014. “After Shock: From Punk to Pornetration to “Let’s Be Facebook Frendz!!.” In Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Working practices and business practices once prevalent in the parent culture were at the heart of hyperlocal activities. When viewed as a news subculture, hyperlocal operators were found to be resistant to the mainstream parent culture, yet they retrieved and repurposed elements of it in their daily activities.