© Media Watch 10 (3) 713-722, 2019
ISSN 0976-0911 E-ISSN 2249-8818
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2019/v10i3/49684
Digital Journalism:
Theorizing on Present Times
Soumya Dutta1 & Saswati Gangopadhyay2
1Loreto College (Kolkata), India
2University of Burdwan,
India
A lot of change is
happening in the world of journalism with the arrival of digital technology.
The journalist in this changed scenario is expected to explore multimedia
options. There is also a paradigm shift with readers and viewers now becoming a
part of the news making process. Write-ups’, pictures, and
audiovisual content are increasingly being published by the citizen on
websites, blogs, video sharing platforms, and social media. While this
has been hailed as democratic and down to top approach, there is a question of
credibility. Theories of digital media which have influenced digital journalism
have talked about immediacy, interactivity, multimodality, convergence, the
broader economic and social factors, the formation of separate networks or
reformation of existing networks, a virtual shared platform for communication,
actor-network and plurality. However, the question of credibility and the
spread of fake news online have raised some new questions. This paper will try
to analyze the nature of digital journalism, the various theories which have
been applied to explain digital journalism and explain why a new approach is
needed in the present scenario.
Keywords: Digital
journalism, participative communication, new media, digital media theory, credibility
Digital technology
has revolutionized the way news is gathered,
compiled, and disseminated. Digital journalism has opened up new possibilities
and has thrown up new challenges. Digital journalism is considered to be the
future as more and more newspapers in print are facing lesser circulation.
Globally, newspapers in print are on a decline except for countries like India,
where there is robust growth. The driving force behind digital journalism has
been a plurality of voices. Digital journalism gave hope of an alternative
media platform where news can be explored from all possible angles. The
emergence of digital journalism also signaled the gradual change in the role of
the journalist. Now anyone can report on events around them or take pictures
and publish them on various digital platforms without needing a gatekeeper to
select or reject their content. Journalism is not now limited to journalism
professionals; amateurs are also taking up journalistic roles. However, while
digital media was expected to be more democratic by creating space for plural
voices, in reality, it has led to consolidation and vertical integration. The
major dominant players are fast filling up the spaces leaving little space for
different ideas to thrive.
The participative nature of digital journalism was a paradigm shift.
Options opened for directly getting feedback from the audience on a report.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and weblogs have
provided the opportunity to the journalists to share news on their accounts and
understand the audience response. Stovall (2011) observes that the web is an ideal news medium because of its ability to handle
information in most of the formats of traditional media like texts, pictures,
graphs, audio, and video. The web provides enhanced capacity. The reporter has
the liberty of using as many words and as much time to tell the story. A photographer
has the option of posting ten pictures of an event. The web provides the option
to include with the reports full text of the speech that they cover, audio of
the source and video of the scenes where the story unfolds. The medium offers
more flexibility. Information can be shared in the form of words, pictures,
audio, video, and graphics. The web can disseminate information in no time and
does so with greater variety, expansion, depth, and context. The permanence of
the medium also puts it into a different league altogether. Properly archived
and maintained data on the web could exist far more than any other tangible
medium in the present times.
Kasturi (2018) observes that contrary to the myth, the
growth of digital medium doesn’t reduce the importance of the journalist. The
responsibility of a trained journalist is even more in the online age because
they have the expertise to separate the important from the redundant and facts
from the rumors that dangerously spread over the online platform. The fundamental
skills required also remain the same. The digital medium can only pose a threat
to traditional news organizations if they choose not to change with the
changing times. Traditional organizations can view the online platform as an
opportunity to develop and share content to reach out to a previously untapped
audience. A different market is emerging with the
revival in readership of long-form journalism through online-only platforms
like the ‘Big Roundtable.’ The digital platform is providing news organizations to expand their
reach. Indian Express is reaching more readers as one of the country’s fastest-growing
digital news companies. Journalists can engage readers, and viewers never like
before through chats and conversations, stories on Facebook,
Twitter, and Google Hangout. Online links posted on the stories enable readers
to verify the source.
Banerji (2018) observes that Twitter is being used by
governments, politicians, news agencies, media houses, and journalists
themselves to inform people. One media house has made it mandatory for
journalists working for the journal to open Twitter accounts and tweet all
news-related information from that platform. Journalists’ increments are linked
to the amount of news they share on WhatsApp groups.
The power of Twitter as an effective mode of communication capable enough to
shake governments was witnessed in 2011 with the rise of the Arab spring.
Several news channels in India regularly feature on their screens tweet by
well-known people. Newspapers cover stories based on reactions from people on Twitter.
Politicians are effectively using Twitter to make their presence felt among the
voters. The tweets are a rich source of information for the journalists to
understand their recent ideas on issues. However, stories cannot depend solely
on Twitter, and facts need to be differentiated from rumor. The wider reality
of the world, which is outside the realm of Twitter, needs
to be considered by journalists.
Social media has democratized interactions, and the journalist is no
longer safe in the ivory tower of his or her byline away from the people who
read or watch the media. Responses from the readers are immediate and at times,
hard-hitting. According to Valecha (2018), media houses are tapping on the
opportunities available online by securing their place in the social media and
digital technology spaces through mobile apps, web platforms like Hotstar and Sony Liv. The growth
of digital technology has resulted in TV viewing from social activity to solo
activity. Specialized content and short duration format content compatible with
the mobile phone is expected to rise. The youth in metropolitan cities are
going digital. This has necessitated newspapers to go digital, ‘Phygital,’ an extension of the physical newspaper into the
digital space. They are launching web portals and mobile apps and are
partnering with social media options and third-party news providers like Flipboard and Dailyhunt. While TV
and print have their ecosystems in the digital age, they are competing with
tech companies, social media, telecom companies, mobile apps, and others for
the same set of audience and attention. Content is set to rule in the coming
days subject to its compliance with various media options.
New
Media and Digital Journalism
Digital journalism is rooted in
developments in the realm of new media. Lister (2003) observes that the
‘newness’ that has been attributed to new media is derived from the modernist
belief in social progress as delivered by technology. New media appears to open
up new creative and communication horizons. Calling a range of developments as
new is part of a powerful ideological movement and a narrative about progress
in Western societies. According to Manovich (2001), the
cultural language of new media is derived from different ways of seeing and
communicating, which is drawn from the prevalence of cinema in the twentieth
century. The digital basis of new media requires a new language of computer
code. The new media object can be described mathematically and is subject to
algorithmic manipulation. Media becomes programmable.
Bolter and Grusin (1999) observe that the presence of immediacy and hypermediacy in new media refashions all previous media
forms. Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant & Kelly
(2009) opine that the term new media came into being to capture a sense of
change from the 1980s when the world of media and communications began to look
quite different. New media is associated with the following social, economic,
and cultural change. A shift from modernity to postmodernity,
intensifying process of globalization, a replacement of an industrial age of
manufacturing by a post-industrial information age and considering
multiple aspects of established and centralized geopolitical orders. New
media has useful inclusiveness. It refers to new textual experiences, new ways
of representing the world, new relations between subjects and media
technologies, new experiences of the relationship between embodiment, identity,
and community, new conceptions of the biological body’s relationship to
technological media and new patterns of organization and production. New media
is characterized by computer-mediated communications, new ways of distributing
and consuming virtual realities, and a whole range of
transformations and dislocations of established media. Some of the major
characteristics of new media include digital, interactive, hypertextual,
virtual, networked, and simulated. Digital media is characterized by the
transformation of input data, light and sound waves into numbers. Once the
numeral coding is completed, the input data in digital media production can be
subjected to the mathematical processes of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division through algorithms available within the software.
Digital doesn’t mean conversion of physical data into binary information. It
only signifies assigning numeral values to the phenomenon. The principle and practice of digitization become important
because it helps in understanding how media texts are dematerialized, how they
can be separated from their physical forms like a photographic print, book, a roll
of film, etc. It also helps in understanding how data can be compressed into
very small spaces, accessed at very high speeds in nonlinear ways and
manipulated in easier ways than analog forms.
According to Friend and
Singer (2007) internet has threatened the hegemony of established media by
creating new storytelling possibilities and ushering in a degree of practical
reality to the ideal of journalism as a public conversation. The Internet has
empowered anyone with a computer to create a media outlet with the possibility
of reaching to an audience of millions. The web formats interactive capability
has been the driving force of the new media landscape. It has to lead to passionate,
public conversations among diverse voices and perspectives and has initiated
the return of point-of-view style of news writing. In web-based journalism,
many are taking greater advantage of technologies capabilities. With the growth
in the audience for online news, advertising revenue has picked up. People are
getting more and more news online, and the outlets are not always from
traditional news providers. By 2005 Yahoo! News equaled and in some months
overtook news leaders CNN.com and MSNBC.com as the most used online news site.
The growing increase of broadband access has helped in news organizations
emphasizing more on multi-media news. The essence of the newsroom is changing,
and journalistic culture is evolving to adapt to new technologies, accommodate
new organizational structures and user expectations of input into the
news-making process.
Keong (2017) studied three
news portals in Malaysia and observed that there is an emphasis given to
objective journalism. The politicization of objective journalism in Malaysia
and the attempt to undermine it points towards the importance of objective
journalism and its vital role in ensuring freedom and a democratic environment.
The news portals have shown that mainstream media needs to take a serious look
at objective journalism. In the digital age, new ways can be explored to
enhance objective journalism.
Ziani, Elareshi
& Alrashid (2017) based their study on an online
survey conducted by a group of academic staff targeting users of the Open Media
Library (OML) group page on Facebook. The results
showed that the Arab world had used social media sites like Facebook
and Twitter differently. The accessibility of the internet to the users during
their efforts and locations has an important role. A deeper understanding of
the power of social networks and the use of the platform is needed. They
conclude that social media has become an integral part of those using Facebook in the Arab world. Facebook
is used for communication with friends and family. Social media has also
provided users a virtual world which has provided an avenue to overcome
different social and cultural barriers. This has been beneficial for Arab women
by helping them to be engaged in different activities.
Pandey (2019) while discussing
the digital turn in media and communication studies, observed that in the
digitally networked society, everything can be considered a part of the
communicative process. A singular media logic cannot
define digital media. Human-technology interactions are defining a multiplicity
of constructions in place of a singular construction of reality. In present
times it is hard to imagine social life without digital technology.
Lingden (2017) observed that
research on explicit forms of bottom-up digital activism in various forms like
uprisings, revolutions and protests has revealed that digital tools and
platforms can be used successfully to challenge, provoke and overthrow existing
power structures. Internet and social media can create a network of resistance.
Digital media has challenged traditional forms of political representation. The
various movements that emerged around 2010 as the Arab Spring, Indignados anti-austerity movement in Spain and worldwide
Occupy protests against social and economic equality have few things in common.
They ignore political parties; distrust the mainstream news media, do not
recognize traditional forms of leadership, and reject formal organizations.
Many of these movements started in social media.
According to Atton (2008), alternative media forms are considered to be
more democratic, and people need not be professionals to contribute. There is
the belief that alternative media projects lead to denaturalization of the
media. Those who were only audiences of media can now become producers of the
media. There is participation in media production and social inclusiveness.
This, which Atton feels is the celebration approach
to alternative media, claims that the political value of alternative media can
be demonstrated by the organizational methods, political parties, self-management,
and participation. However, he opines that the celebration approach is a
problem because it does not throw light on how alternative media connects to
other aspects of social and cultural life. The independence of alternative
media does not guarantee exposure or circulation. The value and purpose of
independence become crucial when alternative media ventures into a public
sphere which is beyond the micro public in their immediate environment.
In contrast to mainstream
media making use of members of elite groups as sources, alternative media
incorporates a wide range of voices. The representation of ordinary people in
alternative journalism provides a space for voices that have equal right to be
heard as the elite groups. There are new ways to look at journalism with the
proliferation of alternative media. However, he thinks that it will be
inadequate to consider that alternative media is free from the influence of
existing practices.
Conboy (2013) feels that
digitally driven technological shifts in journalism is occurring within a
growing field of critical inquiry. Development of technologies like lightweight
digital cameras, smart mobile phones, and portable computers had a two-way
influence on journalism. Anyone who possesses these technologies can be a
potential reporter from the sight of an incident, and that can be relayed to a
worldwide audience online. Professional, institutional journalism is under
pressure to match the speed and immediacy of such coverage. These two counter
forces set up a claim between amateurism and professionalism. The reports
covered and filed by amateurs in platforms like blogs raise a question about
their factual correctness and adherence to legal and ethical constraints. There
are more professional bindings in institutional journalism, which is lacking in
amateur journalism. It is accepted though that journalism is no more the same
with the coming of new technologies. They have the potential to redefine the
way journalism is done in a democratic setup.
The growth of the digital
medium has posed new challenges to the journalists. While discussing on the
skills required in the changing scenario Wenger & Potter (2015) observe
that news organizations are looking for journalists who have a thorough
understanding of the need to provide consumers more ways to access information
and more control over the way they do it. Associated Press (AP) has a 1-2-3-4
filing system where first comes the headline which can be shared on Twitter,
then a brief synopsis of the story, then the complete story and finally an
analytical piece. The multimedia journalism demands that style is changed
according to the various forms. There are new words coined now like “podcast”
thousands of which are now available online. Twitter quickly came up as a
newsgathering and dissemination tool. In online medium internet, user can
access the information at their convenient time. Innovation needs to be
incorporated in the way text is shared, and broadcast is done. Ward (2002)
while pointing out the distinctive nature of online journalism observes that
are distinct ways employed for online researching and reporting. The online
journalist has a powerful new tool in the form of analysis of a large amount of
data for trends, discrepancies, and other results. As a publishing medium
online can open new ways of dissemination of information and build a dynamic
relationship with the reader. According to Niblock
(2011), the internet has to lead to huge fundamental changes to journalism.
Rapid development in technology is leading to changes in the way news is
gathered and disseminated. The high-speed journey is a new development for the
profession. The future of journalism is multi-platformed
and multi-skilled. The internet is at the center stage of newsrooms of
worldwide broadcasters and newspapers and journalists have to devise new ways
to work.
Journalists working for
local and regional newspapers have their copy published to the web, and then
the copy is printed in the newspaper. Cost effective nature of websites and its
popularity among netizens provide an opportunity to
major news brands as they have an established loyal audience. Online journalism
is about versatility and interactivity. There are news aggregators like Google
News, which provide an index of stories which are collated from innumerable
sites worldwide. Weblogs have transformed the news consumer to the news
producer. Blogs add openness and critical debate to reporting but also lead to
unverified information in the public domain. They have blurred the lines
between journalism and activism.
There are micro-blogs
like Twitter, which many journalists feel have huge potential for discovering
breaking stories and carrying out interviews. They also have huge potential for
instant polls and as a potential source to develop a story. Informed and
experienced journalistic judgment can weed out the ethical and legal concerns.
Podcasts which publish and broadcast audio online opens up possibilities for
citizen journalists to intervene in journalistic discourse. Hyperlocality
is an interesting development that has happened with online digital media. It
refers to news coverage of community-level events which normally mainstream
media ignore unless they have mass appeal. Hyperlocality
is significant because media scholars have raised concerns about globalized
media corporations threatening local coverage. However, while many are hailing
these developments as the driving force behind democratization of the top-down
news delivery system, others think that journalistic standards are compromised.
There are concerns regarding untrained citizens turning into reporters.
The positive future of
digital journalism can be ensured if journalists and citizens can unravel the
real picture under the veil of technological determinism. The future of
journalism appears to be a mix of global and local and bottom-up in contrast to
the dominant top-down structure prevailing over traditional mass communication.
There is the possibility of having greater checks and balances on mainstream
sources. News is available free over the digital platform, which is going to
have an impact on traditional media. Good journalism has been the priority and
will continue to be the priority. Pavlik (2001) thinks
that networked new media has the potential to transform journalism because it
is interactive, on-demand, and customizable. There is the scope to build
communities based on shared interests and offer greater reportorial depth,
texture, and content, which is not to be found in other mediums. Ihlstrom (2005) states that e-newspaper will replace the
printed version in the long run.
Theories of Digital Media Impacting Digital Journalism
According to Siapera and Veglis (2012), it is
important to understand the sociology of journalism, which views the process as
a product of distinct historical, social, cultural, political, and economic
circumstances. Online journalism has developed its routines, norms, and
practices which shape online news. This includes immediacy, interactivity, and
multimodality. Work on convergence can
be considered under this theoretical framework. Grounded theory, rarely
mentioned in online journalism research has a specific approach to data and
analysis. This theory does not begin with any assumptions and seeks to understand
online journalism inductively by collecting and analyzing data. The third
strand of theoretical work focuses on new technologies and the relationship
between technology, society, and journalism. Since online journalism is
dependent on technology, it is important to explore the relationship between
technology and society to understand the development of online journalism.
Diffusion of Innovation approach of Rogers is considered to be the best-known
approach of this theory. A third perspective on the relationship between
technology and society is associated with Wiebe Bijker. Applied to online journalism and its relationship
to technology, this approach holds that its adoption and the way it is executed
are dependent on broader economic and social factors to narrower organizational
and professional factors. The present understanding of online digital
journalism has been greatly enhanced by these three theoretical perspectives.
One
of the widely referred theories while discussing digital media is Manuel Castells ‘A Network Theory of Power’. He observes that one
of the central characteristics of the network society is that the dynamics of
domination and the resistance of domination are dependent on network formation
and network strategies of offense and defense. This is done either by forming
separate networks or by reforming existing networks. He concludes that
communication networks are the fundamental networks of power making in society.
Power is concentrated in the hands of few global, transnational media conglomerates,
which also simultaneously generate resistance. Schroeder (2018) feels that the
ideas propounded by Castells are flawed. There are
countries like China, where party-state controls media and Sweden, where there
is a dominance of public service media. Such systems limit the power of
capitalist media conglomerates. National media systems and nation-states
largely decide how media operates and the bounds of the political discourse of
resistance.
Hjarvard (2008), while talking about the concept
of mediatization, states that media not only plays a
role of their determination but also act as an independent institution and
provide how other social institutions and actors communicate. Apart from media
intervening and influencing the activity of other institutions, it also acts as
the virtual shared platform for communication for the other institutions and
the actors. He concludes that the interplay between mediatization
and globalization leads to complex social and cultural geography where
individual, local, national, and global entities can be linked in new ways. Mediatization, according to him, is a modernization process
where media contributes to disembodying social relations from existing contexts
and re-embedding them according to new social contexts. According to Fidler (1997), in his book Mediamorphosis:
Understanding New Media, future lies in understanding the past. He coined the
term to describe the transformation of communication media in the wake of the complex
interplay of perceived needs, competitive and political pressures, and social
and technological innovations. He draws his theory based on Paul Saffo’s 30-year rule, where Saffo
explains how long it takes for new ideas to be accepted into a culture. In the
initial stages, there is little perceived a need, in the second stage, there is
increased market penetration, and in the final stage acceptance. According to Fidler, there are some principles of
Metamorphosis-coexistence of media forms and their co-evolution, gradual change
from old media forms to new media, propagation of dominant traits in various
media forms, the survival of different media forms in the changing scenario and
why new media needs to be adopted in a widespread manner.
Actor-network
theory (ANT) seeks to capture the complexity of the social world by
understanding the relationship between humans and non-humans. This theory has
its roots in the sociological study of science but incorporates other objects
of study as well as politics, law, technology, and religion. This theory is
closely associated with Bruno Latour. Michel Callon and
John Law are also associated with the origin of this theory. Schroeder (2018)
observes that actor-network theory has also been applied to the internet. This
theory is dominated by the idea that specific local social contexts shape
science and technology. This makes generalization difficult about the role of
media and technology beyond the individual context.His
research into media systems in countries like America, Sweden, India, and China
have provided some insights into how online media works.
Accessing
the use of digital media for political activism in America and Sweden, he
opined that the internet had changed digital activism to some extent. A diverse
media environment leads to more personalized political communication. This also
leads to the possibility of better-coordinated activism. In these two countries,
due to the saturation in the media environment scope of this enhancement has
been marginal. However, new media have aided in an incremental extension of
political communication. The density of political communication between the
political and media elites and the citizen has increased. The social change
resulting out of such communication has been mostly availed by the elite
sections as they have better access to new technologies. The change that has
happened with new media coming into the fray has complemented traditional media
rather than constituting a break with them. New media needs to diversify
political engagement from both sides to initiate a radical break from the
traditional media forms. In Sweden and in United States chances of new digital
media making a difference has been limited as the balance of power between
political elites and citizen is relatively stable. In these countries, digital
media provides the opportunity to issues and groups who have been overlooked by
traditional media. While there is hope about diverse and content- rich media
environment leading to more political participation and informed citizenry the
reverse is also possible. More mediation might not initiate change if the level
of involvement remains the same or it declines.
Media
becoming more responsive to extreme political forces leads to complications.
New media has not been able to extend the agenda much because of limited
attention space and lack of major new social forces. There has been
diversification and differentiation in form and content, but the impact has
been limited. In India and China, there have been interesting findings and
observations. China having a party regime is waking up to the new challenges
being posed by widespread and intense use of the internet by civil society.
There has been a tension between how to enable Chinese citizen to participate
more via digital media and at the same time, how to manage dissent or questions
about the regime’s legitimacy. They are trying to balance between not overtly
curbing public opinion and trying to keep the party’s core interests intact. In
India, strong growth projected for smartphones brings
into consideration the important role of the internet. Civil society is mostly
unconstrained, but strong elites tend to monopolize development towards the
development of businesses and parties. Fragmented pluralism provides space for several
civil society groups to raise their voice against the dominant interests and
corruption. However, in both countries, these civil society pressures include
intolerant populist forces. In India, a pluralist political and media
environment will lead to increased online activism. In China, such development
will be more controlled by an authoritarian regime. In both countries, online
civil society is leading to lively politics. The impediment lies in the regime
in China and the elite-dominated civil society in India. Schroeder concludes that in China and India,
online media will be the main alternative to a media system which is dominated
by deeply entrenched political power.
Conclusion
Digital journalism has
indeed changed the way news is produced and the way it reaches the audience.
It’s no more restricted to writing a report or reporting it live from the spot.
More and more organizations now seek multimedia journalism. A popular twenty
four hour news channel is expected to have a robust presence on the internet as
well. The main essence of journalism remains the same. Factually correct
reports find acceptance and the credibility of a well-established media house
is an added advantage.
The
existing theories of digital media impacting journalism talk about convergence,
participative down to top nature, the grounded theory of inductively
understanding online journalism, diffusion of innovation approach, broader
economic and social factors, network theory of power, mediatization,
metamorphosis, and actor-network. Theories of mass media like agenda setting is
very relevant while discussing digital journalism as well. The plural and
relatively democratic platform of online media can be used by big business
organizations and different groups to set the agenda for the citizen. As agenda
setting is not about reality but the reality filtered and shaped by media,
digital journalism can construct reality and use the interactive space to build
a public narrative. This has its advantages when there is a social change
involved. However, a constructed reality done with a hidden agenda can lead to
a discourse which harms the social fabric. In the agenda setting, media also
concentrates on a few issues and subjects as important. This leads the citizen
to perceive those issues as more important than the rest.
While
the internet provides the opportunity to cover news which is normally ignored
by mainstream media, there is also the possibility of online media
concentrating on a few issues as important. There are viral posts over social
media which are considered important and are taken up by digital journalists as
well. While digital journalism holds the prospect to be interactive and plural,
there is a growing concern of credibility in the wake of fake news spreading
through websites, blogs, and social media. The biggest advantage of digital
media is that the audience can create content and actively take part in the
news making process. This, as it has been felt lately, has dangerous
consequences as well. Fake videos uploaded on youtube,
fake news shared over social media is leading to social tension. This situation
demands a new approach to digital journalism.
Present
theories need to be considered in the wake of impending danger. Governments are
coming up with new methods to control the spread of false information. This is
not the ideal solution because it can be used to control plural voices and to
curb the free flow of information. New theories of digital journalism can help
understand and find out ways and means to analyze the dissemination of misinformation
over the online platform. These theories can give indications for digital
journalism to build up a proper response to its imminent threats in this
changing media scenario.
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Correspondence to: Soumya
Dutta, Department of Journalism & Mass
Communication, Loreto College, 7, Sir William Jones Sarani (formerly
Middleton Row), Kolkata - 700 071, West Bengal, India
Soumya Dutta (Ph.D., University of Burdwan,
2017) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass
Communication, Loreto College, Kolkata, India. His research interests include new
media and transnational television studies.
Saswati Gangopadhyay (Ph.D., University of Calcutta, 2007) is Professor and
Head of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Burdwan,
India. Her research interests include television, digital media, and
representation of women in media.