Digital Media and New Forms of Journalism

Background

The term digital media is used to refer to digitalized (information or other) content that can be transmitted via the internet and/or a computer network. Initially, this content could (potentially) include text, audio, video and/or graphics, although since the early 2000s this variety of elements has been enriched by new forms of journalism emerging from a range of technological trends, particularly the rapid spread of smart technology.

In the early days of Web 2.0, users could locate media content through the internet; however, this content offered the same information, in terms both of quantity and quality, as the traditional media, whereas new content was available only via paid subscription platforms (van der Wurff, 2008). Since then, media have converged at spectacular speed: from smartphones to radios, television sets to tablets, newspapers to computers, the audience increasingly moves between an ever-extending menu of media platforms (Cushion & Sambrook, 2016). The notion of digitally converged media technologies has been the object of widespread attention since the 1990s, initially focused on the convergence of broadcast television and the networked computer, later evolving to include all media entities.

One of the most widely observed consequences of the growth in digital media is audience fragmentation. As more offerings are delivered on broadband networks and more choices are available on-demand, patterns of consumption become more widely distributed (Webster & Ksiazek, 2012). Furthermore, media convergence in the digital age is frequently used both in the academic field and the media industry to denote the ongoing restructuring of media companies as well as to describe developments in media forms, distribution and consumption. The use of the concept has developed from being mainly connected with digitalization in media technology to also include elements of the ongoing process of integration, combination, competition and divergence (Appelgren, 2004).

Although the rapid evolution of digital media raised questions regarding the future survival of traditional media, the latter still constitute a significant part of the media system. The co-existence of traditional and digital media brought forward the notion of hybridity. Hybrid media, developed in the late 1990s, due to the elusive progress of digital technology, rely heavily on interaction and could be described as the result of the deep remixing of previously separate media techniques and languages (Manovich, 2007). Chadwick, Dennis & Smith (2016) describe the hybrid media system as a system built on interactions among older and newer media logics, where logics are defined as bundles of technologies, genres, norms, behaviors and organizational forms. Actors in this system are articulated by complex and ever-evolving relationships based on adaptation, interdependence, concentrations and diffusions of power. Actors create, tap or steer information flows in ways that suit their goals and in ways that modify, enable or disable others’ agency, across and between a range of older and newer media settings (Chadwick, 2013, p.4).