Browsing by Subject "Online journalism"
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Item Covering the unknown city : citizen journalism and marginalized communities(2008-08) Rutigliano, Louis William; Reese, Stephen D.In recent years groups in several cities have attempted to use online media and digital technology to help the members of marginalized communities cover where they live. These initiatives have the potential to improve mainstream coverage, which relies on official sources and typically portrays these communities as deviant. But despite their relative independence, the influence of the culture of journalism itself could potentially lead these initiatives to use routines and frames that replicate the mainstream’s coverage of the marginalized. This dissertation analyzed four case studies, one based in Austin and three in Chicago, to examine this paradox. It investigated how the schools and nonprofits that maintain these initiatives balance participation with professionalism, and how participants relate to other residents, institutions, and officials within their communities and in other communities. It explored the limits of citizen journalism’s attempts to supplement and improve upon professional journalism. These cases were considered in terms of Bourdieu’s concept of the journalistic field, Castells’ network society, and Habermas’ public sphere. This theoretical framework is concerned with whose voices are heard in public discourse and in the culture overall. As Castells makes clear, access to the Internet and facility with online communication is a requirement for participation in public life, including journalism. But as Bourdieu argues, there are cultural aspects as well to the field of journalism that can limit such participation. Each initiative faced a tradeoff between adhering to traditional journalistic practices and standards and attracting participation from members of a community. A combination of elements of journalism culture (having editors and training), community media culture (advocating for communities, covering ongoing issues alongside events), and digital culture (allowing participants freedom to contribute in multiple ways, interaction) seems the most effective way to improve coverage of marginalized communities. Such a mixture would aid the creation of bonding social capital within a community and bridging social capital across communities, and presents an opportunity for the marginalized to use their cultural capital to gain social capital. Yet this hybrid model of journalism is resisted by the societal factors that influence mainstream journalism.Item How fast is too fast? : examining the impact of speed-driven journalism on news production and audience reception(2014-08) Lee, Angela Min-Chia; Coleman, RenitaNew media technology is altering many aspects of mass communication processes. One of the most profound changes, especially in the newspaper industry, lies in the rise of speed-driven journalism, with growing emphasis on what is new or happening now. With more newspapers adopting this speed-driven news practice, the nature of its impact on journalists and audiences necessitates empirical examination, and this dissertation seeks to contribute to the professional and academic literature from a two-part, mixed method approach. Through interviews with journalists, study 1 sought to understand journalists' view of how speed-driven journalism affects their professional norms, routines and output, and how social media factors into the speed-driven online media landscape. The interviewees were also asked to discuss their view on how speed-driven journalism affects news audiences in terms of news credibility, news use, and paying intent. Based on findings from study 1, an experiment on news audiences was conducted in study 2 to assess the impact of speed-driven journalism on news credibility, future use, paying intent, readability and selective scanning. Key findings from both studies include: (1) Whereas most interviewees in study 1 believed that speed harms news credibility but boosts news use, the experiment in study 2 revealed that speed neither harms news credibility nor promotes future use. (2) Speed-driven journalism has no effect on selective scanning or audiences' paying intent. (3) In terms of readability, news stories presented in the live blog-like format are deemed harder to follow when compared to those presented in the traditional format. This dissertation advances the hierarchy of influence model by uncovering the effect of perceptual disconnect on speed-driven news practices at the social institutions level. That is, journalists are wrong at times in their assessment of how audiences engage with and are affected by new media technology, but nonetheless proceed to produce news and content based upon their mistaken judgment.Item Latin American online journalism : an exploratory Web-based survey for identifying international trends in print-affiliated sites(2004-12) Acosta, Silvina A.; Tremayne, MarkA descriptive analysis of the data from 74 editors and reporters from 62 print-affiliated newspapers sites in Latin America indicate that journalists and print-based sites follow similar broad tendencies observed in different studies inside and outside of the region. The surveyed online editors and reporters -mainly young men with university studies- have a career background in print newspapers, with salaries equals or lower than their print colleagues. They perform weekly activities more related with immediacy than multimedia, and they perceive their primary function as disseminators and interpreters of information. Working in small and integrated newsrooms, online journalists basically interact with their print partner in terms of editing content. Although, advertising is a primary source of revenue, the majority of national, regional and local print-based sites confirm that they depend on the print partner for content and financing their online operations. Furthermore, the online version of papers do not fully take advantage of the Internet technology and capabilities, particularly multimediality and interactivity, or provide too much original new media content.Item Market performance analysis of the online news industry(2007-12) Huang, Jing-rong, 1974-; Sylvie, GeorgeThe online news industry faces a challenge: Whether online news media can produce enough quality content that generates revenue and profit at a level comparable to traditional media. To meet the challenge, this dissertation applied two economic models, the industrial organization (IO) and the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), to locate the determinants of market performance for the online news industry. Together, the determinants derived from both models explained 19 to 35 percent of variance in market performance among the 208 news sites in the study. Separately, IO's industry variables were twice as powerful as RBV's firm variables in explaining news sites' revenue growth, profitability, and relative performance. A post hoc analysis using a news site's traffic as another dependent variable showed that the importance of the industry and firm effects differs substantially across market performance and traffic. A detailed examination suggested that industry effects were powerful in explaining the extent of news sites' market performance, whereas firm effects were influential in explaining news sites' traffic. However, the study argued that generating traffic should not be news sites' ultimate goal but their relay station; otherwise the solvency challenge remains.Item Telling secondhand stories : news aggregation and the production of journalistic knowledge(2015-08) Coddington, Mark Allen; Reese, Stephen D.; Anderson, C W; Bock, Mary A; Lawrence, Regina G; Strover, Sharon LNews aggregation has become one of the most widely practiced forms of newswork, as more news is characterized by information taken from other published sources and displayed in a single abbreviated space. This form of newsgathering has deep roots in journalism history, but creates significant tension with modern journalism's primary newsgathering practice, reporting. Aggregation's reliance on secondhand information challenges journalism's valorization of firsthand evidence-gathering through the reporter's use of observation, interviews, and documents. This dissertation examines the epistemological practices and professional values of news aggregation, exploring how aggregators gather and verify evidence and present it as factual to audiences. It looks at aggregation in relationship to the dominant values and practices of modern professional journalism, particularly those of reporting. The study employs participant observation at three news aggregation operations as well as in-depth interviews with aggregators to understand the practices of news aggregation as well as the epistemological and professional values behind them. I found that aggregation proceeds by gathering textual evidence of the forms of evidence gathered through reporting work, positioning it as a form of second-order newswork built atop the epistemological practices and values of modern journalistic reporting. Aggregators' distance from the evidence on which they base their reports lends them a profound sense of uncertainty, which they attempt to mitigate by using textual means to communicate their epistemological ambivalence to their audiences and by seeking out technologically afforded means to get closer to news evidence. Aggregators' uncertainty extends to their professional identity, where they attempt to improve their marginal professional status by articulating their own ethical values but also by emphasizing their connections to traditional reporting. Narratively speaking, however, their work does not break down traditional journalistic forms, but instead broadens the narrative horizon to conceive of individual news accounts primarily as part of larger story arcs. The study illuminates the fraught relationship between aggregation and reporting, finding that while aggregation is heavily dependent on reporting, it can be developed as a valid, professionally valued form of newswork. Ultimately, both forms of work have a crucial role to play in providing vital, engaging news to the public.Item The transformation of the newsroom : the collaborative dynamics of journalists' work(2008-08) Schmitz Weiss, Amy Christine, 1976-; Sylvie, George; Tremayne, MarkThis study examines online news production through a cross-national comparative ethnography of two newsrooms: The Chicago Tribune in Chicago, Illinois and El Norte in Monterrey, Mexico. The researcher looks specifically at the extent of collaborative group work in the online newsroom. First, the researcher investigates the degree to which online newsrooms operate organizationally as collaborative groups when producing content for the website, as opposed to functioning individualistically when producing content for the website. The second facet examined is the cultural variability (Hofstede, 1980) of collaboration in the two online newsrooms, particularly whether the United States and Mexican online newsrooms support a collectivistic or individualistic and a high-context or low-context culture schema (Hofstede, 1980; Hall 1976). The last facet explored is how the collaborative behavior of the journalists in the two newsrooms supports or interferes with the practice of journalistic principles of verification and comprehensiveness and if this helps to make journalism better. This study found the El Norte newsroom has a collectivistic and high-context communication culture whereas The Chicago Tribune newsroom has an individualistic and low-context communication culture. Both newsrooms support the principles of verification and context in the news that is produced for the Website that helps to make the news accurate and comprehensive. It can be inferred, however, that the collectivistic, high-context communication culture is more supportive of a collaborative work environment that is conducive to making the journalists work together to help make the news accurate and comprehensive for the public. When the news is accurate and comprehensive, the public has better-informed citizens to make decisions in their daily lives as part of a democratic society. This study also has implications for the journalism and business industry as to the benefits of collaborative groupwork on the service or product outcome in an organization.