Change in Journalism

Change in Journalism

Semester 2, 2015

Final essay: The affordances of digital and social media platforms, in particular, have contributed to substantial transformation of both the image and practice of journalism in ways that serve to re-define inherited boundaries of both what journalism is and who can claim to be a journalist.  Using examples, critically consider this development, and its possible significance for journalism today and in the future.

These days, in the fast changing digital world, there are more and more people using computers, smart phones to update information. Especially, with the appearance of the internet and social media platforms, information can be easily accessible to all people. This allows everybody to be aware of what is happening in the world with only a few seconds. As communication being a vital role in any societies, the way in which information spread must be consistent with the new demand of high speed and being accessible. Therefore, print based journalism in the past has to change not only because of the audience but also its survival. Many surveys have shown that print newspapers sales have been dramatically decreased over the past decades and at the same time the number of readers has declined significantly. For example between 2007 and 2009 the US newspaper market declined by 30 per cent and 166 newspapers were forced to close or stop printing on paper (Simon 2012). Another example would be Australia where nearly 1500 journalists were retrenched in 2012 due to the restructure of business model (Hanusch 2015). Furthermore, due to the fast change of journalism environment, technological advancements have redefined the relationship between new media and the public and reshaped most aspects of communication system. What makes digital and social media of particular interest to journalism is how it contributed to substantial transformation of both the image and practice of journalism. In this essay I will discuss how digital advancement influence on journalism. In order to give a better understanding of what the impact of technology is, I will first come up with some features of new media.

According to Deuze & Bardoel (2001), there are four features of digital media influencing on the practice of journalism. First, new media is a platform in which audiences can interact with one another and with journalist as well. This will allow consumers involving in news production process. As soon as reading news, they can participate in the discussion to raise questions and voice opinions about the issue. Second, new media allow news consumers to customize content. This mean that they can choose what content they want to be exposed. Therefore, they can control their news consumption and have their own archives for their own news. For example, many Internet news consumers obtain financial news personalized for their own investment portfolios, sports information targeted to their favorite teams, health news related to their own health situations, and weather for their home communities (Pavlik 2001). The feature of customization provides audiences a perspective of the world that is more contextualized, textured and multidimensional than stories on traditional media. Third, new media has a function of hypertextuality. With hyperlinks, journalists can add extra information to the main story in order to give audiences better understanding about the issue. They can link the main story with its background information, context, pictures and relevant materials. Last, new media performs its function of convergence. This means that news can be published on different media platforms together with images and videos. This also implies that journalists today must be able to work audiovisual materials and know how to use images and sound to illustrate stories.