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(OBS*) International Seminar: Broadband Media Lisboa , September 23, 2009. David Domingo , UniversitatRoviraiVirgili (Tarragona, Catalonia). Innovation and inertia in online newsrooms: challenges for the adoption of interactivity and multimedia. Assessing innovation in online newsrooms.
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(OBS*) International Seminar: Broadband Media Lisboa, September 23, 2009 David Domingo, UniversitatRoviraiVirgili (Tarragona, Catalonia) Innovation and inertia in online newsrooms: challenges for the adoption of interactivity and multimedia
Assessing innovation in online newsrooms • Reflections based on: • Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production (2008, Peter Lang). Edited with Chris Paterson. • Audience Participation in Online Newspapers: Guarding Open Gates (Forthcoming, Routledge). With Jane Singer, Thorsten Quandt, Alfred Hermida, Ari Heinonen, Steve Paulussen, Marina Vujnovic, Zvi Reich.
A constructivist approach • Technology is adopted in specific contexts • Adoption is historically embedded • Decision-making is an open, dynamic process • => Newsrooms have agency • => No room for technological determinism
Actor-Network Theory • Network of actors • Mapping power relationships • Defining positions, conflicting definitions • Process of translations • Obligatory points of passage • Black boxes
Online journalism as work-in-progress • Strong mythical discourses • Buzzwords change, myths stay • Technological innovations push • Media follow the trail • Mimicry effect • Decisions still made locally • Ethnography to assess how myths are translated into real practices
The rule of immediacy • Immediacy as the key Internet myth for journalism • Consequences: • Focus on breaking news • Dependency on news wire copy • Lack of resources for other activities
Multimedia in online newsrooms • External factors: • Broadband development • Boom of user-generated video • Internal processes: • Different solutions in different contexts • Cases: 3 Catalan newsrooms • Public broadcaster • Newspaper • Online-only news site
Interactivity: motivations • International comparative study of journalist attitudes towards audience participation • Motivations: • Inevitable: audience wants to participate • Economic: fostering audience loyalty • Journalistic: new sources • Democratic: public debate
Interactivity: practices • Separate team to manage audience participation • Protecting journalists role and routines • Different solutions possible:
Conclusions • Journalism seems to be conservative regarding innovation • Professional culture and identity strongly shape technologies • Materiality matters: decisions taken affect the work of journalists • Economic context matters: resources, revenue strategies
Room for action • Innovation is possible: nothing is pre-determined • Knowing factors involved in the process empowers newsrooms • There are few explicit structures for innovation management
Feedback welcomed! david.domingo@urv.cat www.dutopia.net twitter: @dutopia