The Digital Revolution and Implications for Journalism - Literature review Example

The Digital Revolution and Implications for Journalism By Student’s Name Course + Code Institution of Affiliation Instructor’s Name Date The Digital Revolution and Implications for Journalism 1. Literature Review 1.1. Decline of Commercial Business Model in Journalism and Public Media In this article, modern day journalism is lacking and the question is “How to save journalism”[Coo10]? This issue does not only concern him but other dailies such as Rocky Mountain News and the Philadelphia Inquirer Implode where it has been a front burner issue. Collectively, their call is to have relaxed restrictions on media ownership to facilitate the merging of newspapers and television stations exemptions without antitrust laws thus facilitating online content availability. This is in response to the makers of public policies’ actions to weaken crucial journalism policies. For this paper, the purpose is to provide further proof of the argument that saving journalism is crucial after the sowing of disastrous seeds in the wake of robust economic times due to misguided model. This business model found the commercial, corporate business model as undermining quality journalism in their actions to gain high profit rates from a highly concentrated market through the use of pressured variable costs to reporters. Such business models are prevalent given the driving force from market fundamentalism where economic success exceeds other things while the media sector evidently became a target. Cooper (2010, p. 2-3) further supports the need to change present journalism conditions through conceptual points, a traditional journalism framework, and definition of media’s roles in the economy and polity, and the causes and metrics of media failure. Through this approach, Cooper [Coo10] hopes that the death of present journalism will be averted through a shift in policies that are required to bring quality journalism back to life in America. In his conceptual framework, Cooper [Coo10] acknowledges journalism as a tool that assists the production of good governance, precisely through monitoring political, social, and economic estates within the society. As a monitoring tool or 4th estate, journalism should demonstrate responsible reporting to itself, its clients and sources, and its audiences while observing the position of a neutral watchdog and never a partisan party in possession of social, political or economic positions thus “…presenting facts instead of advocating them…” [Coo10]. Consequently, quality journalism emerges as deserving public support and in need of public support in both polity and the economy respectively[Coo10] especially due to its devotion to social value beyond its economic value. Besides taking monitoring role or what Plapper [Pla10] refers as watchdog of democracy, the press is obliged with a participatory or facilitative role. In this role, the media is expected to improve public life’s quality while contributing to democracy. The implication here is that press design should be such that it is wide enough to broaden access and enhance active citizenship through participation. In its facilitative role, media the internet period is examined though the 5th estate. However, both the monitoring roles and the participatory roles of medial have been compromised thus unable to form journalism devoted to quality particularly due to present commercial media[Coo10]. Cooper [Coo10] highlights that in addition to externalities and public goods, the current media structural framework contribute to market failure. The failure is due to a vertically and intensely concentrated industry that reduces competition as evident in market fundamentalism since free market forces do not result to optimal welfare [Doy02]. As a failed industry, Cooper (2010, p. 10) reveals media’s failure to satisfy 4th estate’s role as a vibrant monitor; understand journalism population diversity; identify revenue misappropriation; and meet society’s want as resulting from digital disintermediation. In this process, the intermediaries between content creation and content delivery are weakened or removed thus causing media decline. However, the heart of media disintermediation lies on the concentrated commercial model characterized by inefficiency which weakens with digital revolution while facilitating 5th estate’s citizen participation especially for newspapers, book publishing, and music. Although bailing out failing industry may appear to solve the problem, alternative media in the 21st century offers building blocks when provided the right resources thus resulting to the required shift in policies to save the dying journalism. 1.2. Web Analytics and Journalism Tandoc [Tan14], like Cooper [Coo10] supports the fact that digital revolution should be supported in the journalism field not just for news delivery but also for understanding how news users interact with news[Tan14]. Understanding users, has been simplified in the 21st century, through web analytics that allow journalists to learn their audiences through collection and analysis of the footprints left behind by users. Tandoc’s purpose is to evaluate the role of web analytics in changing journalistic norms and routines. Tandoc [Tan14] identifies current media as responsible for gate keeping roles. Here, media is responsible for the selection, editing, scheduling, positioning, planning, repeating, writing, and messaging information to become news. However, news selection as a process requires contribution from various sources including the audience which is a social institution. The drawback pointed out in gatekeeping is that it does not offer a clear mechanism through which potential influences on news construction comes about. Tandoc (2010) also identifies the need to understand the relationship between journalism and other fields through a framework comprising of field, doxa, capital, and habitus. Journalism as a field is seen to struggle to attain transformation or preservation roles both due to its own laws and external laws. However, journalism doxa should prevail through a set of rules that merge through the agents enforcing them. With time, the agents get linked to their field by understanding the rules of the game based on their experience over time. In order to participate within the struggles in the field, journalists are expected to have the right capital or prestige both economically and culturally. With journalists identifying their roles as rational agents understanding the capital required excelling in their field, Tandoc proposes a mechanism of influence resulting from journalistic instability in their accumulated capital. In their search for capital, Tandoc reveals that journalists are susceptible to influences that depend on their habitus and doxa in the field. One mechanism of capital accumulation is the audience who are both news consumers and items sold to advertisers (Tandoc 2014, p. 564). The more journalists identify consumers as a form of capital, the more they identify their resulting response to perceived capital instability. It is this understanding that results to Tandoc’s proposed mechanism of influence using web analytics in journalism gatekeeping. Web analytics introduces the aspect of not ignoring the audience’s feedback especially from new information technologies that offers means of interaction between messages and audiences. Additionally, web analytics offers audience monitoring metrics that guide the decisions of auditors like where to have their stories on the website. Despite the benefits of using web analytics, some journalists remained loyal to traditional journalistic norms promoting Tandoc [Tan14] to re-examine the use of web analytics by journalists, and the factors that affect journalist’s use of web analytics. Tandoc [Tan14] reveals the use of web analytics by journalists as including promotion of access/observation, filtering or selection, editing or processing, distribution, and clarification. The two main factors influencing the use of web analytics by journalists are instability perceptions within the field and the significance of audience. These factors emphasize the need for journalists to modify their norms to accommodate the gradually increasing influence of technology in their field. 2. Critical Reflection The contemporary media landscape is one characterized by benefits on one side and costs on the other thus creating a new media space altogether. First, the commercial mass media was characterized by a business model that caused huge market failure resulting from aspect of market fundamentalism such as societal failure such externalities; structural flaws due to concentration; endemic problems due to conflict of interest; behavioural problems such as misperception of value of civic discourse; and transaction costs due to high costs of distribution. Consequently, the commercial news media has failed to satisfy the needs of the society through its concentration on the size of the population it reaches ignoring the diversity especially due to its low investment in diversity among journalists, lack of investment in diverse activities for journalists coverage, lack of necessary financial resources for journalists to explore the needs of the society, and absence of quality investment in journalism. For the commercial news media, services are left only to the population that advertisers value most and those thought of as potential sources of sales. In this case, the society is served unequally given the economizing the role of journalism. However, digital revolution eliminates the aspect of intermediaries whose role lies between news production and public’s reception of the news. Consequently, the public is guaranteed of information and participation in the production of the information. Digital disintermediation does not only create audiences for the advertisers but also eliminate expensive ways of disseminating through print media such as newspaper, books, and cable systems amongst others. Through digital distribution, target advertising is possible resulting to effective audience aggregating and information distribution hence, the collapse of print media. Given the new space of media landscape, it is clear that news distribution is not just about getting news to massive sizes gatekeeping roles of web analytics offer a crucial way of promoting the future of journalism. Additionally, to News delivery is also about having the audience interact with the message, deliver content, and access data. Technological evolution facilitates such interactions through the use of web analytic. Web analytics facilitates data on online traffic such as access or observation information that editors use to identify trends and seek for ways to repeat stories with significant traffic. Despite getting to huge online traffic, news distribution using digital means is not expensive. Web analytics promotes information selection or filtering that is useful in deciding the right spaces to place information such that information readers from news websites are well distributed thus easily navigating the sites. Today, web analytics assists in the determination of news headlines as well as decisions on accompanying photos, graphics, and videos thus determining the traffic flow. This determination is crucial and influences user participation which determines whether or not the news makes sense based on the comments people make. From this week’s readings, I think that as technology in media converge so does the media spaces and media practices[Mab14]. In this case, the role of news media in a democratic society as a monitoring tool is simply not enough to cover news. This is mostly due to the loss of economic model that supported such roles in the 20th century[Coo10] since the oligopoly was identified as resulting to production of mediocre products with or without excessive profits and little competition[Har03]. However, with the explosion of information technology, oligopoly in journalism will be a thing of the past as news media has to seek for ways of value addition to information resulting to a self-created culture that seeks after consumer attention other than simply delivering information. According to Public Broadcasting Service (2014), current journalism is on the web and is specially meant for the web thus resulting to the disruption of traditional models. Traditional models that involved news delivery now blend news with advertisement, and entertainment thus emphasizing the crucial role of the audience attention for information delivery. Blending result to observable audience trends in terms of web traffic which newsrooms use as a means of revenue generation. Chapman & Nuttall [Cha11] reveal that today, journalism and news production is not just a matter of responding to what a small a well-defined leadership need but also in response to changing patterns of news production and interpretation in terms of technological, social, commercial, and cultural aspects. This is possible through embraced competition that results to diversity given that all consumer needs will be served well[LIS01]. Consequently, journalists are expected to invent ways of moulding and manipulating information to add value to it for public’s attention and result to quality information-driven society[Can14]. Advocating for efficient use of digital revolution in journalism will result to numerous advantages with the most crucial being information accessibility to the general public. It is the availability of information to consumers to that will attract their attention to read, watch or view news then provide their comments. It is also through by embracing digital evolution in mass media that the public will be more likely to transverse numerous forms of media, read or watch news from a website then forward it to a friend. Additionally, the availability of information to the public increases literacy levels as the public is exposed to texts of various levels. The result is convergence culture that involves the cooperation of numerous media industries and shifting consumer behaviours where news is sought from anywhere. Consumer migration is evident in You Tube website that gains enormous migration of audiences and content. For instance, a video gets to You Tube and news broadcasts the story resulting to increased video popularity. Further, audience migration works with news exerts that land on social media blogs and sites where they are viewed by more than the number that watched or read the original broadcast. 3. Research Scope In the face of an information driven environment, media has a crucial role in ensuring that the public has both the right information and an opportunity to provide their feedback. However, in democratic and autocratic governments, the media faces challenges while operating in the new ecosystem that merges traditional and modern journalism concepts. Reference List Coo10: , (Cooper 2010, p. 2), Coo10: , (2010), Coo10: , (Cooper 2010, p. 5), Coo10: , (Cooper 2010, p. 4), Pla10: , (2010), Coo10: , (Cooper 2010, p. 8), Doy02: , (Doyle 2002), Tan14: , (2014), Tan14: , (Tandoc 2014, p. 560-561), Tan14: , (2014, p. 561), Tan14: , (2014, p. 568), Mab14: , (Mabweazara, Mudhai and Whittaker 2014, p. 49), Coo10: , (Cooper 2010), Har03: , (Harper 2003, p. 11-12), Cha11: , (2011), LIS01: , (LI and Chin-Chin 2001, p. 106), Can14: , (Canadian Security Intelligence Services 2014), Read More

Besides taking monitoring role or what Plapper [Pla10] refers as watchdog of democracy, the press is obliged with a participatory or facilitative role. In this role, the media is expected to improve public life’s quality while contributing to democracy. The implication here is that press design should be such that it is wide enough to broaden access and enhance active citizenship through participation. In its facilitative role, media the internet period is examined though the 5th estate. However, both the monitoring roles and the participatory roles of medial have been compromised thus unable to form journalism devoted to quality particularly due to present commercial media[Coo10].

Cooper [Coo10] highlights that in addition to externalities and public goods, the current media structural framework contribute to market failure. The failure is due to a vertically and intensely concentrated industry that reduces competition as evident in market fundamentalism since free market forces do not result to optimal welfare [Doy02]. As a failed industry, Cooper (2010, p. 10) reveals media’s failure to satisfy 4th estate’s role as a vibrant monitor; understand journalism population diversity; identify revenue misappropriation; and meet society’s want as resulting from digital disintermediation.

In this process, the intermediaries between content creation and content delivery are weakened or removed thus causing media decline. However, the heart of media disintermediation lies on the concentrated commercial model characterized by inefficiency which weakens with digital revolution while facilitating 5th estate’s citizen participation especially for newspapers, book publishing, and music. Although bailing out failing industry may appear to solve the problem, alternative media in the 21st century offers building blocks when provided the right resources thus resulting to the required shift in policies to save the dying journalism. 1.2.

Web Analytics and Journalism Tandoc [Tan14], like Cooper [Coo10] supports the fact that digital revolution should be supported in the journalism field not just for news delivery but also for understanding how news users interact with news[Tan14]. Understanding users, has been simplified in the 21st century, through web analytics that allow journalists to learn their audiences through collection and analysis of the footprints left behind by users. Tandoc’s purpose is to evaluate the role of web analytics in changing journalistic norms and routines.

Tandoc [Tan14] identifies current media as responsible for gate keeping roles. Here, media is responsible for the selection, editing, scheduling, positioning, planning, repeating, writing, and messaging information to become news. However, news selection as a process requires contribution from various sources including the audience which is a social institution. The drawback pointed out in gatekeeping is that it does not offer a clear mechanism through which potential influences on news construction comes about.

Tandoc (2010) also identifies the need to understand the relationship between journalism and other fields through a framework comprising of field, doxa, capital, and habitus. Journalism as a field is seen to struggle to attain transformation or preservation roles both due to its own laws and external laws. However, journalism doxa should prevail through a set of rules that merge through the agents enforcing them. With time, the agents get linked to their field by understanding the rules of the game based on their experience over time.

In order to participate within the struggles in the field, journalists are expected to have the right capital or prestige both economically and culturally. With journalists identifying their roles as rational agents understanding the capital required excelling in their field, Tandoc proposes a mechanism of influence resulting from journalistic instability in their accumulated capital. In their search for capital, Tandoc reveals that journalists are susceptible to influences that depend on their habitus and doxa in the field.

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