We explain what digital journalism is and what its characteristics are. We also explain its history, its impact on society and some examples.
Digital journalism uses the Internet to research, produce and distribute its content.
What is digital journalism?
Digital journalism, also called cyber journalism or web journalism, is a modality of journalistic practice that uses the Internet to investigate, produce and disseminate its contentIt is a set of practices, tools and digital environments that can be used for news and educational purposes, making the most of new computer and cyber technologies.
At its core, however, digital media is not very different from its previous variants, such as print media, radio and television. Simply put, It constitutes a meeting point between journalism and the digital world and 2.0 dynamics.Thus, it is possible to read articles and reports on news portals, listen to the radio and watch television via the Internet, taking advantage of the potential of hyperlinks and multimedia formats.
Still, digital journalism differs from the common activity of users of blogs, social networks and other communication platforms available online in that operates according to traditional journalistic methodologiessuch as confirming sources and writing from an objective point of view. For this reason, it is usually published on websites considered legitimate and reliable.
Characteristics of digital journalism
Digital journalism takes advantage of the different resources available on the Internet.
Broadly speaking, digital journalism is characterized by the following:
- It is informativeIt is dedicated to generating news, opinion or dissemination content in the same terms as traditional journalism, but it does so through the Internet.
- It is multimedia. Take advantage of the various formats and resources available on the Internet, such as written text, video, audio, infographics and animations, according to your needs.
- It is hypertextualIt relies heavily on hypertext, that is, on the possibility of “jumping” from one content to another (previous and complementary news, for example), through a network of relationships and readings that complement each other. It thus proposes a non-linear reading of information.
- It is interactive. It offers readers a certain degree of interactivity, meaning that the Internet user chooses which news to view and which not, which videos to play and for how long, and manages their exposure time to the news as they wish. In addition, in many cases, the Internet user can share and comment directly on the content.
- It is innovative. It promotes a new profile of journalist, determined by the fast-paced dynamics of the digital world. This requires the use of digital tools and social networks, specific knowledge of society 2.0 and familiarity with digital communications software and image and audio editing, among others.
- It is massive and immediateIts reach can be much more massive, faster and more agile than that of traditional news media. In this sense, it aims to make its content go viral.
History of digital journalism
The beginnings of digital journalism date back to the 1990swhen the Internet made its entrance into the world’s workplaces and homes. Many of the major media outlets, such as newspapers and television networks, immediately opened their web portals to offer their readers additional material. The first to do so was the American newspaper The Chicago Tribuneusing the then popular America On Line (AOL) platform.
As the Internet-using public grew and became more established in the following decades, so did web journalism. It became a necessity of the professionThe opportunities offered by digital advertising, the speed of the flow of information and the participation of readers themselves in the dissemination of news through forums, blogs and social networks changed the way in which journalistic texts are constructed.
Likewise, with the incorporation of smart cell phones in the first decades of the 21st century, digital journalism was forced to reformulate its methods to adapt to shorter reading periods and faster current demands.This pressure from consumers, coupled with generational change, was one of the most important forces behind the emergence of digital journalism as a completely independent field of journalism in the early 2020s.
Impact of digital journalism
Digital journalism proposes a new model for meeting its audience.
The rise of digital journalism has put traditional media outlets in check through much more attractive models of meeting their audiences. Digital media are cheaper and less perishable; they have a greater reach and greater complexity than traditional media. However, they are susceptible to misinformation and the desire for immediacy, features of the information society that endanger journalistic seriousness.
One of the great dangers of digital journalism is the tendency to replicate information with little, uneven or sometimes no rigorous verification of its veracityThis is a consequence of the lack of institutional regulation and the absence of an ethical code of information in digital media.
Even so, digital journalism has not yet implied the extinction or replacement of traditional ways of reportingRather, it is a somewhat disorderly coexistence between the traditional model and the new digital model.
Examples of digital journalism
Some examples of digital journalism portals and articles are the following:
- 20Minutos.es (Spain). “4 words about the Wall”.
- Excelsior (Mexico). “Alert! There are 30 active forest fires in Guerrero; 4 in Chilpancingo.”
- ElDiario.es (Spain). “The epidemic of poverty in Greece”.
- El País (Spain). “The ‘Gürtel case’, which is the PP case”.
- Univision (United States). “When life depends on a transplant.”
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References
- Garcia Jimenez, A. (2008). Approaches to digital journalismDykinson Bookstore-Publisher.
- Irigaray, F., Ceballos, D. & Manna, M. (Eds.). (2011). Digital journalism: convergences, networks and mobiles. Labor of Books Editor.
- Saint Bonaventure University Online. (2023). What is digital journalism? https://online.sbu.edu/