Abstract
Since the mid-1990s, many journalistic initiatives have entered the online environment, either as a continuation of brands already consolidated in conventional formats or as native projects of the new medium. In Spain, the online media scene has just completed its first quarter century of life. This said, the aim of this proposal is to present the evolution of the digital native media in Spain in order to compare their current situation with European success stories. For that purpose, we have conducted a comparative case study between three highlighted Spanish digital native news outlets and three from other European countries. The results show a progressive shift towards a member-funded model, while news outlets try to reduce their dependence on advertising. However, the three European natives seem to be more advanced compared to the Spanish cases as these remain still dependent on advertising revenues to stand upright. Furthermore, two models of participation stand out: the user community and, in particular, the model of collaboration networks. Nevertheless, the study reveals how the analyzed European news outlets are changing the role of the reader through innovative forms of participatory interactivity.
Highlights
Journalism is a communicative activity deeply dependent on technological changes
The results evidence a progressive shift towards a member-funded model, while news outlets try to reduce their dependence on advertising
Two models of participation stand out: the user community, which is observed in news outlets that promote interaction between users through tools and mechanisms of participatory interactivity—e.g., leaving comments and joining meetings with the newsroom—such as in the case of El Confidencial or Tortoise Media, and especially the model of collaboration networks, in which the community is created by enhancing, to a greater or lesser degree, productive interactivity—writing opinion articles, having a personal blog, being an expert source, and so on—as in the case of Eldiario.es, El Español, De Correspondent, and Mediapart
Summary
Journalism is a communicative activity deeply dependent on technological changes. It has adopted, adapted, and developed some of the most important devices and paradigms, where technology plays a main role. Since the 1990s, we have attended to the creation of online-only journalistic brands as well as the birth of digital versions of renowned media outlets that sought to take as much advantage as possible of this new platform. In this context, we have witnessed the creation of novel journalistic formats that rely only on this new platform, as could be the case of multimedia infographics (Cores 2004), while others have experienced a growth in its importance, as it has happened, for instance, with fact-checking (Brandtzaeg et al 2017). Verification, which is a core activity in journalism practice, is experiencing a rise in terms of audience growth and development of particular tools to detect fake news, both of them directly linked to the emergence of online-based technologies
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