Abstract
Digital journalism studies have done little in terms of studying longitudinally the interrelationships between emerging technology and convergent news practices. This study addresses that void by using a sensemaking approach to examine how emerging technology was appropriated and enacted in the convergent news activities of newsworkers, and how they made sense of the emerging technologies over two and a half years. Our study analyzes two newsrooms in Singapore: 1) a digital-first legacy newspaper, and 2) an independent digital-only news startup. This article employs the Infotendencias Group’s (2012) analytical framework and its four dimensions of news convergence: i) business, ii) professional, iii) technological, and iv) contents. Additionally, it proposes and employs a fifth dimension: v) audience-centric engagement. The fifth dimension is based on the concept of “measurable journalism” (Carlson, 2018), analyzing how its actors influence the relationship between newsrooms and their audiences. This study builds on two rounds of in-depth interviews conducted from end-2015 to mid-2016, and again in 2018. Our findings show that audience-centric-engagement practices are observed in all four dimensions of convergent news activities of each news organization, and leads to three main conclusions: 1) the growing significance of <em>audience-centric engagement</em>, 2) an emergence of a <em>collaboration culture</em>, and 3) the salience of <em>platform counterbalancing</em>.
Highlights
Emerging technology possesses the potential to impact the situation for news work and the place journalism has in society
To date and to our best knowledge, digital journalism studies have done little in terms of studying and comparing the interrelationships between emerging technology and convergent news practices in both these types of news organizations, and especially so when it comes to research designs with a longitudinal approach towards change and persistence over time
This article contributes to the body of research on emerging technology and news convergence in three distinct ways. It provides an in-depth comparison of how emerging technology is being approached by news workers in two distinct types of news organizations. This goes beyond most studies that focus on LNM, and provides vital insights into the interrelationships between emerging technology and news practices of digital-only’ news startup (DNS)
Summary
Emerging technology possesses the potential to impact the situation for news work and the place journalism has in society. To date and to our best knowledge, digital journalism studies have done little in terms of studying and comparing the interrelationships between emerging technology and convergent news practices in both these types of news organizations, and especially so when it comes to research designs with a longitudinal approach towards change and persistence over time. It provides an in-depth comparison of how emerging technology is being approached by news workers in two distinct types of news organizations This goes beyond most studies that focus on LNM, and provides vital insights into the interrelationships between emerging technology and news practices of DNSs. Secondly, this article presents a fifth form of convergence—audience-centric engagement, which has been developed by drawing on the concept of “measurable journalism” (Carlson, 2018). Conclusions and a discussion of future research close the article
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
