Converging practices and discourses

Abstract

The debates on new communication patterns between journalists and their audiences have been coupled with the concept of interactivity, which has become one of the pillar terms in discussions on the future evolution of journalism. By exploring general understanding of interactivity between news editors and organisational circumstances where interactivity as a set of new communication practices is articulated in journalism, this study shifts the attention from the user perspective to occupational ideology, news production culture and the organisation of news production. The aim of this study is to explore to what extent such realities can be identified to Slovenian online news culture that has gone through many changes in recent years. By adopting two ethnographic methods – news website analysis and in-depth interviews with print and online editors – the article offers a case study of the new websites of three prominent Slovenian print media organisations: Delo, Dnevnik and Žurnal. Productivity, efficiency and profitability have pushed traditional journalistic values in Slovenian online media to the margins. When it comes to interactive modes of audience engagement, editors and journalists control online news production. As a consequence, despite various interactive features provided on news websites, news production culture develops with the aim of retaining control over information delivery rather than of creating a new space of dialogue and interactive communication.