Digital Newspaper Research Articles

This study examines the effects of the digitalization process on the local press. The research compares news production and content differences between the print and online editions of local newspapers, revealing the transformations brought about by new media technologies in local journalism. The study was conducted based on the case of Yozgat, a medium-sized city in Anatolia, and illustrates the trends in the digitalization process of local media. The data set consists of the print editions of six newspapers published in central Yozgat between February 1-15, 2024, and news items published on their websites. Both quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods were employed; the category, source, scope, headline characteristics, and use of audiovisual elements in news items were systematically coded. According to the findings, digitalization increases news diversity and the use of audiovisual content, strengthening the local emphasis in headlines. However, the abundance of agency-sourced content limits editorial originality. Significant differences were found between print and digital newspapers in terms of the number of news items, scope, and content. Furthermore, it was observed that local newspapers are unable to take full advantage of technological opportunities and remain limited, particularly in terms of interaction and multimedia use. The research examines the digitalization process in local media through a current case study, contributing to the academic literature on the digital transformation of the Anatolian press and offering recommendations for practical application.

In this article, we historicize the emergence and adoption of electronic newspapers (ePapers) in Uganda’s mediascape over the last three decades. Despite the extensive literature on Uganda’s media and its political economy entanglements, it is puzzling that little attention has been paid to the rise of ePapers—a surprising omission given the growing relevance of digital journalism, especially in the Global South. Adopting a Historical Political Economy perspective, we employ a qualitative approach involving key informant interviews to explore how economic pressures, political constraints, and technological change have steered Uganda’s transition to digital newspapers. We identify key institutional shifts and strategic innovations that have shaped the electronic adaptation of the ePaper model by Uganda’s print media. The findings present a media ecosystem undergoing political economy changes and socio-techno-structural transformations involving neoliberal economic reforms under Structural Adjustment Programmes, a de-regulated policy environment that allowed emergency of private media; the spread of the internet and mobile telephony during the 1990s; the rise of social media and digital accelerations in the 2000s; alternative revenue motivation due to declining print circulations; and the COVID-19 pandemic that hastened digital-first strategies. Beyond this historical narrative, we highlight multiple implications of this transition for press freedom, media sustainability and preservation, and mediated public discourse. We further offer pathways for further research across Africa and beyond

This article aims to analyz the edition of the Primeiro Catecismo da Doutrina Cristã (First Catechism of Christian Doctrine) published by the Vozes publishing house in 1964 which presents significant alterations in relation to editions published in previous decades. It seeks to present evidence regarding the role it played in the formation of the audience to whom it was addressed. Catechisms are religious printed materials that have withstood the test of time with relative stability in relation to the content they convey and have served the purpose of disseminating the doctrines that underpin. Considering that this catechism had high print runs and a large number of editions, this study sought to understand the motivations for the changes undertaken and how, in a critical period of the history of the Catholic Church and Brazilian society itself, the catechism sought to adapt to new demands from the public and the publishing market. The research sources included 13 editions of the catechism published throughout the 20th century; magazines and newspapers available in the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library of Rio de Janeiro; catalogs from the Vozes publishing house; and official documents resulting from Catholic councils and conferences. The analysis revealed several changes in materiality, mainly through the increase in the book's size, the presence of color illustrations, and the use of a simplified vocabulary; however, the questions and answers remained consistent over time, revealing the preference for tradition due to the success of the official text.

ABSTRACT This critical policy research paper considers the impact of media on education policy, drawing on our empirical research that utilises print and digital newspapers and social media datasets. We acknowledge the broader social shifts in digital technology, advances in digitalisation and datafication, which contribute to mediatisation and deep mediatisation. In considering media/policy imbrications, we analyse three strategies utilised by different actors in the construction of media messaging to influence education policy. These are, celebrity as policy influencer, organisation as mediapreneur, and media as message curators. These actors include a football celebrity, Marcus Rashford, a mediapreneurial international intergovernmental organisation, the OECD, and Australian legacy media curation. The celebrity utilised social media activism to directly change policy decisions; the OECD attempted to manage legacy media reporting of PISA results to affect national policy responses and used social media for policy awareness raising and dissemination; and the Australian legacy media utilised their gatekeeper status to affect the context of influence of policy development and helped constitute discourses that frame policy. We conclude offering a comparative analysis of the three strategies, as well as considering the contribution of our research to the fields of policy sociology in education and media and education policy.

The digital era has revolutionized access to information through digital news platforms, but attracting paid subscribers for digital newspaper remains a challenge for the media industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence customer satisfaction toward digital news platform and, subsequently, on digital newspaper paid subscription. The research employed a quantitative approach and partial least squared structural equation modelling to investigate the impact news site quality on consumer satisfaction and digital newspaper paid subscription. The data were collected through online questionnaires from 212 individuals who actively pays for subscription to a digital newspaper in digital news platform in Indonesia. The results of this study indicate that price point, flexible service, convenience, news quality, and commitment have a positive influence on customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction positively affects customer loyalty towards digital newspaper paid subscription. These findings emphasize the importance of price, flexible service, convenience, news quality, commitment, customer satisfaction and their role in cultivating paid subscriptions towards digital newspaper. This study contributes to the existing literature on digital newspaper subscription by exploring the factors influencing consumer satisfaction in this context. The findings provide implications for digital newspaper companies to formulate strategies and policies in delivering their services, in order to increase paid subscribers and maintain their competitive position.

This research focuses on human etiquette issues towards the environment. All forms of damage and changes to the environment are depicted through news stories and digital newspaper short stories. Ethical studies are raised to examine the attitudes that humans should have towards the environment to create harmony. Through environmentally themed digital newspaper short stories, the researcher explains the forms of environmental damage and changes and their relation to how human characters respond to them. The method used is qualitative to comprehensively and deeply understand the phenomenon under study. The results of the ethical study of five digital newspaper short stories as research objects. The analysis shows that the ethical analysis of environmental wisdom describes: an examination of attitudes towards the environment, namely an examination of respect for nature; an examination of moral responsibility towards nature; an examination of solidarity towards nature; an examination of love for nature; and an examination of not disturbing natural life. The analysis results show findings of ethical study of environmental wisdom in terms of attitude studies found in digital newspaper short stories. Three of them have a comprehensive study of attitudes towards the environment, while the other two only have one individual attitude study towards the environment

This study examines content curation on the front pages of four Spanish digital newspapers: two legacy media outlets, El País and La Vanguardia, and two purely digital, elDiario.es and El Español. This exploratory and unprecedented research aims to understand the characteristics of front-page news curation in digital press in terms of themes, authorship and genre, origin and temporal range of curated content, types of sources used, the function of curated links, and techniques employed to add value to the presented information. The CAS (Curation Analysis System) methodology is used for content analysis of a selection of news items from different time slots and days of the week, following the constructed week method. The results provide a better understanding of the characteristics of curation on newspaper front pages, comparing them with other curation studies in journalistic products, such as media newsletters and live news.

ABSTRACT The transition of vernacular language newspapers from print to digital formats has been largely overlooked in journalism studies. I suggest that studying this transition can help us better understand, from a production standpoint, the prevalence of both print and digital newspapers in the Global South. This article examines vernacular news production in the Global South by focusing on Malayala Manorama (MM), one of the most widely circulated Malayalam-language newspapers in both India and the Middle East. Using Bourdieu’s notion of “linguistic capital,” I unravel the technological and cultural challenges that MM faced during its transition from print to digital formats and the ways in which MM journalists addressed those impediments to produce online news in a multilingual media environment. Through multi-sited fieldwork, I argue that the journalistic accumulation and circulation of linguistic capital—alongside cultural, symbolic, and economic capitals—were crucial in overcoming the challenges of vernacular news production in the digital era. MM journalists developed language-specific fixes that were just as important as the broader technological advancements in the digital industry. Theoretically, this article demonstrates that the differentiation between cultural and linguistic capitals and the latter’s deployment in journalism studies can enhance our understanding of vernacular news production.

This study investigated how the front-page designs of digital newspapers differ based on institutional origin—comparing platforms that were born-digital with those that have transitioned from print—focusing specifically on their appeal to Generation Z audiences. Grounded in Media Richness Theory, this research employed a mixed-methods approach that combined a quantitative visual content analysis with qualitative semi-structured interviews. In the quantitative phase, the front pages of ten Saudi digital newspapers (five digital-native and five digital-migrant) were systematically analyzed to identify differences in their layouts, typography, multimedia usage, and interactivity. The qualitative phase then explored Generation Z users’ perceptions of the design clarity, visual engagement, and interactive affordances, as well as their suggestions for improving interface usability. The results indicate that digital-native newspapers more closely adhere to contemporary digital design standards and demonstrate significantly higher levels of media richness. This study contributes to digital journalism scholarship by offering both theoretical insights into interface-centered richness and practical design recommendations for enhancing user experience and engagement among younger audiences.

Digital content can bring many advantages to a sustainable world, such as higher accessibility, flexibility, reduction in natural resource consumption, or storage issues. Probably one of the biggest advantages is related to the possibility of preserving any type of document without the use of typography machines, as digital content does not suffer from deterioration. This approach can prove to be extremely useful in the case of important documents for human culture and history. Our paper presents some of the most successful cases of digitization of physical papers, including books, newspapers, and old manuscripts. The analysis of international models of digital libraries is followed by a case study of digitization in Romania, with an analysis of their future perspectives on sustainability.

This research focuses on current photojournalism practices in the media representation of the climate crisis, exploring how images published by Spain’s leading digital newspapers contribute to shaping public perception of the phenomenon. Through a mixed-methods approach, this study examines eco-visual reporting in 2023—a year characterized by unprecedented global temperatures—alongside an examination of the initial month of coverage of the 2024 DANA floods. The main objective of this study is to evaluate whether the visual depiction of climate change in mainstream media aligns with or deviates from the established visual patterns associated with stereotyped iconography and alarmist narratives. This research provides a taxonomy of the predominant thematic elements and their frequency, addressing key issues such as the persistence of worn-out visual tropes, the reliance on stock images, and the episodic nature of its news treatment. The inclusion of the most catastrophic climate disaster of the 21st century in Spain allows for an exploration of how the media pressure inherent to crisis situations intensifies the risk of errors in image attribution and contextualization. Finally, we offer practical recommendations to guide visual coverage toward comprehensive, accurate, and human-centered approaches, aiming to foster public trust and maximize the potential of photojournalism as a key tool in collective mobilization against the climate emergency.

The Blockchain technology is used in the Digital Document Verification using Blockchain project to improve the security, authenticity, and integrity of digital documents. Conventional document verification techniques are frequently ineffective, expensive, and susceptible to fraud or manipulation. In order to overcome these difficulties, this system stores the cryptographic hash values of documents in a decentralised ledger, guaranteeing that once they are recorded, they cannot be changed or modified. A hash of the document is created at the moment of verification and compared to the hash that has already been saved on the blockchain as part of the verification process. The document is unaltered and legitimate if the hashes match; if not, any differences suggest possible changes or manipulation. By lowering reliance on centralised authority and making unauthorised alterations immediately identifiable, this technique greatly improves document security. The solution provides more openness and confidence by utilising the decentralised and irreversible characteristics of blockchain technology, guaranteeing that all verification records are permanent and available for auditing purposes. In industries including education, healthcare, law, finance, and government agencies that need strong document verification, the method is very advantageous. Additionally, automating verification procedures improves efficiency and dependability by cutting down on the time and effort needed for manual authentication. In addition to reducing the dangers of document fraud, this initiative promotes a safer and more reliable digital document management environment

This article examines the history and evolution of newspaper preservation, digitization, and accessibility at the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries. Highlighting the Libraries' role as a steward of Florida’s history and the narratives of Latin America and the Caribbean, the article traces the development of their extensive newspaper collection, which is the largest in Florida. Initially focused on physical formats, the collection expanded through microfilming efforts starting in the 1940s and gained momentum in subsequent decades, including initiatives funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Libraries’ digitization strategies have evolved to include collaborative efforts that enhance access to both historical and contemporary materials. Through initiatives like the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Digital Library of the Caribbean, the Libraries ensure broad public access to vital resources, fostering civic engagement and education. This articles argues that the ongoing commitment to preserving, digitizing, and sharing newspapers illustrates the Libraries’ mission to safeguard the past while supporting future generations, marking a century of dedication to accessible knowledge at UF.

The digitalization of historical documents is of interest for many reasons, including historical preservation, accessibility, and searchability. One of the main challenges with the digitization of old newspapers involves complex layout analysis, where the content types of the document must be determined. In this context, this paper presents an evaluation of the most recent YOLO methods for the analysis of historical document layouts. Initially, a new dataset called BHN was created and made available, standing out as the first dataset of historical Brazilian newspapers for layout detection. The experiments were held using the YOLOv8, YOLOv9, YOLOv10, and YOLOv11 architectures. For training, validation, and testing of the models, the following historical newspaper datasets were combined: BHN, GBN, and Printed BlaLet GT. Recall, precision, and mean average precision (mAP) were used to evaluate the performance of the models. The results indicate that the best performer was YOLOv8, with a Recalltest of 81% and an mAPtest of 89%. This paper provides insights on the advantages of these models in historical document layout detection and also promotes improvement of document image conversion into editable and accessible formats.

In recent decades, social networks have experienced an exponential increase involving millions of users and transforming the way they communicate in the medical community, becoming an important tool in medicine, where plastic surgery has not been an exception. We aimed to present a review of the effects of social networks in the area of plastic surgery, the main existing regulatory frameworks, and propose the basic aspects for the adequate use of these platforms in the practice of our profession. A literature search was performed, including scientific articles, specific existing guides from the USA, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina, as well as articles in digital newspapers and Google regarding emblematic cases. These platforms are an important source of information and communication in medicine and are frequently used by different scientific societies, mainly for educational and dissemination purposes. In the area of plastic surgery in particular, there is a high presence of specialists in the field who use these tools mainly for orientation, education, promotion of their brand, and peer-to-peer relationships. The main negative aspects of social networks are a high presence of publications generated by non-professionals in the field, false information, and the generation of esthetic violence. The regulations of several existing scientific societies, although heterogeneous on some points, mostly agree that the need for informed consent, protection of patient privacy and safety, truthfulness of the information published, and patient education campaigns are key points. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

The digital age has opened the doors to numerous opportunities for publishing organizations and journalists, and has increased the number of challenges, particularly those related to the sustainability of the business model. The management of media companies faces a number of profound and disruptive challenges that even significantly defy the logic of various social media industries. This paper aims to understand the sustainability and challenges of media business models and how managers are reacting and adapting their practices in this industry in the field of digital transformation, and in an increasingly competitive market. Thus, the central research questions of this work are: RQ1. What are the main strategies and management practices applied by journalistic companies to achieve the sustainability of their business model and funding? RQ2. To what extent are the revenue streams of digital newspapers growing and how has the funding model of US newspapers differed from that of European ones? This article is based on 6 interviews (out of a total of 90 from a larger study that included executives from media companies based on all continents) with executives from 3 North American (United States and Canada) and 3 European newspaper companies. (Ireland, UK and France).

Every year, more than 700,000 people die by suicide worldwide, a quarter of whom are between 15 and 29 years of age. In Spain, suicide has surpassed road traffic accidents as the leading non-natural cause of death in this age group. Although its overall incidence remains low, the number of suicide attempts continues to rise, indicating an upward trend. Despite being recognized as a significant public health issue, the media often refrains from reporting on suicide to prevent the Werther effect, thereby avoiding the potential propagation of suicidal behavior. This is a form of self-censorship in the exercise of freedom of information, a right recognized by the Spanish Constitution, which also undermines the right of citizens to receive such content. The Spanish Constitutional Court has determined that public interest is a mandatory requirement to endorse the legitimacy of a news item in case of a clash with any of the rights that legally limit freedom of information. This article aims to analyze whether, in those exceptional cases in which the rule of silence is broken, the information on suicide in young people is in line with the jurisprudential concept of public interest, above privacy, honor or self-image and, especially, above the protection of children and adolescents. As a research method, this study analyzes a selection of news articles on suicides of minors, published in Spanish digital newspapers and compiled into a self-developed database. These articles are examined through the lens of the Spanish Constitutional Court’s doctrine on freedom of information. The findings indicate that public interest is unequivocally justified when news coverage focuses on aggregated data regarding suicide or suicide attempts among minors. However, when reporting on the suicide of an individual minor, the justification from the perspective of freedom of information depends on the specifics of each case, requiring a careful balance between public interest and the protection of fundamental rights.

Syndicated content from news agencies remains a pivotal component of newspaper coverage. Especially for smaller local/regional news organizations with limited resources, syndicated content helps them deliver important news that is beyond their capabilities. However, research on syndicated content has heavily focused on its potentially negative impact such as content homogenization or extensive news recycling (i.e., churnalism) from the production side, whereas investigations on the effects of syndicated content on news audience engagement have been an uncharted territory. Considering the importance of syndicated content for complementing quality local/regional journalism, understanding how it contributes to building readership is especially important for local/regional news organizations. We aim to fill this gap by investigating the impact of syndicated content on news reading behaviors. Using news subscriber behavioral data from two local/regional news sites in the US, we identify subscriber segments and study how syndicated content differentially influences the regularity of news reading. Results indicate that syndicated content can help develop news reading habits of relatively less engaged subscribers and imply that local/regional news organizations should strive to understand their subscriber segments deeper, and syndicated content can be a cost-efficient way to achieve balanced news portfolios when developing content strategies.

With the increasing trend of digitization of business processes and personal communication across the globe, digital documents of intrinsic value continue to be created. Whereas the questioned document examination (QDE) field of forensic science deals with the examination of “physical” documents potentially disputed in a court of law, there are no developed approaches for handling questioned digital documents (QDDs). Although techniques that address related problems such as identifying document types and image forensics exist, concrete strategies for analyzing questioned “digital” documents still need to be developed. This paper focuses on developing methods to examine QDDs that are customized from a database, due to the versatile use of customized documents in many areas. As a basis for our approach, we make the case for the need to develop analysis techniques for a digital counterpart of QDE which we term Questioned Digital Document Examination (QDDE). We posit that there is a benefit in considering digital aspects of forensic science disciplines where the questions answered by the discipline are clear, from a digital perspective. The paper describes some of the aspects that can be considered in the domain of question digital document examination. In designing methods for QDDE, we discuss the process of document recreation and describe the feasibility of our recreation process in different scenarios. Our experiments show that an alternative approach of considering digital aspects from a well‐defined physical domain is worthwhile. It also supports the practical application of our approach in examining documents customized from a database.

Blockchain represents a groundbreaking innovation poised to streamline various human tasks and yield positive impacts, particularly in the realms of managing and safeguarding digital records and data. With the rapid advancement of technologies dedicated to digital document management and security, these digital assets have become prime targets for cyberattacks, potentially resulting in undesirable consequences such as data tampering and forgery. This research delves into the development of a robust digital document security system leveraging Blockchain technology tailored to meet the specific requirements of institutions. Utilizing the Enterprise Blockchain Design Framework, the study aims to ascertain the suitability of Blockchain implementation in current business processes. Subsequently, various popular Blockchain platforms are evaluated based on factors such as functionality, speed, transaction costs, and security. The findings from this selection process inform the design of a Digital Document Security Framework utilizing Blockchain technology, thereby enhancing the integrity and security of digital records.