Is Digital News<i>Really</i>that Digital? An Analysis of How Online News Sites in the UK use Digital Affordances to Enhance Their Reporting

Harmer, Emily ORCID: 0000-0002-7842-4829 and Southern, Rosalynd ORCID: 0000-0002-5031-5428 (2020) Is Digital News<i>Really</i>that Digital? An Analysis of How Online News Sites in the UK use Digital Affordances to Enhance Their Reporting. JOURNALISM STUDIES, 21 (16). pp. 2234-2248.

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Abstract

Legacy media have responded to the introduction of digital-born news sites by instigating their own online platforms, reflecting the extent to which journalism operates within a hybrid media environment. This article aims to test if and how digital journalism makes its hybridity manifest by using various online affordances. We used content analysis to compare the extent to which BBC News, Mail Online, The Guardian, Buzzfeed and Huffington Post exploit video, hyperlinks, and Twitter posts to better inform citizens about politics during the 2017 UK election. We found that online news sites did not use video extensively. Hyperlinks were frequently used. Digital-born news sites linked more widely than their public service and commercial legacy counterparts who, in contrast, used more internal links. Digital-born sites used more embedded tweets than legacy sites. We also found that online news preferred to link to journalistic content and tweets than, say, official government or other expert sources. These findings show the hybridity of online news in the UK because both public service and commercial legacy media adopt some online practices but reject others, just as digital-born sites blend traditional journalism with digital tools to produce new ways of supporting their journalism.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Hybrid media, journalism, digital affordances, video, hyperlinks, Twitter
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	18 Sep 2020 10:00
Last Modified:	14 Oct 2023 22:28
DOI:	10.1080/1461670X.2020.1831397
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3101676