From Rigidity to Exuberance: Evolution of News on Online Newspaper Homepages

Abstract

Since their emergence in the mid-90s, online media have evolved from simple digital editions that merely served to dump content from print newspapers, to sophisticated multi-format products with multimedia and interactive features. In order to discover their visual evolution, this article conducts a longitudinal study of the design of online media by analyzing the front pages of five general-information Spanish newspapers (elpais.com, elmundo.es, abc.es, lavanguardia.com, and elperiodico.com) over the past 25 years (1996–2020). Moreover, some of their current features are listed. To this end, six in-depth interviews were conducted with managers of different online media outlets. The results indicate that the media analysed have evolved from a static, rigid format, to a dynamic, mobile, and multi-format model. Regarding the language used, along with increased multimedia and interactive possibilities, Spanish online media currently display a balance between text and images on their front pages. Lastly, audience information consumption habits, largely superficial and sporadic, and the increasing technification and speed of production processes, means that news media have lost in terms of the design part of the individual personality they had in their print editions. However, they maintain their index-type front pages as one of their most characteristic elements, which are very vertical and highly saturated.

Theory and Applications of Web 3.0 in the Media Sector

“…The third paper deals with the evolution of news presentation in online newspapers, monitoring their visual progress from simple digital editions that merely served to dump content from print newspapers (rigidity) to sophisticated multi-format multimedia products with interactive features (exuberance) [34]. Peña Fernández, Casado del Río, and García-González (2021) conducted a longitudinal study on the design of online media, analyzing the front pages of five general information Spanish newspapers (elpais.com, elmundo.es, abc.es, lavanguardia.com, and elperiodico.com (accessed on 20 April 2023)) over the past 25 years (1996-2020).…”

“…Thereafter, digital literacy initiatives and audience engagement strategies can enhance the impact of SW services in the media world and the broader society. The current Special Issue enlightens the above perspectives through theoretical, algorithmic/technological, and case-study contributions, discussing challenges and state-of-the-art solutions on news detection, classification, (semantic) analysis and evaluation [12,18,27,29,30], automated modeling/prediction, generation, and recommendation of news content [19,[31][32][33], evolution, aesthetics, and integration evaluation of Web 3.0 elements in news websites [34][35][36].…”