iWatch: the intense flow of microformats of “glance journalism” that feed six of the main online media

Abstract

Introduction. Digital media needed to adapt, in these last years, to numerous changes affecting both contents production and reception. The wearables or devices we carry along with us, specially smartwatches, can offer an interesting option in the diffusion of journalistic products. Objectives and Methods. To study the trends in the production of contents for iWatch, we used a quantitative methodology based on analyzing apps for Apple smartwatch from a total of fifteen cybermedia of informative communication of generalistic character and daily publication, with printed matrix. Results. Results show that the platform demands renewed narratives and online media still have very primary models available to face the new informative challenges of ubiquity. Discussion and conclusions. Exploit personalization, audios or customization, are some of the challenges editors and journalists must face in the current journalistic context.

Ephemeral Journalism: News Distribution Through Instagram Stories

“…However, the interest in the ephemeral format reinforces the daily presence of the journalistic brand in a section—Instagram Stories—which is gaining more and more followers. From the perspective of journalistic production, the elaboration of ephemeral stories is a challenge to maintain a constant presence with contents that disappear daily and whose exposure to the user is very short—from tenths of a second to go over it, up to the maximum duration of 15 s. This feature places the Instagram Stories next to the smartwatch information pills (Silva-Rodríguez et al, 2017) in the so-called “glance journalism” (Shanoff, 2014). However, Instagram Stories give rise to live coverage and native formats with creative applications based on the resources of the platform, following previously identified trends (Newman et al, 2017; Kalogeropoulos et al, 2016).…”

“…These new incidental and ephemeral users’ consumption habits are the reason for the different “know-how” of the media (Larrondo et al, 2017), as these intensify their efforts to produce native formats (Newman et al, 2017). Short videos for web and Facebook profiles (Kalogeropoulos et al, 2016) are followed by the creation of journalistic microformats (Silva-Rodríguez et al, 2017). Smartphones turn into the main device to access the Internet (Ofcom, 2018) and consume information (Bell, 2015; Newman et al, 2019), so the shape of the news changes to accommodate navigation through them (Newman, 2018), prioritizing the use of “horizontal storytelling mode” and Snapchat’s “tap to advance mode,” Twitter moments, Facebook and WhatsApp status, as well as Instagram Stories (Online Journalism Blog, 2017).…”

An Interweaving of Influences: How the Digital Environment Redefines Journalism

“…In the last five years, different media have explored the adaptation of content to suit emerging technologies such as smart watches and the Internet of Things (Silva et al 2017), virtual reality applications (Vázquez-Herrero and López-García 2017), automation (Thurman et al 2019) and immersive podcasting (Dowling and Miller 2019), among others. Media outlets such as the Washington Post have specialized teams dedicated to testing and experimenting with the latest technological innovations.…”

Intersections between TikTok and TV: Channels and Programmes Thinking Outside the Box

“…Instant messaging networks such as What-sApp and Telegram have also been adopted by the media for the personalised distribution of their information content (Negreira-Rey et al 2017). In addition, the standardisation of some wearables, such as smartwatches, forces experimentation with new microformats that allow the consumption of content 'at a glance' (Silva et al 2017).…”