Journalism and Digital Labor

Labouring the news: Management control strategies and work intensification in the digital newsroom

“…It was up to editors to subjectively decide on the most appropriate use of the WhatsApp and when they considered that other editors had impinged on the well-being and cooperation of journalists, they moved their personal communications, temporarily, into a private space. Neilson (2020) cautions against the dangers of purely focusing on changing technologies in the industry and emphasises the need to analyse how power and subjectivity operate within these networks (Anderson and De Maeyer, 2015: 4-5). The media company in this case study reported story performance analytics to all staff but not newspaper sales.…”

“…Cohen (2019: 585) argues how a labour process perspective illustrates that digital technologies do not act on their own to shape journalists’ experiences but are used “usually in the context of capitalist news organizations restructuring to increase profits and lower labour costs”. Research suggests technological changes have not resulted in less work for reporters but have led to longer working hours (Neilson, 2020). While some of these pressures may come in the form of directives from management, journalists often feel an implicit obligation to participate in additional and unpaid digital labour (Hayes, 2021).…”

“…This research builds on an emerging body of work in journalism scholarship that places labour at its core, treating journalism as work and journalists as workers (Cohen, 2019;Örnebring, 2010;Neilson, 2020;Petre, 2021). There have been calls for more labourfocused examinations of journalism and for more research on management processes within news organisations (Sylvie and Gade, 2009).…”