Journalism Design: The NewsCube, Interactive Technologies and Practice

Abstract

Journalism is in a period of transition. Disrupted by social and mobile technologies, practitioners need new ways to create stories and engage audiences if they hope to remain relevant and viable. Yet journalists' relationship with technology is fraught. Weighed down by legacy production processes and entrenched ideas about what journalism is, newsrooms have failed to fully exploit the potential of new platforms. But as technology becomes more interwoven in our lives, and interactions move out of the computer and into the everyday world, those practices will need to change. The question is how.This thesis is concerned with the practice of journalism, the practice of design, and what one can learn from the other. In order to argue its central proposition -that design methods are central to the future of journalism practice -the thesis documents and evaluates a design-led approach to addressing a journalistic issue. It does this via the NewsCube: a digital artefact that uses space and shape to tell news stories. The NewsCube is a unique storytelling format.Through a transparent process of concept development, design, prototyping and evaluation, the project detailed in the following pages reveals new possibilities for journalism practice: that stories could be tactile, fun and designed for distributed control.Physicality and playfulness are not values readily associated with journalism, but the work here suggests that such qualities could inform new forms of engagement.

Journalism Training Beyond Journalism Schools

“…Although the latest technological innovations have introduced some significant changes, the essential flow of journalism education has not changed significantly in response to this “epochal transformation” (Mensing, 2010). As Doherty (2018) showed, if we take journalism’s deep craft—social responsibility, the public interest—and combine it with emerging technology, new concepts will emerge; however, journalism educators cannot confine themselves only to adapting technology to existing practices and vice versa, but will, additionally, need to create synergies and encourage proactive practices. Moreover, the distinct features of the new generation of journalism students need to be taken into consideration (St Clair, 2015) because—as postmillennials and members of the so-called “Generation Z”—they tend to be quite familiar with interactive educational and informational tools and applications (Photiou & Maniou, 2019).…”