News Now

Abstract

This article explores how mobile consumption practices afforded by new mobile media have transformed the spatialities and temporalities of news media through processes such as proliferation, participation, personalization, cross-platform flow, geolocation, and mapping. Expanding journalism studies to encompass digital social media and the interdisciplinary field of mobilities research, the approach taken here gives greater attention to the making and unmaking of materialities and infrastructure in order to show how the mobile production, dissemination, and consumption of news produces new spatial temporalities and scales. With the emergence of various mobile interfaces and personalized networks connected via mobile social media, news is not only constantly accessed "on demand" from miniature mobiles, but also tagged, curated, aggregated, and easily re-distributed, fostering "ambient journalism" (Hermida) and on-location "citizen witnessing" (Allan). Through a historical analysis of changes in the New York Times since the 1990s and a consideration of emerging modes of on-demand, on-location, participatory news production, it is argued that the redistribution of the places, spaces, and timing of news production and consumption has transformed not only the content, form, and style of news, but also the very temporality of news as an event. Through an analysis of the impact of these changes on the reporting of recent natural disasters, the article seeks to envision an enlivened terrain of mobile news that is live, active, immersive, pervasive, and constantly updating, yet also attentive to the implications of infrastructural disruption, data-mining, and surveillance.

Journalism Design: The NewsCube, Interactive Technologies and Practice

“…Such a lack of engagement with a fundamental aspect of the internet is troubling, particularly when journalism faces challenges from digital disruption. But given the reluctance of news organisations to network journalism (Beckett & Mansell, 2008;Russell, 2011;Ryfe, 2012;Sheller, 2015) it is perhaps understandable.…”

“…Hence, the struggle for legacy media to adapt. Russell (2011), Ryfe (2012), Anderson (2013) and Sheller (2015) all illustrate this struggle, and point out that journalism is increasingly becoming a participatory process involving non-professional reporters, and the audience: networked communication has "transformed the role of the audience from a mostly passive to an active voice" (Russell, 2011, p. 43). …”

“…In some ways the efforts by journalists to incorporate social tools to their workflow, or following their audiences on to networked platforms, could be viewed as innovations, but Sheller's (2015) point about incorporation suggests that simply reacting to new technologies will be insufficient. The technology literature reveals an alternate approach.…”

“…It sees design as way for journalists to engage proactively with technology: to design user experiences that "creatively, excitedly, and constructively extend what people currently do" (Rogers, 2006, p. 406). Rather than simply incorporating existing technologies to their practice (Sheller, 2015), journalists can, though design, create software, devices and interactions that achieve journalistic goals and embody their values.…”

“…However, the literature discussed earlier in this chapter suggests there is a reluctance among those most vested in current professional conventions to adapt (Lasorsa, Lewis & Holton, 2012), and Sheller (2015) has pointed out that the "traditional newsroom is not capable of adapting to the new situation simply by incorporating it" (p. 5).…”