Abstract
Journalism is evolving rapidly, and as a result the future of journalism is remarkably unpredictable. It is especially so in terms of news media’s relationship with its audiences, and that relationship is constitutive of journalism and vital to news media. Without an audience, journalism is moot. Without audiences willing to trust in and pay for journalism, news media have neither legitimacy nor means to survive. The current process of reconfiguration in the audience–news media relationship has many roots: changes in the global economy, audience preferences and habits, and perhaps also the natural evolution of journalism itself. However, we argue most of these changes can be traced back to the widespread diffusion of new technologies. Namely, digitalization, the advent of the internet and the World Wide Web, high-speed wireless data transfer, mobile devices, cloud computing and algorithms making use of these newly created wellsprings of data are the cornerstones upon which our current media system rests. This technological development has impacted how, on one hand, audiences navigate, access and interact with news media; and how news media monitors, understands, reaches and monetizes its audiences on the other.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abernathy, P. M. (2018). The expanding news desert. Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Available at https://www.cislm.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-Expanding-News-Desert-10_14-Web.pdf
Abrahamson, E. (1991). Managerial fads and fashions: The diffusion and rejection of innovations. Academy of Management Review, 16(3), 586–612. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1991.4279484
Alexander, J. C., Breese, E. B., & Luengo, M. (Eds.). (2016). The crisis of journalism reconsidered. Cambridge University Press.
Blumler, J. G. (2010). Foreword. Journalism Studies, 11(4), 439–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616701003802519
Bozdag, E., & Van Den Hoven, J. (2015). Breaking the filter bubble: Democracy and design. Ethics and Information Technology, 17(4), 249–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-015-9380-y
Briggs, A., & Burke, P. (2002). A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the internet. Polity.
Brüggemann, M., Humprecht, E., Nielsen, R. K., Karppinen, K., Cornia, A., & Esser, F. (2016). Framing the newspaper crisis: How debates on the state of the press are shaped in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and United States. Journalism Studies, 17(5), 533–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1006871
Chadwick, A. (2013). The hybrid media system: Politics and power. Oxford University Press. https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759477.001.0001/acprof-9780199759477
Conboy, M. (2004). Journalism: A critical history. Sage.
Costera Meijer, I. (2020). Understanding the audience turn in journalism: From quality discourse to innovation discourse as anchoring practices 1995–2020. Journalism Studies, 21(16), 2326–2342. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1847681
Creech, B., & Nadler, A. M. (2018). Post-industrial fog: Reconsidering innovation in visions of journalism’s future. Journalism, 19(2), 182–199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884916689573
Curran, J. (2019). Triple crisis of journalism. Journalism, 20(1), 190–193. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918807034
Ferrucci, P., Nelson, J. L., & Davis, M. P. (2020). From ‘public journalism’ to ‘engaged journalism’: Imagined audiences and denigrating discourse. International Journal of Communication, 14, 1586–1604.
Franklin, B. (2012). The future of journalism: Developments and debates. Journalism Studies, 13(5–6), 663–681. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2012.712301
Hay, C. (2002). Political analysis: A critical introduction. Palgrave.
Hepp, A., & Loosen, W. (2021). Pioneer journalism: Conceptualizing the role of pioneer journalists and pioneer communities in the organizational re-figuration of journalism. Journalism, 22(3), 577–595. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919829277
Høyer, S. (1998). Constructing epochs in the history of the press. Nordicom review, 19(2), 3–16. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:norden:org:diva-9696
Kaplan, R. L. (2015). Press, paper, and the public sphere: The rise of the cheap mass press in the USA, 1870–1910. Media History, 21(1), 42–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2014.955841
Le Cam, F., & Domingo, D. (2015). The tyranny of immediacy. In T. Vos & F. Heinderyckx (Eds.), Gatekeeping in transition (pp. 123–140). Routledge.
Machill, M., & Beiler, M. (2009). The importance of the internet for journalistic research. Journalism Studies, 10(2), 178–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700802337768
Manninen, V. J. E. (2017). Sourcing practices in online journalism: An ethnographic study of the formation of trust in and the use of journalistic sources. Journal of Media Practice, 18(2–3), 212–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2017.1375252
Mitchell, A., Gottfried, J., Barthel, M., & Shearer, E. (2016). The modern news consumer: News attitudes and practices in the digital era. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2016/07/07/the-modern-news-consumer/
Molyneux, L. (2018). Mobile news consumption: A habit of snacking. Digital Journalism, 6(5), 634–650. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1334567
Morganti, L., & Ranaivoson, H. (2019). Future and emerging technologies for the media sector. MediaRoad Vision Papers. MediaRoad - European Media Ecosystem for Innovation. Available online: https://www.mediaroad.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Vision-Paper-2_Future-and-emerging-technologies-for-the-European-Media-Sector.pdf
Myllylahti, M. (2018). An attention economy trap? An empirical investigation into four news companies’ Facebook traffic and social media revenue. Journal of Media Business Studies, 15(4), 237–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2018.1527521
Negrine, R. M. (2008). The transformation of political communication: Continuities and changes in media and politics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Nelson, J. L., & Lei, R. F. (2018). The effect of digital platforms on news audience behavior. Digital Journalism, 6(5), 619–633. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1394202
Newman, N. (2021). Journalism, media and technology trends and predictions 2021. Digital News Project. Reuters Institute, University of Oxford. Available online: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/journalism-media-and-technology-trends-andpredictions-2021
Nielsen, R. (2016). The business of news. In T. Witschge, C. Anderson, & D. Domingo (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of digital journalism (pp. 51–67). SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473957909.n4
Ohlsson, J., & Facht, U. (Eds.). (2017). Ad wars: Digital challenges for ad-financed news media in the Nordic countries. NORDICOM.
Pavlik, J. (2000). The impact of technology on journalism. Journalism Studies, 1(2), 229–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700050028226
Pavlik, J. (2001). Journalism and new media. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/pavl11482
Peters, C., & Schrøder, K. C. (2018). Beyond the here and now of news audiences: A process-based framework for investigating news repertoires. Journal of Communication, 68(6), 1079–1103. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy060
Pickard, V. (2019). The violence of the market. Journalism, 20(1), 154–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918808955
Posetti, J. (2018). Time to step away from the ‘bright, shiny things’? Towards a sustainable model of journalism innovation in an era of perpetual change. RISJ research report, University of Oxford.
Ridge-Newman, A. (2016). Tories and television, 1951–64: Broadcasting an elite. Palgrave Macmillan.
Spyridou, L. P., Matsiola, M., Veglis, A., Kalliris, G., & Dimoulas, C. (2013). Journalism in a state of flux: Journalists as agents of technology innovation and emerging news practices. International Communication Gazette, 75(1), 76–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048512461763
Steensen, S., & Westlund, O. (2020). What is digital journalism studies? Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429259555
Tandoc, Jr., Edson, C., Zheng, W. L., & Richard, L. (2018). Defining “fake news” A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143
Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2020). An emotional turn in journalism studies? Digital Journalism, 8(2), 175–194. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1697626
Ward, S. J. A. (2019). Disrupting journalism ethics: Radical change on the frontier of digital media. Routledge.
Westlund, O. (2015). News consumption in an age of mobile media: Patterns, people, place, and participation. Mobile Media & Communication, 3(2), 151–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050157914563369
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Manninen, V.J.E., Niemi, M.K., Ridge-Newman, A. (2022). Introduction. In: Manninen, V.J.E., Niemi, M.K., Ridge-Newman, A. (eds) Futures of Journalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95073-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95073-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-95072-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-95073-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)