Nätjournalistik : En explorativ fallstudie av digitala mediers karaktärsdrag på fyra nyhetssajter

Sammanfattning: During the last decade the Internet has become a widely used source of information for the average person and also a publishing tool for media corporations. The transition of journalism from one medium to another is one with important implications as the world wide public consumption of online news grows. This dissertation puts focus on how journalistic content changes when it's published on the World Wide Web compared to the traditional newspaper. The explicit aim of this dissertation is to explore and theoretically test the net-based characteristics of interaction, convergence and, continuous flow of information in the context of the user interface of four major Swedish news websites and to explore how these characteristics could influence journalistic values, norms and media logics. The theoretical framework is composed of two basic perspectives. The first is based on the theoretical core assumption that the introduction and spread of communication technology transforms the symbolic content and the patterns of communication compared to the previous dominant cultural medium of communication. The second theoretical perspective is based on the current western liberal norms, ideals, and practices of journalism. In essence, In essence, this has to do with the normative views surrounding journalistic objectivity whereby news publishers are supposed to deliver true and fair journalistic content to citizens so they can make informed decisions as members of the deliberative democracy. The study is based on an experimental non-probability selection content analysis of websites. The empirical material has been collected during 2004-2005 from the major Swedish websites aftonbladet.se, expressen.se, dn.se and svd.se. The results of the study shows a number of important things. Interaction is widely present in the form of hyperlinks and e-mailing opportunities, but it does not take the form of public conversational interaction. There is not one single instance in the study where readers and publishers meet in a public dialogue about news content. This shows that it is still the producers that are heard in the news, although the technical means allow consumers to be heard. Very few news items, less then five percent, features any form of convergent elements like moving image or sounds along with text. The study of continuing flow of information confirms the assumption that websites have moved toward a less predictable publishing rhythm. In print newspapers, content changes once every 24 hours and all at once. This is not the case on websites. This study clearly shows that news items disappear from the first page within 24 hours, but not all news items disappear within those 24 hours. In the material studied here, the news cycle seems to be shorter than 24 hours and there is more than one top news story every day. The study of the continuing flow of information also shows that the news items themselves changes during the course of a day. Eight different indicators of how the news material changes was found: 1) The news is updated often 2) The news is updated without readers being aware 3) The author of the article change 4) Sources come and go 5) The meaning of the news changes 6) News stories disappear from the website 7) Pictures and graphics are changed or removed 8) Information that is promised is not delivered. The non transparent and coming-out-of-a-black-box-tendency of the print medium gives the news in traditional newspapers a monolithic appearance. If people follow news on the Internet, over time they are likely to discover that news stories are rather more like works in progress than they are finished products. Parts, but not all, of both the gathering and the processing of news material are visible to the audience. Rather then being delivered as the only and true version of reality, news stories on the Internet have more of a provisory multi-meaning characteristic to them. If this is practised in most online journalism, we may stand on a brink of a new kind of journalism and journalistic norms.