DOMINGO: Interactivity in the daily routines of online newsrooms: dealing with an uncomfortable myth”

• Any development in online journalism, is the consequence of decisions
• taken in specific newsrooms, in particular circumstances
• by journalists that have, a professional culture, knowledge and expectations about the Internet as a news medium.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Interactivity in the daily routines of online newsrooms: dealing with an uncomfortable myth

David Domingo

The buzzword in the 1990s was interactivity. Now it is participatory journalism. But the bottom line is the same:

• many professional and scholarly discourses tend to reproduce ideal models of what online journalism could be,
• taking them for granted as the path that news production on the Internet must walk.

  

Empirical research

• has already offered evidence that the development of these ideals in online news sites tends to be limited (Kenney et al., 2000; Van der Wurff and Lauf, 2005) and
• has identified that there is ‘‘a gap between, on the one hand, online journalists’ perceptions of the Internet’s potential and, on the other hand, the actual use of interactive features’’ (Deuze et al., 2004: 22).

The fact is that:

·         we know very little about how online journalists deal with interactivity in their daily working routines and

·         what is the rationale behind the development of interactive options on online news sites.

This article advocates that… we can get a perspective that acknowledges that

• any development in online journalism

• is the consequence of decisions
• taken in specific newsrooms
• in particular circumstances
• by journalists that have
• a professional culture,
• knowledge and
• expectations about the Internet as a news medium.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Interactivity in the daily routines of online newsrooms: dealing with an uncomfortable myth

David Domingo