Innovators and innovated: Newspapers and the postdigital future beyond the “death of print”
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Along with other cultural organizations, newspapers, through waves of digital disruption, have become subject to a dominant narrative of crisis. But newspapers have long participated in change. A constructivist approach, qualified by consideration of media materiality, draws attention to diverse but essential processes of innovation around them. We see a contraflow of migration from digital to print, opening up a shared media space; bonding strategies are bringing multimedia to ink on paper, while bridging via boundary objects such as QR (Quick Response) codes are connecting the two. Among other initiatives, development of automation of news production and experiments with transparency are further evidence of an active embrace of change by newspapers that calls into question the discourse on their demise. This analysis inductively develops a nuanced account of the role of the newspaper as an object and as an institution. It suggests a hybrid, multifaceted, enduring presence of print in the complex media ecology of the future.
Source: The Information Society
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2591804444