technological advancement and the challenge of online ...... · technological advancement and the...

IN DEGREE PROJECT INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT,SECOND CYCLE, 15 CREDITS

, STOCKHOLM SWEDEN 2019

Technological advancement and the challenge of online journalism

A technological perspective on the work of journalists in online media

APOSTOLOS VASILEIADIS

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYSCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT

TRITA TRITA-ITM-EX 2019:220

www.kth.se

Technological advancement and the challenge ofonline journalism

Apostolos Vasileiadis

Master of Science Thesis INDEK


KTH Industrial Engineering and Management

Industrial Management

SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM

πίεσvη χωρίς ουσvία...

Examensarbete INDEK 2019


Technological advancement and thechallenge of online journalism

Apostolos VasileiadisGodkänt Examinator Handledare17 Juni 2019 Gregg Vanourek Kristina Nyström

Sammanfattning

Nyhetsbranschen har genomgått stora förändringar under 2000-talet pågrund av tillgången till uppkopplad teknologi och sociala medier. Informationsprids ögonblickligen till allmänheten vilket tvingar journalisterna att anpas-sa sig till en ny online-verklighet. Det här examensarbetet fokuserar på på deteknologiska framsteg inom branschen och hur journalisterna klarar av föränd-ringen. En kvalitativ analys utförs för att förstå det nuvarande landskapet ochanalysera och diskutera utmaningar och möjligheter som journalister mötersamt utforska metoder för att förbättra kvaliteten avseende granskning av ny-heter och effektivitet. Resultatet visar att det finns utrymme för innovationeroch förbättringar inom nyhetsbranschen som kan bidra till förbättrad nyhets-kvalitet samt hjälpa journalister och nyhetsföretag att nå allmänheten i ettonline ekosystem.

Master of Science Thesis INDEK 2019


Technological advancement and thechallenge of online journalism

Apostolos VasileiadisApproved Examiner Supervisor17 June 2019 Gregg Vanourek Kristina Nyström

Abstract

News media and journalism have undergone huge changes over the first twodecades of the 21st century due to the online boom and social media. Infor-mation is delivered to the readers instantaneously making journalists adapt toa new online reality. In this thesis we are focusing on the technological ad-vancement of field and how the journalists manage to cope with this change.A qualitative analysis is carried out in order to understand the current land-scape and to analyze and discuss the challenges and opportunities journalistsare facing, as well as explore possible ways one can improve the quality re-garding fact-checking and overall effectivity. The findings show that there isroom for innovation and improvement in the news industry that could con-tribute to the quality of the news, together with supporting journalists andnews organizations into having a better reach in an online ecosystem.

Acknowledgements

Before I carry on with the main subject of this thesis, I would like to thank all theprofessors and students in the master’s program in Entrepreneurship and InnovationManagement with which we shared great times of learning and inspiration.

I would also like to thank Kristina Nyström, who, as a supervisor, helped andled me form the topic and structure of this thesis along with clarifying the researchquestions over our meetings at KTH. What is more, I am grateful for the commentsof Gregg Vanourek, Bo Yin and Kelvin Soen who along with my supervisor provideduseful feedback on the thesis, which is incorporated in this final version.

Lastly, I appreciate the help I got from the journalists who gave some of theirtime to answer my questions, so that this thesis could be carried out.

Contents

1 Introduction 91.1 Research question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101.2 Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111.3 Delimitations and ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2 The News Media Landscape in the 21st Century 132.1 Technological change and society; a theoretical framework . . . . . . 132.2 Previous research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152.3 Journalism: A quest for reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3 Methodology 193.1 Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.2 Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.3 Reliability and limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.4 Research ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4 Analysis 24

5 Current Challenges and Solutions 305.1 The main challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305.2 Potential solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315.3 Are journalists open to new innovations? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

6 Conclusion 35

References 38

A Appendix 42

1 Introduction

The news industry is a rapidly changing field in the world of business. During the late20th century and the rise of the online era, the news organizations’ business modelshave shifted significantly from a traditional revenue model in which the newspaperis sold quite inexpensively, while using advertising to cover remaining costs (Teece,2010). As the rise of the online media continues in the 21st century and the adrevenue decreases (Cook and Sirkkunen, 2013), it puts the newspapers and othertraditional news media, along with their business models in a situation where theymust rethink their strategy.

Due to this change, there is also an impact on the quality of news that is beingproduced and the journalists in order to survive financially. The worth of a singlenews article has dropped significantly since online journalism took over. That is trueboth for the print and the online media (Levy and Nielsen, 2010).

Because of this shift there is room for innovation both in the news industry aswell as in the niche of fact checking and news acquiring, meaning where journaliststhemselves get their news and facts.

In this thesis we will try to study the current news market and the challengesjournalists are facing in an increasingly digitalized industry. To do that we will userelevant literature on value creation and recent developments in the news industry(del Aguila-Obra et al. 2007; Kennedy et al. 2017 ; Stremlau et al. 2017) and inves-tigate the journalists’ point of view by qualitatively analyzing a questionnaire sentto 6 journalists that work at a certain Swedish online news organization.

What is more, we will discuss possible correlations, based on our results andinvestigate digital solutions for existing problems people in the word of journalismare facing (fake news, lack of investigation, etc). To achieve this it is crucial torecognize and isolate the challenges of the industry and sketch a way to tackle themeffectively.

This thesis will contribute to the field of industrial management by shedding somelight into the technological aspect of online journalism, the advancement of which isbound to happen in the near future with even faster rates than the present.

1.1 Research question

We can specify the research in this thesis by mentioning two research questions:

1. How has technology changed journalism in the 21st century?

2. Is there a way to tackle the current challenges and improve the journalists’effectiveness?

The topic is attractive for two main reasons, which we are going to analyze in detailin later chapters.

1. The importance of the news in a democratized economy (Levy and Nielsen,2010) is evident, since it affects the political and social structure of every coun-try (McNair, 2009). Studying the news both in quality and quantity is essentialto understand social trends and the future of the industry and possibly the fu-ture of democracy

2. As technological advancement becomes more and more rapid, there is a needto rethink traditional ways that the news industry was functioning (Cook andSirkkunen, 2013). Business model innovation in this case plays a deciding rolein social development

Analyzing the history of the news media can be of great help since we can track thechanges that happened in the past and try to map new ways forward by learningfrom successes and failures that have occurred in the industry. The technologicaltransition from the 20th to the 21st century is of huge importance.

Later we will connect this change to our own work that has the journalist infocus and their work in an increasingly digitalized news media landscape, as well asanalyze their answers in key issues such as quality and quantity of articles, potentialimprovements and dangers that need to be addressed.

Following the analysis there will be a attempt to interpret the findings in order tosketch the general concepts for new possible innovations with the journalists’ answersas a compass.

1.2 Sustainability

In the past years there’s been justified concerns for sustainability mainly with a focuson ecological sustainability but also on every aspect of industrial life (Elkington,1998). University research must therefore be involved as well, since it has closerelations with innovation and the real economy.

Digitalization is a key aspect within the sustainability pursuit. Digital innovationshave always been a way to manage resources (economical, or ecological) in a moresustainable way. The 3 P’s (people, planet, profit), with which Elkington (1998)attempted to build a framework regarding the sustainability goals of a business in the21st century, explains with a few points what sustainability must be in the modernindustrial market. The U.N has also dealt with similar sustainable developmentissues by focusing yearly on health, poverty, equality, the environment and safety(United Nations, 2018).

The “people” component includes the social sustainability of an organization,meaning the preservation of people’s rights, as well as their communities by inclusionand protection.

The “planet” component refers to the environmental aspect of an organization,which in the 21st century must be taken seriously mainly due to the climate crisisknown as global heating.

The “profit” component has to do with the financial sustainability of an organi-zation, which is crucial for the growth both of the business itself and for the peopleinvested in its success.

According to Thomas and Lohrmann (2017) those three goals must be met inorder to reach sustainability status and are interconnected. The reason this thesisrelates to sustainability is the way the “people” component affects “planet”. The socialaspect of news is also mentioned in Section 2 and is evident that well informed in-dividuals have more chances of being socially and environmentally active(Eisenberg,2008). The business aspect of sustainability (“profit”) is beyond the scope of thisthesis.

1.3 Delimitations and ethics

Although this thesis studies the technological advancement in journalism and itsonline aspect, in no way is it a thesis on journalism and the specifics of journalisticwork. The thesis tries to analyze data collected from journalists in order to correlatetheir answers with the technological advancement in the industry. The author is not ajournalist, although he is highly interested in the news industry and its advancementdue to the effects it has on society, democracy and entrepreneurship.

What is more, the results of the analysis reflect the Swedish online news industry,since the data is taken from a Swedish medium sized online news organization (detailson Section 3). Because of the fact that the news industry is quite diverse, we havechosen online journalism focused on political commentary and investigative stories.This approach has been chosen due to the abundance in literature and the effect ithas on social and economical life.

The research that is carried out in this thesis is not funded by, or related to anyparticular news organization or company. It is a completely impartial investigation onthe technological advancement of journalism. The participants in our data samplehave given full consent to use their answers in our analysis. The names of theparticipants, as well as the name of the news organization will remain anonymousand the author assures that he will not use this information under any circumstancesin an article or publication in the future. The author also ensures the integrity ofthe research and that all data has not been tampered with.

2 The News Media Landscape in the 21st Century

To further discuss the curremt news media landscape we must dive into the dynamicsof its industrial change as well as the technological change that occured during the20th and 21st century.

In this thesis we argue that the basic mechanism behind the change in the newsmedia is technological advancement. Motivated by William Ogburn’s work (2004),technology always stands together with the largest social revolutions around theworld. Information management lies in the heart of every society no matter howadvanced technologically. According to Ogburn’s theory of social change, technologyis the basic cause of social change.

Hence we consider the news media as a tool; a technological tool that bringschange to the fabric of society. This change is then the reason why the news mediathemselves evolve.

This section will help us understand the driving forces that make journalism whatit is today. By studying the history and previous research on the advancement andthe state of journalism we get a clearer view of what needs to be researched and getthe most out of our methodology in Section 3.

2.1 Technological change and society; a theoretical frame-

work

Ogburn’s identified stages of invention, accumulation, diffusion and adjustment (2004)are fully used in this analysis.

1. Invention is the process by which new forms of technology are generated

2. Accumulation is the increase in technology because new things are inventedmore rapidly than old ones are forgotten

3. Diffusion is the spread of an idea from one cultural group to another, or fromone field of activity to another, and as diffusion brings inventions together, theymerge to form new ones

4. Adjustment is the process by which the non-technical aspects of a culturerespond to invention

By using this framework it is evident that technological change is an inseparable partof society itself and its evolution.

Roger’s diffusion of innovation (Rogers, 1995) is also an important and frequentlyused theory in order to create a social framework to explain adoption of technolog-ical innovations. In more detail, he uses certain variables that he claims affect theadoption rate of innovations (Wonglimpiyarat and Yuberk, 2005)

1. Perceived attributes of innovations. This variable has to do with therelative advantage, compatibility and complexity of the innovation in question.It is essentially the characteristics of the innovation.

2. Type of innovation-decision. This variable relates to the nature of theadoption decision. It can be optional, meaning that the users are free to choosewhether or not to use it, it can be collective, where the users are indirectly forcedto adopt the innovation because of peer pressure, or, finally, the innovation canbe forced by an authority (state, or monopoly based industry).

3. Communication channels. This aspect has to do with the way the publicgets informed about the innovation. It could be for example, mass mediacoverage of the innovation, or word of mouth. After the social media boom inthe late 2000s, these two are interconnected.

4. Nature of the social system. Every social system has a different structuredepending on the norms, institutions, laws and general mentality toward inno-vations. As an example, countries with more positive attitude to reforms cancreate an easier environment for new innovations to be adopted, than countriesbased on more traditional and values.

5. Extent of change agents’ promotion efforts. This final aspect that inno-vation diffusion depends on has to do with the efforts the stakeholders of theinnovation put into promoting attributes of the innovation.

This framework is useful into identifying possible correlations in types of innovationsand the environments that they are pushed into. In later chapters we see that newtechnological innovations in the online news industry is never adopted disruptively,but acts incrementally upon older technologies. In the beginning of the 21st century,the journalists made use of various tools in order to carry out their work. The onlinetools became more and more powerful and popular among professionals, but neverdisrupted the industry (Cottle and Ashton, 1999). They acted as a catalyst, changingthe traditional print and multimedia firms into adopting gradually new methods andtechniques, along with changing their business and revenue models. In Sections 2.2and 2.3 we dive deeper into how the online technology has changed the news industryand how journalists have reacted to innovations.

2.2 Previous research

The information revolution started during the 1980’s with the introduction of thepersonal computer and some years later, the internet. This had a great impacton the news as the public began to have multiple sources to stay informed. Untilthen information was a one way channel. Newspapers, radio and television were agradual technological improvement of the same idea. One party (the news media)was providing the news and the other (the public) was consuming it (Kennedy et al.,2017). Also, the revenue models in large had similarities in that they were all basedin ad placement (Hognaland, 2014).

Advances in technology are then staggering during the 1980’s. The PC did nottake time, being first a professional tool, to be turned into an all-round entertain-ment/information machine. Within 15 years and with help from the internet thatbegun to be commercialized in the late 1980’s, we have the PC domination era whichis complemented now with smartphone devices.

Since then information became a two way channel. The public begun to have closefeedback interactions with news outlets changing the balance between transmissionand delivery of news pieces (Domingo et al., 2008).

In Figure 1 one can see among others the adoption rates of radio, color TV,internet and social media. This information is crucial for the next chapters where

Figure 1: Technology adoption in the US. Technology adoption rates, measured asthe percentage of households in the United States owning, a particular technology(Bowden and Offer, 1994; Comin, 2004; Pew Research Centre, 2016).

we will try to discuss new possible digital solutions for the challenges journalistsare facing. The change in the time needed for a service or product to be adoptedas we approach the 21st century shrinks. Radio and color TV took the same timeto become adopted by the majority even though there is a gap of almost 40 years.After the personal computer, the rate of adoption is clearly faster and shows howtechnology is more easily adopted from society in the 21st century.

TV, radio, newspapers have now all online presence. That is what makes theweb unique. All news media are suddenly (it took 10 years) competing in the samearena. The web has become a platform for all traditional news media. That alsomeans that the rules have changed in terms of business models, advertising, numberof employees etc. Even though Figure 1 is not specialized for the news media, itclearly shows the trend from which the news media is not an exception.

During the late 2000s social media come into existence with a lot of them allowingfree information exchange between individuals. By 2013 social media were the most

popular services in the world (Vis, 2013). This also allowed the interaction betweenindividuals and news organizations and also that people were free to distribute newsby themselves.

2.3 Journalism: A quest for reliability

There is a need to focus on how journalism has changed within this changing in-dustry. As mentioned, due to changing business practices, the distinction lines ofwhat journalism is have been blurred. During the early 20th century, the model fora journalist “was a trained professional delivering objectively validated content to areader (or viewer, or listener)”. Analysis and opinion of the journalist was frequentand consensually accepted as forms of organizational, professional and cultural status(McNair, 2009). By the middle and end of the 20th century the standard for news,became more objective, influenced by the advances of natural sciences like physicsand chemistry. This gradually challenged the authority of the professional journal-ist by using multimedia in news articles (video, audio samples) in order to conveytheir message objectively as facts and inform the public (Hoyer and Pottker, 2005).The later type of journalism is not considered a transformation of the news industryrather another side of the same coin. The relationship of between the journalists andthe readers didn’t change.

During the early 21st century and the burst of the online media changed thoserelations. The news industry had to come to terms with readers that were willing toparticipate actively in the news production process. The internet gave the opportu-nity to share information and network with people regardless their location, status,or occupation. In the beginning, as happens with many innovations, the journalistswere unwilling to accept the fact that they had to include the public in the processof news production (Domingo et al., 2008), as this would downgrade their profession.

As the sharing culture continued, the introduction of social media and bloggingmade a dent in the news industry by giving a digital podium to every person in-terested in sharing their story. By the late 2000’s this trend forced journalists andnews organizations to rethink their approach in reporting news (Esser and Umbricht,2014). Social media and online presence is now a necessity for journalism since jour-

nalists themselves are a part of the social media landscape.The history of journalism is a continuous quest to reach the public by reporting

reliable news. The integrity of a journalist has transformed from an authority profes-sional figure to anyone with relatively large online audience. This poses a threat andan opportunity for journalists. On the one hand it is easier than ever before to reacha news reader quickly and target a specific audience. It is however the case that theabundance of online stories along with the way online news produce revenue (ads,sponsors) makes it trickier to objectively establish oneself as a reliable journalist(Borden and Tew, 2007). The public is also a variable that changed during the 21st,as the trust towards the news media have changed significantly. People are graduallydrifting away from mainstream media due to the abundance of information online(Turcotte et al., 2015). In Section 4 we analyze how the journalist is reacting tothose changes along with what be done in order to utilize this technological change.

The news reader is another aspect of news that has changed significantly as wellover those years . The modern reader chooses to stay informed by online tools asit is more convenient and cheaper (Kennedy et al., 2017). Due to the abundance ofonline news and the complexity of regulating the online industry, a reader gets tochoose online news sources regardless integrity or reliability. People are graduallydrifting away from mainstream media due to the abundance of information online(Turcotte et al., 2015). This could be considered a threat for society and democracyas uninformed public tends to affect the economy and politics negatively and thereforeimpact the well being of all citizens (Eisenberg, 2008). This aspect of the online newsindustry is often used to promote interests and has been studied extensively over thepast few years (Mihailidis and Viotty, 2017; Lazer et al., 2018). Although this thesisdoes not dive deep into the issue of “fake news”, it is a major influence on Section 4as well as in forming the questionnaire (Section 3, Appendix A).

It is difficult to predict what the results that the new wave of online journalismwill be. There is relevant research that is done that attempts to shed light into thefuture consequences of the current state of the news media (Curran, 2010; Pavlik,1997; Berger, 2018).

3 Methodology

Methodology constitutes the most important section of a research project. Themethods used are inextricably linked with the reliability of the results of the research.Choosing a methodology to follow is crucial for the topic of any thesis and must beconsidered carefully. “Research methods, as a general concept, include a spectrum ofmethods. It is often defined as the search for knowledge or systematic investigationto establish facts” (Håkansson 2013, pg 2).

In every thesis data must be acquired in some way in order to be analyzed. Itcan either be first hand data (interviews, simulations, experiments) or second handdata (acquiring through literature). The methodology deals with the ways by whichthe data will be obtained and analyzed. It is crucial that the methodology is clearin order to assess the acquired data in Section 4.

Since the thesis is meant to discuss certain challenges in journalism and possi-ble ways to solve said challenges, we will be following an applied research with anabductive approach. The approach was chosen since we want to identify patternsfrom our research that are not necessarily accurate, but will be useful as assembleddata can act as a basis for further future research (Marczyk, 2005; Bryman and Bell,2015). Through a questionnaire we will be gathering useful data, which then aregoing to be analyzed using qualitative methods. A qualitative analysis has beenchosen due to the nature of the research. The data that are going to be analyzed aremainly non-quantifiable (likelihood of a choice, thoughts on issues, etc). Most of theresearch in the bibliography used in this thesis has been conducted using qualitativeapproaches (Borden and Tew, 2007; Domingo et al., 2008;Kennedy et al., 2017).

For the purpose of this thesis it is crucial to get first hand data. This willbe useful for two reasons, as it will be used as information to discuss ways to solvecertain challenges in journalism in Section 5, but it can also be utilized in the analysisregarding the current state of the news media industry and used to identify issuesthat journalists are facing in a digitalized news market.

3.1 Data collection

In order to collect first hand data we turned into an Swedish medium sized onlinenews organization and asked a few journalists to fill a questionnaire. Ideally, personalinterviews would have been a more effective way of getting the data, but due to thelack of time and the firm’s heavy schedule, the questionnaire became the most viableoption. On the other hand a carefully assembled questionnaire can help us focus onspecific questions we want answers to instead of going astray into general discussions,irrelevant to the subject of the thesis.

The news organization that has been chosen will remain anonymous as well as theindividuals that participated in the questionnaire. The reason behind this decisionwas to make sure that the journalists can express themselves openly without havingto concern whether their opinions affect their state of employment.

This particular news organization has been chosen because of its small-mediumsize, as it consists of 15 online journalists and had a revenue of 45 000 000 SEK in2017 according to Bolagsverket (Swedish Company Registration Office). The factthat it also consists of purely online news makes it a good candidate to assess thechange many of its journalists has seen in news reporting over the past decades,as well as describe their situation as journalists and witness their struggles in anincreasingly digitalized news industry. The journalists in this particular news agencyare working purely with political articles, sometimes of investigative nature.

The questionnaire was answered by 6 journalists between the age of 24 and 32years old, their working experience as journalists ranges from 3 to 12 years and theyusually work on 3-5 stories daily. The relative young age of the people in our sampleis also important to extrapolate into what journalism can look like over the nextdecades.

The questionnaire is formed in such a way so that one can identify the currentworking conditions of journalists, e.i. amount of stories per day, ability to fact check,etc, as well as recognize ways to improve the work of a journalist in general. Ithelps us comprehend the changes that journalists and the news media companiesare facing, also described in Section 2 with the appropriate literature, due to vastdigitalization under previous decades and what that means practically for journalists

and the quality of their work.

3.2 Questionnaire

The questionnaire is formed in such a way so that we can get as much personalinformation as possible, map the issues that journalists are concerned with, as wellas try to map the current and future state of news journalism. It is mainly dividedin 4 parts:

1. Journalist’s working experience

2. The current landscape in journalism

3. The journalist’s assessment of the their work

4. Questions on how their work could potentially be improved (analyzed in Section5)

The questionnaire was sent via e-mail to the journalists’ manager who forwardedit to 6 journalists. The platform that was used to gather data was Google Forms(https://docs.google.com/forms) due to its analytics tools and generally its ease ofuse.

The questions in the questionnaire consist of two types of questions. One isscaling questions with which we are trying to collect preference or opinion patternsby asking the participants to answer a question in a scale of 1 to 4. An example is

“How easy/hard would you say it is for JOURNALISTS nowadays to stayin- formed and cross-reference facts?” [1-Very hard, 4-Very easy]

The 1-4 scale has been chosen for two reasons. First, so that it is easier for theparticipant to choose from a few options. Secondly, the scale consists of 4 answerswhich is an even number. That way the participant has no choice but choose the lowscale (1 or 2), or the high scale (3,4). This way there is no middle number (neutralanswer) and makes the analysis easier and more informative.

The other type is open questions. Open questions are questions that are notmultiple choice but requires that the participant answers with a few words. Anexample is

“Can you mention certain difficulties Journalists face at the moment?”[Write a few words.]

This way we ask the participants to freely express themselves and possibly get an-swers that are not expected. It is however very time consuming when it comes toanalysis due to the large amount of information.

The full questionnaire can be seen in Appendix A.

3.3 Reliability and limitations

This thesis takes reliability issues seriously as mentioned also in the Section 1. Selfreporting questionnaires, as the one used in this thesis, have certain limitations andreliability issues.

1. The truthfulness of the answers are often debated in previous research (Spec-tor, 1994; Podsakoff and Organ, 1986). It is stated that the participants due tosocial acceptability biases may not answer truthfully when it comes to sensitivetopics in order to protect their privacy (Schrijver, 2012). Having time and sub-ject limitations, the participants’ truthfulness in answering the questionnaireis not discussed over the scope of the thesis, but it is certainly an interestingsubject in behavioral science.

2. Difficulty in analyzing certain answers is another significant issue. Incontrast with personal interviews, one cannot ask for clarifications or additionalanswers in a questionnaire, often resulting to vague answers or even unansweredquestions.

3. Personalization issues. In questionnaires it is difficult understanding po-tential intensity of emotions that could be helpful in the analysis. People’sreactions are particularly significant when it comes to rating the importance

of a certain subject. Trying to overcome this issue by self assessment of thefeelings of a participant may not give reliable results.

3.4 Research ethics

As briefly mentioned in Section 1.3, the questionnaire is designed so that we get asobjective answers as possible and was not steered by an external entity, business,organization or otherwise. The questions were meant to be clear and tried to keepthe participants within a certain framework of technological advancement and onlinejournalism, without any attempt to deceive or guide them into giving a particularanswer.

It was also stated that their answers and data will be used into carrying out adegree thesis project in industrial management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.The questionnaire was optional and opt-in consent was clearly given without anypressure from the author of this thesis.

The author did not have any personal relations with the people that participatedin the questionnaire, is not aware of their contact information and therefore no con-cerns of breach of confidentiality exist. The online news organization also remainsanonymous over the whole thesis project, so that possible answers in the question-naire do not give away potential business plans, internal organizational structure, orstrategy plans.

4 Analysis

In this section we are analyzing the answers we have gotten from the journaliststhat have answered the questionnaire (Appendix A). The analysis is then going tobe discussed, compare with previous research and consider possible solutions to thechallenges that arose from the answers of the journalists.

As discussed briefly in Section 3 the questionnaire was completely anonymousas well as the news organization. However, we needed a few personal details ofthe journalists that are employed in the organization in order to assess the answersthat we get. For example, age plays a crucial role in the technical capacity of thejournalists. Similar parameters may turn out useful for the purpose of this thesis.

Figure 2: Age of the the sample that participated in the questionnaire.

Age and experience

The median age of the journalists that participated in the questionnaire is 27.5 yearsold (Figure 2). This does not represent all the journalists in this particular newsagency, but it is important for our purposes to have an estimate of the age of thejournalists that work in such digital news agencies. The oldest journalists in oursample are 32 years old and the youngest 24. Even though this age span shows thatour sample is typically young, 10 years of difference in technological years could beconsidered quite a large number taking into account the rate of the technologicalchange we are experiencing in 2019 (Mutekwe, 2012).

Generally, it is a fact that youngest individuals are generally more capable withcomputers, the internet and new technologies (Eisenberg, 2008) and the same rulewas expected to be observed in journalists in the digital age when one has to useevery available piece of technology to research a story. However, in our sample wehave found that younger journalists are having a harder time staying informed andfact-checking the stories they are working on by answering HARD in the question“How easy/hard would you say it is for JOURNALISTS nowadays to stay informedand cross-reference facts? ” (See Appendix A for the answer scale). Due to thisfinding one could conclude that experience is the most important variable in fact-checking and not computer literacy. Since the sample is small and the age differencenot considerable, more future research on the topic could shed some light on possiblecorrelation.

Current landscape

The work of the journalist is of great importance in a democratized society. Thejournalists in our sample seem to overwhelmingly agree with this statement. Theyall agree that journalism has changed over the last couple of decades and will keepchanging as we transition to new technologies and forms of communication.

The journalists in our sample mention the change in television towards a differentform, where it is now more interactive, as well as the introduction of social media,podcasts, virtual reality (V.R), augmented reality (A.R) and artificial intelligence(A.I) in our daily lives. The journalists nowadays must have a range of skills thatwasn’t required in the past. Due to that fact there is higher demand for fast newswith high quality from reliable sources and journalists must adapt to this industrialpace. No journalist in our sample believes there is a chance of returning to previousforms of news reporting.

The change that is mentioned comes naturally with certain issues that journal-ists have to face. As mentioned, journalists nowadays have to have a broad rangeof skills, e.g. analytical skills with modern tools, video and photo editing, socialmedia presence, understand algorithms and most importantly combinatory skills tointegrate all those skills into being a better journalist that captivates the readers.

Figure 3: Number of stories journalists are working on daily.

It is also a fact that news has become less and less objective with all the abundancein the opinion articles online that are more attractive to people due to polarizingtones often used for this very reason. Subsequently, it has become trickier to reachand out to readers, viewers, or listeners and therefore the work of the journalist hasbecome “more stressful ” and “uncertain” and less compensated. This finding agreeswith previous research on this topic (Levy and Nielsen, 2010).

The journalists in our sample have also answered on what they think biggestproblems are in the world of journalism at the moment. 3 out of 6 have mentioned“fake news” and its spreading as the biggest problem. Due to new technologies falseinformation becomes harder and harder to tackle and be critical of what there isonline. Another problem is political and geographical polarization, meaning that theobjectivity of news are at stake. Polarization, along with fake news pave the wayfor a journalism that is based purely on traffic. More traffic means more clicks andtherefore more income for the journalist, who at this point may not have objectivereporting as a priority.

Figure 4: Answers to the question: “Do you think that the amount of stories youwork on simultaneously poses a problem on the quality of your work? ”

Quality self-assessment

The journalists were also asked to mention their daily work routine and assess itsquality. All journalists in our sample reported that they are working simultaneouslyon 3 or more stories per day (Figure 3).

The number of stories per day should affect the quality of their work since everystory comes with interviews, fact-checking, writing, editing and often, as discussedin this chapter, photo and video editing. In other words it is significantly timeconsuming. The journalists however seem to be somewhat divided on this issue butmost of them also agree that the amount of stories they are working on affect theirquality of work (Figure 4).

This question has not taken into account what kind of stories every journalist isworking on. Different news topics are expected to have different gravitas regardingthis question. In any case, 4 out of 6 journalists answered that the quality is indeedaffected (“A little” to “Significantly”) by the amount of stories they have to worksimultaneously. No correlation between “age” or “years in journalism” has been found.It is also interesting that most of the journalists are not happy with the availabletime they have to fact-check, with the majority of them choosing “Not happy” inthe question “How happy would you say you are with the available time you have toresearch every topic and cross-reference facts? ”.

Figure 5: Answers to the question: “How do you usually stay informed about thelatest news? Choose the two most important to you.”

Most journalists believe, however, that they are mostly effective in their fact-checking with all of them choosing “Quite effective” to the question “How effectivewould you say you are with the ways you are checking facts? ” and 4 out of 6 answeringthat there is little room for improvement on this subject.

Social media play a significant role in all this since all of the journalists chosethat social media has a positive effect on journalism due to easy access to people,stories and general information.

Another interesting finding is that all journalists in our sample choose to beinformed by national news agencies and social media (Figure 5). This is crucial toshow how social media has changed the news media landscape. The ease of use andaccess one gets from social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) is unprecedented andit is fully expected that journalists would exploit those media to the best of theirabilities.

This finding is arguably the most important in this thesis regarding the newsmedia landscape at the moment. It shows the transition from one form of journalismto a new era of information sharing where social media play the most important rolein news reporting.

It is also evident however that social media is not yet equipped with the ap-propriate tools in order to battle false information sharing and quality control andthus needs critical thinking in order to distinguish news from opinions or noise data

(additional meaningless information).To perform this task (distinguishing news from other junk information) the jour-

nalists try to cross-reference their stories with established news sources and checkknown patterns to determine the credibility of the source. For example one of theparticipants of the questionnaire commented:

“I use my experience to recognize things that looks and sound fishy, andthen I use google to find credible sources to make sure I do not makemistakes. For example peer reviewed studies and credible news sourcessuch as CNN or The Guardian.”

Another one commented:

“I make sure to find the original news source. I always make sure to readthrough the original study or interview that an article is based on.”

It was a common answer that journalists try to find multiple sources of a certainpiece of news, as well as search online (Google) on relevant information about thesubject. Moreover, mostly in the case of local news they will continue their researchby calling or e-mailing sources to get first-hand testimonies.

At the moment fact-checking is not a particularly hard task for professionalsaccording to our sample. All journalists have currently the tools and experienceto tell apart false from real news. However, this is going to change as A.I andmachine learning become commercialized and more abundant in the industry. Thereare already cases where computer generated videos faked natural facial expressionson politicians to appear as if they made a statement. In that case the future looksbright for machine learning and A.I to tackle those issues.

Possible solutions to current challenges

In the question “If there is room for improvement, what could be done differently? ”regarding fact-checking the majority of the journalists (4 out of 6) replied that thereneeds to be more care into patiently double-checking all relevant sources. In Section5 we are discussing possible solutions that could help journalists carry out their workmore efficiently as well as improving the quality of their work.

5 Current Challenges and Solutions

In this section we are discussing ideas and possible solutions with the journalists infocus. In Section 4 we analyzed the data we acquired from the questionnaire sent tothe journalists. This analysis showed that journalists are mainly doing their researchonline in order to get more information, or fact-check a story they are writing about.This chapter includes a discussion on the key issues that need to be resolved, as well aspossible venture concepts always based on the collected data from the questionnaire.

5.1 The main challenges

As seen in the previous chapter, all journalists in our sample answered that the mainsources for cross-referencing stories are social media and national news agencies. Wealso discussed the issues that comes together with social media due to their reliability.

On one side we have the national news agencies which are owned by the state.This creates a question of polyphony and plurality of different views. In order forjournalists to get the most out of a story they find on a news organization, there hasto be a way they can examine the genuineness of the story that is being reported.That requires more than one source of information.

According to our sample this gap is filled by social media. Social media are easyto use and everyone can have access on them. This creates two issues. The first hasto do with the enormous amount of information that exists due to said accessibility.This makes it really difficult for journalists to cross-check articles due to the datanoise, or personal opinions, as discussed in the previous chapter. The second isthat even though the information can be available, there is the anonymity problemwhere the author of articles or multimedia cannot always be verified and politicalor economical goals are unclear. (Youmans and York, 2012). That poses a greatobstacle for the journalists who are after reliable sources and evidence based facts.

In this thesis we argue that there can be solutions to these two challenges. Acombination of reliable news sources with the ease of use of social media. Thechallenges that are identified in the analysis can be summarized us such:

1. Difficulty to digitally cross-check stories

2. Less time to research a story

3. Multiple stories simultaneously daily

4. Effectiveness of fact checking

5. Reliable source availability

These challenges are the ones that must be addressed when discussing solutions orimprovement of current online platforms.

5.2 Potential solutions

Journalists turn to the web in order to cross-check stories and articles. They usemainly search engines, or social media in order to get a full picture of a story. Searchengines are designed to give results based on what the user is more likely to see, sothey are not useful as unbiased fact checking platforms. Social media, as discussedabove, have a reliability issue. Some social media companies have been trying totackle this issue by ensuring that sources are verified, but there is still much to bedone in order for this issue to be resolved. Since most of the revenue of the socialmedia comes from individual users (Asur and Huberman, 2010) it is difficult toimagine a cross-over of social media companies into a niche market like journalists.

A solution to this challenge could be a digital way to gather news from reliablesources and feed journalists with multiple sources and opinions on the story they areresearching. The data collected show that there could be such a market interestedin using such a platform.

A solution like this could use machine learning to identify the topics of the articlesso that journalists can save time in researching which, according to our sample, is amajor issue in their profession.

It can also give journalists the chance to interact purely with other journalists.Interaction and networking is a key aspect of social media and could be used in otherdigital platforms in order to convey information.

New technologies and innovations are essential to make journalism move forward,exactly as has been done in the past and described in Section 2. As journalists in our

sample stated, it is expected that artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machinelearning and other prominent technologies will lead the way into battling challengesin journalism that existed for a few decades and also others that will arise as a resultfrom these same technological advancements.

5.3 Are journalists open to new innovations?

The journalists were shown an example (mockup) of an online news application andwere asked a few questions in order for us to understand what their priorities are.It was stated that the application does not exist and is used purely for our researchpurposes as a tool that show strengths and weaknesses in the journalist profession.

Figure 6: Mockup design of the online news application. The chosen news sources,topics and other journalists can be seen on the left side. The latest news stories canbe seen on the right side.

As in any other online application, the user (journalist in this case) signs up andis presented with choices of news organizations to choose which ones they want tofollow as well as the topics they are interested in. The application then gets all the

news from the selected news organizations using an algorithm that distinguishes thetopic they belong to.

Then the user is presented with the homepage which will be the main page ofthe platform. All news are presented chronologically independently of the newsorganization and with a clear depiction of what organization each story belongs to(Figure 6).

Apart from the news sources, the journalist can also follow other journalists. Eachjournalist can create “Readlists” where they can gather multiple news stories for acertain subject, which will be public for their followers. This way each user can getthe most out of the platform and interact with other professionals. All news piecesappear on the homepage. The news sources are purely a choice of the journalist(Figure 6).

The journalists were also given a few explanations of this potential online appli-cation:

1. Each journalist can stay informed by having all established news media in oneplace without any algorithm that decides what they would like to see and whatnot to see. Every news story is chronologically ordered and the journalist isthe one that decides which news organizations to follow, according to theirjudgment.

2. Each journalist has a personal space where they can create “Readlists” andalso write their own news pieces. Every user can interact with one another byfollowing them and comment on their pieces.

3. Every news piece is tagged according to topic, so it becomes easier finding newspieces to cross-reference than searching on search engines.

Even though the journalists in our sample had a minor interaction with the ap-plication in Figure 6, they gave a lot of useful feedback on what they believe isimportant for their work. Generally, they were skeptical over how easy to use theonline application could be.

A journalist had doubts that the application could not work for small news stories:

“Usually tools like this fail to pick up the small stories, and only focus onthe ones that are already world wide.”

3 out of 6, found the platform useful. In the question “In what ways do you thinkthis potential application would make your work easier? ” they answered:

“I would use the to get more stories faster.”

“Help with time for researching and reliable sources.”

“Multiple trusted sources in one place would make it a lot easier.”

In the question “Can you mention a reason(s) that you would NOT use this potentialapplication?” we predominantly got two answers:

“To use a new tool takes new routines, and if it’s basically just googletrends, I’m afraid it’s not really enough.”

“Price.”

The first answer has to do with the way one sees the news pieces the on the applica-tion. It is a decent concern since all large online companies have algorithms based on“cookies” that are not tailored to a journalist’s work. It also concerns the adoptiontimespan. New tools require investment in time and money from journalists, or theorganizations they are working in. It is difficult for new innovations to be adopted.

The second answer is about pricing. 3 out of 6 journalists gave the same answer.Being an important factor for a company, pricing involves researching the marketdeeply in order to come to a conclusion and therefore goes beyond the scope of thisthesis although it is crucial if an application like that was going to be a venture.

Only 1 journalist answered positively in the question “If you are/were a freelancer,how likely do you think it is that you would pay for an application like this? ”.

However, half of the people answered positively in the question “How likely do youthink it is that your employer would pay for a service like this for their employees? ”.

6 Conclusion

In this thesis we presented the rapid changes that journalism is subjected to andattempted to solve certain issues by asking the journalists for their opinions oncertain ideas. In Section 2 we discussed the chronological evolution of the newsmedia as well as the importance of technological change in society and the role ofthe journalist.

In Section 3 we described the methodology used in order to get the informationneeded to analyze the issues that journalists are facing in 2019. We designed anonline questionnaire that was sent to medium sized Swedish online news agencyand was answered by 6 journalists. The questionnaire included 27 questions, somemultiple choice and some response questions (Appendix A). The questions spannedover personal experiences, specific tools used and comments on the new venture thatwas proposed.

In Section 4 we aimed to understand the journalists’ issues and thoughts onthe growing online news industry. The first research question “How has technologychanged journalism in the 21st century? ” can be answered using the data we receivedfrom the questionnaire.

To begin with, young journalists seem to have a harder time staying informed andfact-checking news in spite of having higher computer literacy than older journalists.All journalists in our sample agree that journalism is crucial to society and democ-racy. Another finding is that the journalists in our sample consider A.I, V.R, A.Rand other new technologies as pivotal to the profession of the journalist that mustadapt to the new age. This statement also agrees with McNair (2009). The skillsof the journalists also change since nowadays they have to have a range of differentexpertises, such as analytical skills with modern tools, video and photo editing, socialmedia presence, understand algorithms, etc.

Fake news and objectivity in journalism is also regarded as a problem and highlyconnected to new technologies in the new age of news media. To tackle that oursample believes that there is little we can do and suggest caution and patience, whichis hard considering that there is a lot of pressure on journalists to perform better,producing more and more stories and not having sufficient time to fact-check and

increase the quality of their work. However most journalists believe that social mediais a positive step in journalist, mainly because of the ease of use and connectivity.

The most important finding in the thesis is that the two main sources journal-ists use to stay informed and cross-reference news are social media and nationalnews agencies. This finding confirms our assumption from the beginning that mostjournalists use social media for their work as much as non-journalists. This is bothexciting and dangerous at the same time. Exciting because the solutions describedin Section 5 are based on that assumption and can bring forward innovations in thefield and dangerous because social media have a bad record as far as reliability isconcerned.

In Section 5 we describe possible solutions to current issues based on answerswe obtained by using a non-existent online application as a mockup. This sectionis the answer to the second research question “Is there a way to tackle the currentchallenges and improve the journalists’ effectiveness? ”. Journalists, especially youngones, are familiarized with the idea of going all digital. They believe that there isno turning back to smaller amounts of information and that something needs to bedone in order for the industry to not become chaotic. Journalists need a platformthat would make their work easier as well as of higher quality. Also, new technologies(A.I, A.R, machine learning) allow this step to be realized. Journalists believe thatnew innovations will solve certain of their problems regarding time, reliability andfact-checking. They are also skeptical at the same time on how much difference theseinnovations will make in their day-to-day lives.

Limitations and future research

This research comes naturally with a lot of limitations.

1. To begin with, the analysis has been done by using a small number of partic-ipants (6 journalists). In order to have a more clear view of the data, moreparticipants are needed so the statistical error can be smaller. The methodol-ogy will have to change in order to be able to handle data from larger samples.Maybe a quantitative component could be helpful in larger groups of data.

2. Our sample consists purely of Swedish journalists. This limits the findingssignificantly, as Sweden is above the world average in computer literacy (Eu-rostat, 2017). European journalists from the E.U area could be used for morerepresentative results, since the E.U is the largest economical area in the world(European Comission, 2017) and contains countries with a variety of technologyliteracy and journalism practices.

3. The research touches but not goes deep into the correlation between age andrelevant skills that are needed in the new age of online journalism. This is asocially interesting subject as younger journalists have the tendency to be moreskilled in various topics related to technology.

4. The important topic of “fake news” is also not analyzed in this thesis, eventhough it plays a crucial role in the results. A quantitative analysis can alsoshed more light into the efficiency of fact-checking from journalists. Data fromjournalists as well as online articles can be used to reach that goal.

5. Finally, this thesis has not dealt with technical details of the technologicalchanges that has been analyzed. A tech-driven research on the specifics of thosetechnologies (machine learning, A.I, A.R) could be crucial of the advancementof the field.

This thesis attempted to shed some light into the current state of journalism froma technological point of view. By researching the current state of the industry,analyzing the answers of journalists and discussing possible solutions for some of theissues journalists encounter, we came to certain conclusions on the possible futureconditions journalists will have to deal with. As technological advancement continues,journalism and the objectivity in news will be an interesting topic to explore in detailin the near future.

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A Appendix

Below one can see in detail the questionnaire sent to the Swedish online news orga-nization and was answered by 6 journalists for the purpose of this thesis.

Questionnaire

1. Age

2. Years in journalism

3. From 1-4 how important would you say journalism is to society? [1-Very hard,4-Very easy]

4. How easy/hard would you say it is for PEOPLE nowadays to stay informed?[1-Very hard, 4-Very easy]

5. How easy/hard would you say it is for JOURNALISTS nowadays to stay in-formed and cross-reference facts? [1-Very hard, 4-Very easy]

6. Can you mention certain difficulties Journalists face at the moment? [Write afew words.]

7. How do you think the news industry has changed over the past decade or so?[Write a few words.]

8. To what degree does this change has an effect on a journalist’s work? [Write afew words]

9. What would you say is the biggest problem in journalism at the moment (2019)?[Write a few words]

10. Would you say social media have changed news for the better? [1-Not at all,4-Very much so]

11. How many journalists are employed in the agency you work for? [Number]

12. How many stories do you usually work on per day? [Number]

13. Do you think that the amount of stories you work on simultaneously poses aproblem on the quality of your work? [1-Not at all, 4-Very much so]

14. How happy would you say you are with the available time you have to researchevery topic and cross-reference facts? [1-Not at all, 4-Very much so]

15. How do you usually stay informed about the latest news? Choose the twomost important to you. [National news agencies, Social media, Private newsorganizations, Governmental press agency, Other]

16. How do you usually cross-reference facts for a story you are writing about?[Write a few words]

17. How effective would you say you are with the ways you are checking facts?[1-Not at all, 4-Very much so]

18. Do you think there is room for improvement? [1-Not at all, 4-Very much so]

19. If yes, what do you think must be done differently? [Write a few words]

20. [Figure 6] Consider the following image. This is a mockup of a, currently, non-existent application meant to facilitate journalists to get news from all aroundthe world and multiple news agencies and cross-reference facts. One can alsofollow topics as well as journalists who write articles directly on the platform(as freelancers or as part of news agencies).

21. If the application was active at the moment, how likely is it that you woulduse it for your work? [1-Not likely at all, 4-Very likely]

22. How likely is it that would you contribute to the application with articles oropinion pieces as an individual journalist, or as part of you agency? [1-Notlikely at all, 4-Very likely]

23. In what ways do you think it would make your work easier? [Write a few words]

24. Mention a reason(s) that you would NOT use the application. [Write a fewwords]

25. If you are/were a freelancer, how likely do you think it is that you would payfor a service like this? [1-Not likely at all, 4-Very likely]

26. How likely do you think it is that your employer would pay for a service likethis for all their employees? [1-Not likely at all, 4-Very likely]

27. Comments [Write a few words]

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