Master´S Thesis by Nina Zöpnek
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Master´s Thesis By Nina Zöpnek Mapping the News – How an inter-disciplinary approach between the artistic form of social mapping as implemented by Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes and investigative journalism can allow to re-think news representation A theoretical approach in the shape of an investigative article rMA Cultural Analysis (Arts and Culture) Supervised by Dr. Joost de Bloois June 2017 Universiteit van Amsterdam Historically speaking Staying on track with the latest news updates in any shape or form currently seems like an almost impossible task. Whether one is particularly interested in the news or not, the overwhelming fragmentation of the journalistic profession makes it a difficult endeavour to keep an overview. Updates are constantly offered as articles in newspapers, news shows on radio or television broadcasting, instant news updates on websites or apps, news excerpts in social media, podcasts on recent occurrences, images, or video clips, … And the list of what counts as news items could be expanded. One of the main reasons why it has become so difficult to keep up with the constant flow of information is the internet. Its introduction into our everyday lives is one of the biggest challenges journalism1 had and still has to face. Historically speaking, it is a rather long record that is currently being disrupted. The concept which we today refer to as “the press” has had a privileged monopoly over exposing and reporting on political and economic facts, transitions, and misconducts for approximately half a millennium. Its strength was born out of a technological advancement – namely the Gutenberg Press – and is now being undermined by another progression in technology and the changes this inherently entails: the rise and spread of the internet. With the Gutenberg Press and the concept of reproducing texts through printing, the first forerunners of today´s newspapers can be located in Europe in the late 15th to early 16th century. The increasing spread of Protestantism and its focus on a more widespread literacy within society for various reasons2 laid the groundwork for the success of public newspapers (Gawthrop and Strauss 39). Later, during the 18th century, newspapers “played a crucial role in exposing scandals and investigating the wrongdoings of public officials” in Europe and the newly independent United States of America, which is still one of the roles of news outlets today (stanford.edu). The big difference between newspapers of the past and now, however, is that their standpoints today are often required to be less political and more objective (as far as objectivity can go within journalistic reporting). By the early 20th century, newspapers had become an important medium to inform the public about important issues, to question the government, and to hold it accountable, affording the industry its role as the Fourth Estate. When radio broadcasting and later television broadcasting came into being, however, they “damaged its monopoly over the dissemination of information” (stanford.edu). The next, and so far biggest, challenge for print journalism arrived when Arpanet, “the first prototype of the internet”, was decommissioned in 1990, and the internet was introduced for 1 In this paper the term “journalism” will refer to what would traditionally be newspaper journalism, if not stated otherwise. Due to technological advancements it refers to more than articles in printed newspapers, but also online articles, and publications in news apps which might be supported by documentary photography and documenting video clips. 2 According to Gawthrop and Strauss, during the time of the Lutherian Reformation there was the aim to increase education – and therefore literacy – in order to be able to choose from a higher number of educated people because “the expanding state and the aggressive church needed a large recruiting pool for their proliferating bureaucracies” (p. 39). Although the connection between the rise of Protestantism and literacy might not be as clear, and implemented due to different reasons as often believed (where common belief is that Protestantism propagated literacy so that believers were not dependent on the priesthood anymore), it still laid ground for a more educated and bureaucratic way of life. (Gawthrop, Richard, and Strauss, Gerald. “Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany”. Past and Present, no. 104, 1984, pp. 31-55) 1 public usage in the following years (Cantoni and Tardini 221). Since then it has confronted the profession of journalism with a number of new challenges. Steadily, the utilization of the World Wide Web by the public increased over the following years, leading to continuous augmentation of its capacity for quicker searches, an advance in the speed of loading images and viewing video clips on screens, an increase in complex interaction between users, and much more. All of these constantly improving features resulted in the emergence of online websites of various kinds, including those of newspapers, journals, and magazines. Within that trend, an increasing number of blogs were created, chat rooms invented, and slightly later along the timeline social media as we know it today came into being. Simultaneously, technology kept adapting to the constant changes and advancements in the internet, maybe even creating a symbiotic relationship with it, within which the hardware and the software keep pushing each other to new heights. As much as the technological market expanded and improved, it was one invention in particular which forever changed our relationship with the internet: Steve Jobs´ first generation of the iPhone released in 2007. It was the introduction of the multi-touch smartphone exactly one decade ago which marks the turning point in technological progress and the public utilization of the online network. Individual drops of a fluid concept On first glance and taken individually, all of these inventions, alterations, and enhancements mentioned above might not seem very influential on the changes within the profession of journalism. A combination of them all, however, has inevitably changed the industry, “representing something of a paradigm shift in how journalists have traditionally functioned” (stanford.edu). It has progressively become an “industry in transition” (Deuze and Witschge 121) wherein the core concept of the newsroom has become “increasingly fluid” (Deuze and Witschge 128). And the individual drops seem to be impossible to collect, even by the professionals of the field, as it is not yet clear which effects the technological changes and their subsequent modification of daily modern life will have on the profession. So far it has entailed a persistent necessity to experiment and “transition” from one mode of conduct to another, and to adopt a certain “fluidity” that serves the acceleration within journalism and our contemporary lifestyle in general. In short: professional journalism has fragmented into a less homogeneous concept due to the various changes that have occurred throughout the past five decades or so. It has lost its forward momentum, trying to adapt to these alterations while simultaneously attempting to maintain its centuries-long traditions, instead of seizing the opportunity to re-invent its approach towards its manners of implementation. Several improvements within the internet – such as the increase of its speed, its growing capacity, the expanse in connectivity between the rising numbers of users, and the mobility of the network leading to the web´s democratization – were above all seen as competition instead of as a potential tool for the profession. The increased individualization of the internet still represents an obstacle: “Web logs, later known as blogs, became an immensely popular way for everyday citizens to update the world about their lives and news – democratizing the news reporting function outside of the small elite of journalists that had previously controlled 2 the media. These blogs linked to articles and provided immediate opinions and analysis, and represented an entirely new way to report on news than previously seen.” (stanford.edu). In other words, these improvements within technology sparked a new form of the movement of citizen journalism in which individuals who are not affiliated to professional journalism gather information and distribute it through new, personalized channels. According to Bowman and Willis, it is not inherently damaging when “a citizen, or group of citizens, [play] an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (9). The concept of citizen journalism, however, became more complex since the publication of their study in the year of 2003. The fast-paced growth of the internet allows every citizen with access to the world wide web to contribute in one way or another: articles or postings of any kind can be commented on individually, virtual discussions may be sparked from these in chatrooms or on social networks, images and video clips can be uploaded as sources of proof or commentary, and personal standpoints can be easily shared with the vast amount of people in the online communities. By the end of the 1990s, forerunners of weblog publishing systems and content management systems comparable to today´s Wordpress and Wix boosted the surge in personal publishing (Gill,