Innovative News Design: Merging Technology, Participation, and Values
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Chapter 1: The Role of Technology in Journalism
Technology serves as a medium that can be tailored to enhance participation and uphold journalistic values. Crafting stories that prioritize public interest, foster engagement, and leverage technological advancements is crucial for driving innovation in journalism. While there is a general acknowledgment of the need for innovation in storytelling for the public good, there remains ambiguity regarding what true innovation entails beyond merely adopting new digital tools, as well as how to effectively utilize these tools without compromising fundamental journalistic ethics.
As emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things and mixed reality gain traction, it is essential for journalists to learn how to harness these novel technologies while maintaining independence from large platforms. This autonomy is vital for ensuring that public interest values remain central to journalistic innovation.
In a recent paper, Jane Johnston, Ben Matthews, and I contend that rather than continuously adapting to new tools and platforms, journalists should engage in a design-oriented process that involves configuring, exploring, and envisioning how to use technological advancements to serve the public interest.
Chapter 2: Understanding Values in Journalism
The process of configuring technology, participation, and values can lead to the creation of new news products and shed light on necessary changes to support innovative ideas. Here, "values" refer to the foundational principles of rigorous research, objectivity, transparency, autonomy, and ethical conduct that support public interest journalism, along with the values held by communities and audiences. By treating values as materials to be worked with, transparency or representation of marginalized voices can take precedence over mere story reach or click metrics.
Imagine if platforms like Facebook had been designed with a focus on verification, transparency, or balance.
Section 2.1: Participation in Journalism
While journalism has welcomed the idea of audience participation through comments, shares, and likes, these forms of engagement often overshadow deeper, real-world interactions that foster meaningful involvement in societal issues. Co-design practices offer a way for newsrooms to engage audiences in storytelling, thereby encouraging constructive responses to social challenges.
Section 2.2: The Impact of Technology
Emerging technologies such as mixed reality and ambient computing have the potential to radically enrich journalism. The next wave of computing is poised to transform our interactions with information and societal issues. Journalists, designers, developers, and publishers should explore what interconnected journalistic tools are, their functions, their destinations, and the meaningful interactions they can facilitate in storytelling.
Chapter 3: Steps Toward Innovative Public Interest Experiences
To embark on the journey of designing innovative public interest experiences and products, consider these four strategies:
- Reframe technology as a supportive tool for journalistic objectives, rather than a black box that journalism must perpetually adapt to.
- Provide journalists, designers, and developers with the freedom to think creatively about the interplay of participation, technology, and values relevant to their topics or communities.
- Utilize design techniques, such as journalism-specific design thinking cards or sketching, to generate and refine ideas.
- Experiment with co-design by involving reporters, producers, developers, artists, experts, and the public in creating impactful storytelling methods that encourage action.
Chapter 4: Addressing the Consequences of Innovation
Newsrooms have quickly integrated social and mobile technologies into their production processes and outputs. Extensive research critiques the effects of these digital platforms on journalism and society (van Dijck’s 2018 book, Platform Society, provides an insightful overview). Increasing concerns in liberal democracies about the influence of social networks on public discourse have prompted parliamentary inquiries in countries like Britain, the United States, and Australia.
Journalists, with their in-depth understanding of communities and issues, can significantly contribute to discussions on how to incorporate social, democratic, and public interest values into platform usage. However, it is crucial not to assume that new journalistic outputs will resemble existing stories. Experiences crafted by merging technology, values, and participation are likely to diverge from familiar formats.
The true value of this process lies in its potential to unveil the underlying structures, constraints, and assumptions inherent in current practices. Creating and distributing tangible, public interest experiences may necessitate different personnel, editorial processes, and methods for evaluating impact, ultimately challenging existing power dynamics. Embracing innovation means tackling these complex challenges head-on.