Mediamorphosis of Regional Newspapers: Utilization of the Internet’s Potential by Kannada Media

Abstract

The advent of the internet has posed threats as well as offered new opportunities for the traditional news media industry. The innumerable potentials of the internet include instant delivery of news, multimedia content and other user-friendly features to media consumers. Since digital news consumption is proliferating in India, it is important to study how Indian regional newspapers have adapted to new media technological advancements. Using Zamith’s (2008. 9th International Symposium on Online Journalism, 1–8) methodological framework, we identify various potentials of the internet that can be utilized by the traditional media offering news online. The study examines the extent to which Indian regional news sites have incorporated these potentials—interactivity, hypertextuality, multimediality, immediacy, memory, personalization, ubiquity, creativity and other latest new media technologies. Roger Fidler’s ‘mediamorphosis theory’ is employed as a theoretical approach to examine how regional language newspapers are responding to technological advancements. The study looks at three news sites of the most circulated Kannada language (a regional language of Karnataka state) newspapers. Our study finds that Indian regional news sites only partially use the internet’s potentials and are unable to explore some of the internet’s features due to their rigid organizational policies and a lack of multiskilled workforce.

Keywords

Indian media internet Kannada media mediamorphosis news regional media Zamith methodology

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

ABC (2019). Audit bureau of circulations. Mumbai: ABC.

Bamezai

(2011). Impact of the internet on changing patterns of newspaper access and news-reading habits in India. Media Asia, 38(2), 110–121.

Bharti

(2019). Changing nature of journalism in India in the digital era. Journal of the Gujarat Research Society, 21(16), 133–138.

Carlos

(2016). Local media and digital frontiers. Media Development, 18–22.

Chung

C. J.

(2012). Exploring online news credibility: The relative influence of traditional and technological factors. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(2), 171–186.

Dahlberg

(2011). Re-constructing digital democracy: An outline of four ‘positions’. New Media & Society, 13(6), 855–872.

Djonov

(2007). Website hierarchy and the interaction between content organisation, webpage and navigation design. Information Design Journal, 15(2), 144–162.

Domingo

(2008). Participatory journalism practices in the media and beyond. Journalism Practice, 2(3), 326–342.

Economics Research Unit (2018). Telecom Statistics India 2018. New Delhi: Department of Telecommunications Ministry of Communications India.

10.

Fiber

(2019, September 23). High speed internet. https://www.jio.com/fiber.html#section-1

11.

FICCI (2016). The future: Now streaming. India: KPMG.

12.

FICCI (2019). A billion screens of opportunity. Kolkata: Ernst & Young LLP.

13.

Fidler

R. F.

(1997). Mediamorphosis: Understanding new media. New York: Pine Forge Press.

14.

Giles

F. H.

(2017). Multimedia Features as “Narra-descriptive” texts: Exploring the relationship between literary journalism and multimedia. Literary Journalism Studies, 9(2), 74–91.

15.

Haneef

A. K.

(2018). Is mojo (en)de-skilling? Journalism Practice, 12(10), 1292–1310.

16.

Harlow

(2018). Looking for community in community news: An examination of public-spirited content in online local news sites. Journalism, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918805255

17.

Harnischmacher

(2014). A comparison between alternative news websites and websites of traditional newspapers in German local media markets. Journalism, 16(8), 1062–1084.

18.

Holcomb

(2018, September 27). Digital Adaptation in Local News. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/digital-adaptation-in-local-news.php

19.

Internet World Stats (2019, September 21). Top 20 countries with highest internet users. Retrieved from www.internetworldstats.com:https://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm

20.

Jackson

T. W.

(2007). Personalisation and CRM. Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 15, 24–36.

21.

Karlsson

(2007). Immediacy of online news: Journalistic credo under pressure. International Communication Association, 1–24.

22.

Karlsson

(2009). Freezing the flow of online news: exploring approaches to study the liquidity of online news. International Communication Association, Annual Meeting, 1–38.

23.

Katarzyna

M. K.

(2013). Book review: Digital Journalism. Discourse & Communication, 365–367.

24.

KPMG (2017). The Digital First Journey. India: KPMG International.

25.

KPMG (2019). India’s digital future. India: KPMG.

26.

Lim

(2012). The mythological status of the immediacy of the most important online news. Journalism Studies, 71–89.

27.

Loop

(1998). Book review of Mediamorphosis: Understanding new media. Mass Communication and Society, 1, 103–105.

28.

Marios

C. J. D.

(2016). User Interface Personalization in News Apps. INRA 2016 Workshop, 12–15.

29.

Misra

(2019). New media, new technologies and print journalism: Changing journalistic practices in the convergent era. International Journal on Transformations of Media, Journalism & Mass Communication, 4(3), 19–26.

30.

Mitchell

(2015). Local news in a digital age. US: Pew Research Center.

31.

Mullick

(2019). Public Sphere 2.0: Targeted commenting in online news media. SpringerLink, 180–187. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15719-7_23

32.

Olusola

(2017). An era of journalism transition in South Africa: Traditional media versus online media. Journal of Social Sciences, 51(1–3), 1–5.

33.

Phillips

(2010). Transparency and the new ethics of journalism. Journalism Practice, 4(3), 373–382.

34.

PMGDISHA (2019, November 7). Overview of PMGDISHA. www.pmgdisha.in:https://www.pmgdisha.in/about-pmgdisha/

35.

Reevell

(2007). Freedom as the web gets wilder. British Journalism Review, 18(2), 47–52.

36.

Rodrigues

U. M.

(2017). Social media as a platform for incessant political communication: A case study of Modi’s “Clean India” campaign. International Journal of Communication, 11, 3431–3453.

37.

Scott

(2006). Mapping mediamorphosis: How print newspaper circulation influences features of audience participation at online news sites. https://doi.org/10.17615/nh03-xy50

38.

Sliashynskaya

(2019). One nation, two languages’: representations of official languages on multilingual news websites in Belarus. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 40(4), 274–288.

39.

Sloboda

(2013). Receptive multilingualism in ‘monolingual’ media: managing the presence of Slovak on Czech websites. International Journal of Multilingualism, 10, 196–213.

40.

Speakman

(2019). Influencing interaction: Does technology increase public participation on community journalism websites? Newspaper Research Journal, 40, 38–50.

41.

Varma

(2018, March 29). Medianama. https://www.medianama.com/2018/03/223-india-had-1-012-billion-active-mobile-connections-in-january-2018-trai/

42.

Wanke

T. J.

(2004). Interactivity potentials and usage of German press-title web sites: An empirical investigation. Journal of Media Economics, 17(4), 241–260.

43.

Wolk

Agnieszka

, & Theysohn

Sven

(2007). Factors influencing website traffic in the paid content market. Journal of marketing management, 23(7–8), 769–796.

44.

Wood

J. F.

(2016). Local journalism: The decline of newspapers and the rise of digital media. London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd.

45.

(2017). Mediamorphosis and the audiences’ media usage. Journalism Bimonthly, 15–26.

46.

Zamith

(2008). A methodological proposal to analyse the news websites organisation of the potentialities of the internet. 9th International Symposium on Online Journalism, 1–8.

47.

Zhang

(2017). Bounding and bonding community: Ethnic diversity and the ethic of inclusion in hyperlocal news. Journalism, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917717830