On the becoming of an academic home for research into the intersection of mobile devices and news

The journal Mobile Media & Communication (MMC) has attracted, editorially processed, and published an impressive batch of original research articles since its inaugural issue in 2013. The journal presents itself as “a peer-reviewed forum for international, interdisciplinary academic research on the dynamic field of mobile media and communication,” and it has rapidly gained significance and earned a well-deserved high impact. The journal attracts scholars and scholarship from a range of disciplines, many of which frequently also participate in the annual International Communication Association (ICA) conferences. Once operating as an interest group at ICA, at the 72nd annual conference in Paris, “Mobile Communication” was turned into a division of its own, and the MMC journal editors have contributed to this as well. The journal and the division have become important academic “homes” and “hubs” for research into mobile media and communication. These are incredibly important for academic dialogue, belonging and research cumulativity, and will play powerful roles in the ongoing shaping of international research.

Importantly, these had not been established when I started researching the intersection of mobile and journalism/news in 2005. As a junior scholar I was keen to develop research about this emerging area, yet found that no other journalism studies scholars focused on mobile media, and scholars of mobile communication were not studying news/journalism but mostly communication patterns. The area evolved through standalone conferences and special issues, attracting scholars like myself, and I noticed how many others were repeatedly contributing to the same venues. Then followed industry developments that were to substantially transform what mobile media is, and its uses and significance. In late 2007, Apple publicly announced its first iPhone and Android announced its work with a mobile ecosystem. In 2008, touchscreen smartphones coupled with app stores, and mobile data-plan subscriptions rolled out internationally. Over time, smartphones have become increasingly sophisticated and these mobile ecosystems with apps have developed substantially. In his important book on taken-for-grantedness, Ling (2012) convincingly reported how mobile communication had become interwoven into the textures of everyday life. This has since extended also to mobile media, including but not limited to how it is being taken for granted that publishers publish news for mobile apps and that citizens are updated on important news, having their smartphones within an arm's length at most times.

The massive developments in the industry and society, transforming the mobile phone into what some have referred to, metaphorically speaking, as a Swiss army knife, has once and for all transformed the contours of media and communication, and the role mobile plays. The timing for launching Mobile Media & Communication in 2013, with such a compelling journal name, was great. The editorial agenda of the journal has opened for journalism studies scholars to submit their works focusing on journalism or news, in the intersection with mobility or mobile, media and communication. The journal has published a significant number of articles on this research area, including but not limited to a 2015 special section of the journal. Several of the articles in the journal and field have studied if, and how, the uptake of accessing news with mobile devices has had a displacing and/or a complementary effect on people's other news consumption habits. Using different methods and measures in studies in different parts of the world, the findings at the time were mixed (Chan, 2015; Thorson et al., 2015; Westlund & Färdigh, 2015).Meanwhile, the Reuters Institute has rolled out its internationally oriented and survey-based Digital News Report on an annual basis every year from 2013 to 2022. Their findings witness a continuous growth in online news consumption over the years, across countries, and this is largely because of mobile news consumption (and less so desktop or tablets). The rise of accessing news via social media platforms has gone hand in hand with mobile devices. Meanwhile, print, radio, and television news consumption has continuously decreased (Newman et al., 2022), suggesting that mobile has exerted overall displacing effects on legacy news media. As of 2022, people around the world (especially the Global North) turn to their smartphones for accessing the news. The smartphone is a so-called miniaturized mobility par excellence (Elliott & Urry, 2010) that can be used whilst on the go by the general public for accessing the news (from the moment they open their eyes in bed in the morning until they close their eyes in the evening). The ubiquitous and increasingly computer-like affordances of smartphones have also enabled journalists to engage in news production activities whenever and wherever. Mobility as a concept has recurrently been used by scholars studying journalism and news with mobile devices. Duffy et al. (2020) brought together a Special Issue focusing on the intersection of mobility and news in production, distribution, and consumption. They argued that mobility extends far beyond the material sense of smartphones being portable, to dynamics of movement associated with technologies and business models more generally, as well as diverse actors and audiences. Let us look in retrospect at exploring some key insights when it comes to how news publishers and journalists have approached publishing news for mobile devices.

Research into journalism and news in an age of mobile media

Journalism studies and the news industries have time after time come up with labels for emerging forms of journalism. A team of journalism scholars proposed X Journalism to capture how “journalism” is combined with whatever term du jour is being used to suggest novelty and specificity in journalism. Altogether they mapped 166 forms of X journalisms (Loosen et al., 2022), and this list has continued to grow. In this context we find that there has been the development of research into “mobile journalism,” indicating the emergence of a novel and specific form of journalism. Scholars have reviewed and discussed “mobile journalism” as an emerging newsgathering practice (Quinn, 2011) and distinct epistemic practice linked to its production and distribution (Canavilhas, 2021), as well as explored “mobile journalism” as a field (Perreault & Stanfield, 2019). These, and many other studies, suggest that a distinct form of “mobile journalism” has emerged. Proposing “mobile journalism” as a genre or form of journalism is not the same as recognizing that journalists equipped with mobile devices have become more mobile and flexible, able to work as so-called mojos (mobile journalists) if you so will. Journalists can enter countries and places with their mobile devices where they would not be allowed to bring in professional recording equipment, and by always having their smartphone with them they are in some ways always ready to report from the scenes of where they are (Westlund & Quinn, 2018).

Meanwhile, much news work is being carried out from open office landscapes in the newsrooms, with reporters engaging in online sourcing and production of news materials from their desks. Reporting from the scenes requires sending reporters there, and research shows some have organized their online live broadcasting more as a collaborative effort than a one-person mojo endeavor (Westlund & Ekström, 2021). The intersection of mobile and news/journalism thus goes beyond individual mojo and “mobile journalism” as a form of journalism, which certainly calls for critical scrutiny.

The emergence of increasingly smart and sophisticated mobile devices, and ecosystems, have enabled news publishers to accomplish more when it comes to publishing news for mobile devices. The technological developments have enabled, and certainly pressured, publishers to publish news for mobile news but has not determined their actions. Formative developments in the early 2000s included sending news push alerts via short message service (SMS) or multimedia messaging service (MMS), and cross-publishing news for (somewhat) mobile-friendly web pages. Adapting and customizing news materials for specific formats, like an SMS with a pre-specified number of characters, certainly result in news workers having to take mobile into consideration in some ways. It does not mean, however, that they shift to doing “mobile journalism” the very moment they re-write an excerpt from a news article to fit with the affordances of an SMS, MMS, etc. Publisher's subsequent efforts towards developing mobile push notifications, indeed, have proven valuable, and nowadays such are incorporated into mobile news apps that can notify its users of breaking news even on their locked screens. Mobile news push notifications also result in some learning (Stroud et al., 2020). Relatedly, the receivers of push notifications may treat their mobile screen as an individual sphere for which they have expectations of it fulfilling personal needs (Mäkelä et al., 2020). In the 2000s there was much emphasis on how digital and mobile media facilitated for citizens to actively produce and share content, actively participate in journalism, and act as citizen journalists. The public contribute occasionally, with tips and pictures used by professional journalists (Westlund, 2013), but overall research finds that journalists have not broadened their online sourcing much over time (Schapals & Harb, 2021). Importantly, many news publishers have approached mobile media with serious and diverse efforts.

Next, let us explore some key findings from my doctoral dissertation from the formative phase 2008 − 2010, then turn to subsequent research in the field and MMC. In my doctoral dissertation I longitudinally studied a large Swedish news publisher and how their journalists, technologists, and businesspeople engaged in sensemaking of mobile media. At the time the publisher employed a “mobile editor” who customized news materials for their mobile channels, deemed both practically and symbolically important. The mobile editor manually adapted headlines and images to fit better with the smaller user interface, and eventually trained other web editors to carry out similar tasks. Importantly, the publisher did not work under the assumption that all reporters would become “mobile journalists,” but rather that editorial content management systems would become capable of automating news distribution for mobile. The news publisher sought to explore a cost-efficient approach to mobile, amid concerns about the overall sustainability of their business model. They chose to follow suit with others in the industry by creating and launching apps for iOS and Android. This was done in spite of some internal actors raising significant concerns about the power and control Apple would have over their mobile app, access to metrics, and indefinitely charging them 30% of all revenues made. The apps were programmed and designed to feature top news materials for a selection of news “beats.” They opted for automating the mobile news publishing, programming the app to fetch and publish specific news content based on how prominently it was featured on the website (Westlund, 2011).

From the late 2000s to the early 2020s much has clearly happened in both the news industries and with mobile media. Meanwhile, the longitudinal study discussed above brought up findings and themes that have continued significance for mobile communication research. This extends to research inquiries focusing on the interrelationship between journalism and technology, a.k.a. humans and machines. Automation, artificial intelligence, algorithms, programming, platforms, datafication, code, and digital design have all become important areas of development and scientific inquiry in the context of journalism and news. There is indeed the need to keep these issues in mind with framing research in the context of mobile news. For example, one can ask how news publishers use mobile chat applications for sourcing (Belair-Gagnon et al., 2018).One can ask about the impact of mobile media on journalistic practices (Dodds, 2019), as well as how mobile media is used for news sharing by the public (Duffy, 2021; Kalogeropoulos, 2021). There are also studies focusing on publishers’ approaches to platforms (Boczek & Koppers, 2020) and how they personalize news with mobile-based push notifications (Wheatley & Ferrer-Conill, 2021). Scholars have studied how human news workers, with their news values, develop code, and algorithms that let technology automate the distribution of news for mobile news applications (Weber & Kosterich, 2018), and the resource exchanges between news organizations and third parties when it comes to mobile news apps and their data (Kammer, 2021). Relatedly, scholars have advanced work into location-based data and ethics (Oppegaard & Schmitz Weiss, 2022), and how news publishers framed authorities’ tracking of citizens’ geolocations during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yadlin & Marciano, 2021).

With an eye towards the future

The list of important studies in this field could go on and on, and obviously cover a range of themes and topics. Mobile Media & Communication has become an important academic home for multiple publications in the field and will evidently continue to publish pioneering research in years to come. Let me end this article by calling for research into four specific areas that have not yet been studied sufficiently.

First, cross-platform orientation: scholars both can and should study the role of mobile more in relation to other digital platforms. There is a quickly growing body of research into themes such as incidental news exposure, news-find-me, audience analytics, news recommender systems, etc., yet scholars have largely overlooked the distinct role of mobile devices and mobile news. Few studies have focused on analytics and metrics for mobile devices, and subsequently also efforts towards mobile news personalization. Yet we know that people predominantly use their mobile devices for news accessing, and that trace data is collected by Android and Apple, as well as by analytics companies and publishers.

Second, and in extension of the first, scholars should study the business of journalism in an age of mobile media. Legacy news media have faced continuous declines in advertising revenues due to global platform companies. There are significant opportunities for personalized news and advertising for smartphones, but, as discussed, publishers are dependent on analytics from Apple and Android. Publishers advance more and more reader revenue, focusing on conversion to subscriptions and issues of churn. I call for research into this area, including publishers’ position towards revenue sharing with Apple, but also revenue models such as crowdfunding and sponsorship.

Third, mobile news and visual culture: smartphones equipped with sophisticated cameras, photo-editing programs, and visually oriented social media platforms have contributed to contemporary visual cultures. Scholars should advance research into the intersection of mobile, visual culture, and news; not only institutional journalism but also misinformation and so-called fake news. This line of research harmonizes with many research agendas into social media networks and platforms but would make mobile media salient.

Fourth, news work in an age of mobile media. Much remains to be studied when it comes to how news workers approach the affordances of mobile technology in their news production, and in shaping approaches to news distribution with developments of app functionalities, etc. I call for research into concrete epistemic practices, in newsrooms and beyond, and via digital technologies such as Slack and Teams. Researchers should study the ways in which news workers approach different platforms and devices; and, if they have developed specific considerations and routines for mobile devices, then what characterize these, and how are they justified?