https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/issue/feedMedia and Communication2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Raquel Silvamac@cogitatiopress.comOpen Journal SystemsMedia and Communication is an international peer-reviewed open access journal dedicated to a wide variety of basic and applied research in communication and its related fields.https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7414Breaking Away From Hectic Daily Media Production: Unleashing Explorative Innovation Through Inter-Firm Collaborations2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Giordano ZambelliLuciano MorgantiBeyond the widespread disruption narrative around media innovation, journalism scholarship has put forward valuable remedies to counteract a techno-deterministic perspective by embracing socio-constructivist and socio-technical approaches. Nevertheless, thus far, scholarly attention has primarily been directed towards the newsroom despite the journalism field having undergone significant structural transformations. In this article, we adopt an organisational perspective to journalism innovation and apply it to the emerging locus of inter-firm collaborations in journalism. In fact, while the newsroom has traditionally been considered the dominant location for implementing innovations, an increasing amount of media work currently occurs in decentralised settings. Our study draws upon 20 qualitative interviews with media practitioners and media managers who have been involved as project leaders in inter-firm collaborative projects. These projects have received institutional funding specifically aimed at fostering media innovation. We strive to understand how practitioners conceive of innovation in their overall activity, what obstacles they encounter in their usual routines, and how collaborative practices support them in their innovation trajectory. Our findings indicate that innovation is predominantly perceived as a demanding and complex ongoing practice characterised by adaptation to an evolving environment and hindered by a lack of resources and time. We also find that collaborations offer media practitioners a temporary framework for balancing their efforts to keep up with the demand for daily media production and their aspiration to carry out explorative activities. Lastly, our research reveals that these collaborations provide occasions for knowledge exchange and self-reflection that are frequently absent in non-collaborative settings.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Giordano Zambelli, Luciano Morgantihttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7399Organizations as Innovations: Examining Changes in Journalism Through the Lens of Newly-Emerging Organizations2024-02-29T10:28:34+00:00Christopher BuschowMaike SuhrThis article argues that the growing variety of new journalistic organizations and their diversification beyond the traditional newsroom may offer a deeper and broader understanding of change and innovation within journalism. Newly emerging organizations play a multifaceted role in journalism: They are both drivers and results of change; they serve as indicators of the ways in which the structures of journalism and its production processes are evolving; they reveal industry trends early on and enable longitudinal research. Despite the emergence of non-traditional organizations in journalism, existing studies on these new entities remain fragmented and have yet to coalesce into a sustained research program. Against this background, this conceptual article aims to contribute to the ongoing theoretical progress in journalism studies in three ways. First, it identifies key factors of why organizational innovations happen. Second, it systemizes recent studies exemplifying the plurality of new organizations in journalism according to different levels from organization studies, including the field level, the level of organizational populations, and the level of the single organization. Finally, the article proposes a research agenda for establishing “organizations as innovations” as a novel conceptual lens for understanding change and innovation in journalism studies.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Christopher Buschow, Maike Suhrhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7444“It’s New to Us”: Exploring Authentic Innovation in Local News Settings2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Ragnhild Kr. OlsenKristy HessMany local newsrooms across the globe have been forced to re-assess (and re-assert) their value and function during a period of intense digital disruption. “Innovate or die” has become an accepted mantra as governments, policymakers, and academics focus on shifting, for example, traditional newspapers into the digital era to maintain their perceived relevance. This article argues the need to understand and learn from the experiences of traditional commercial local news providers who have been encouraged to consider innovative solutions for their businesses. The article adopts a pooled case comparison approach, drawing on data from two separate studies examining media innovation in Norway and Australia. We outline three specific themes that appear to shape localized innovation practices: there is ambivalence or challenge to innovation discourse; introduced innovations are done so incrementally and re-contextualised to adapt to a local setting; and there is an authentic approach to innovation that prioritizes change aligning with local journalism’s social and community values.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Ragnhild Kr. Olsen, Kristy Hesshttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7455Transforming Crises Into Opportunities: Self-Managed Media in Argentina2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Carolina EscuderoThe current situation for journalism in Argentina represents a great challenge due to the continuous economic changes linked to inflation and labour precariousness. Faced with this, a phenomenon known as self-managed media has grown over the recent years, also connected to recovered media that promotes innovation, providing material for use in newsrooms to produce novel content and connect with audiences. For this explorative study, based on journalists’ roles and innovation, we conducted a mixed-methods design to analyse self-managed media composed of recovered, cooperatives, community, popular, and alternative media. First, a focus group was held with 10 communicators to understand their current situation; second, 60 journalists were consulted about their roles and innovations; finally, in-depth interviews were conducted with three communicators who work on self-managed media at the Community and Cooperative Media Confederation. The findings reveal the presence of innovative actions, reported by 90% of respondents, and confirm that 70% of the consulted journalists had assumed new roles in management and administration. In addition, 80% of the journalists praised community work as fostering a sense of belonging and its associated benefits regarding motivation and freedom. These sentiments were further validated by the insights shared by the three interviewees. This sense of belonging could be included in the fifth area of innovation in journalism, which centres on the social dimension.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Carolina Escuderohttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7443Innovations in Journalism as Complex Interplay: Supportive and Obstructive Factors in International Comparison2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Klaus MeierMichael GraßlJose Alberto García-AvilésDámaso MondejarAndy KaltenbrunnerRenée LugschitzColin PorlezzaPetra MazzoniVinzenz WyssMirco SanerWhere does innovation in journalism come from, how is it implemented, and what factors drive or hinder its development? Scholars have explored these questions from different perspectives for over two decades. Our research holistically considers the broader factors that influence the development of journalistic innovation at the macro, meso, and micro levels, and whether it is internally or externally driven. In a three-year international research project, we have unpacked innovation with this multidimensional approach, looking at the most important innovations in journalism in Austria, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. Our study focuses on the mutual interplay between journalists, media organizations, and society. We investigated 100 case studies with 137 guided interviews with senior managers or project leaders. The results show that the focus of supporting and obstructive factors is internal and on the meso level and that many parallels exist between media systems. Internal factors are the intrinsic motivation of individuals, which need the support of open-minded management, allowing a culture of experimentation without economic pressure and assembling interdisciplinary teams. Across countries and independent of the respective media system, three external key drivers of innovation in journalism can be identified: technology, societal change, and change in the digital media universe. The study confirms once again as if through a magnifying glass that journalism is primarily a public service, especially for those innovations that strengthen the role of journalism in a democratic society.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Klaus Meier, Michael Graßl, Jose Alberto García-Avilés, Dámaso Mondejar, Andy Kaltenbrunner, Renée Lugschitz, Colin Porlezza, Petra Mazzoni, Vinzenz Wyss, Mirco Sanerhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7374Institutional Arbitrageurs: The Role of Product Managers as a Locus of Change in Journalism2024-02-29T10:28:34+00:00Allie KosterichCindy RoyalThe modern news industry demands a continuous stream of products ready to meet audience needs; the emergent newsroom role of product manager serves to prioritize them by providing a holistic perspective on an organization’s goals. Product professionals bring in new skill sets and help to bridge the divide and align the priorities among editorial, business, and technology functions, serving as a locus of change in journalism. This sets the stage for institutional complexity where actors struggle to make decisions due to competing logics, which are socially constructed rules created to normalize behavior. This article thus focuses on the dynamics of change in a complex environment by examining news product professionals as institutional arbitrageurs, which are actors who bring competing logics together to create value during a time of complexity. This framing raises questions regarding the locus of change in journalism and aims to further understand the tactics used by actors in a complex environment such as the field of journalism. A qualitative study using interviews with digital journalism’s product professionals is used to address this phenomenon, which allows for a theoretical contextualization of the dynamics of change in journalism and specifically, how product managers act as a locus of change using their roles to manage complexity by bringing incompatible logics together to leverage differences between them.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Allie Kosterich, Cindy Royalhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7496Venture Philanthropy, Local News, and the Murky Promise of Innovation2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Brian CreechAs local news has grown as a research and policy concern, venture philanthropy organizations, like the Google News Initiative, Meta Journalism Project, and American Journalism Project, have forwarded a capacious vision of innovation as offering a broad set of revenue-based solutions to local news’ crises. This article analyzes materials produced by these organizations as a form of metajournalistic discourse to understand how venture philanthropists’ focus on local news and innovation buttresses their authority to intervene in journalistic cultures and articulate visions for the future. Venture philanthropy organizations have claimed a broad and granular authority to define the directions of local journalism’s future, recursively justifying their role as stewards of tech industry largesse by declaring which problems, practices, and innovations are worthy of investment and attention.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Brian Creechhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7429Contextualization: A Path to Chinese Traditional News Media’s Integration Into Social Media2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Difan GuoHaiyan WangJinghong XuMeyrowitz’s media context theory proposes that new media and their contexts will lead to new behaviors. This article adopts media context theory as a framework and utilizes a textual analysis approach to analyze what Meyrowitz termed middle region behaviors and the contextualization strategies of the traditional Chinese news media (<em>People’s Daily</em>) on the social media platform Weibo. The findings reveal three of <em>People’s Daily</em>’s Weibo news’ innovation strategies: the middle regionalization of news contexts (live news, vlog news, chatbox news); personalized production of important news (Weibo commentary, user-produced news); and equal dialogue with the public (daily greetings, holiday greetings, popularizing science). The study also indicates that traditional news media can utilize social media to consolidate communication effectiveness and reconstruct their credibility while actively participating in social governance. In light of these findings, we think that the “contextualization” strategies employed by <em>People’s Daily</em> on the Weibo platform offer meaningful possibilities for traditional news organizations’ integration into social media, such as exploring innovative approaches to news presentation, emphasizing audience interaction, appropriately providing “non-news content” for the audience, and maintaining a commitment to objectivity and fairness in news reporting.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Difan Guo, Haiyan Wang, Jinghong Xuhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7427Can’t Fix This? Innovation, Social Change, and Solutionism in Design Thinking2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Annika RichterichDesign thinking is commonly presented as a solution-oriented approach to innovation. It aims to solve so-called “wicked problems,” with various textbooks and toolkits promising to equip their readers with the skills needed to do so. By rendering design thinking as a magic bullet for problem-solving towards innovation and social change, some of its proponents fall back on a solutionist position. This is despite a growing body of research highlighting critical approaches to design thinking. Drawing on, and adding to, such literature, this article examines how innovation and social change are concretely conceptualised in design thinking guides. Using a cultural media studies approach, the article first contrasts design thinking literature with critical design research, emphasizing the notion of (technological) solutionism. It then zooms in on a purposively selected case: a design thinking textbook aimed at tertiary students. Based on an interpretative analysis of this example, it discusses what understandings of innovation and social change are encouraged in the envisioned design thinking. In linking the reviewed literature and observations from the case study, the analysis highlights two main arguments: First, complex interrelations between innovation and social change are causally simplified in outlining design thinking, thereby fostering techno-fix approaches and mindsets: Readers are encouraged to not merely select but in fact construct solvable “problems,” in turn avoiding confrontations with substantive issues that cannot be fixed through the envisioned design thinking. Second, innovation is conflated with corporate activities and normative questions of innovation, (in-)equality, privilege, and social change are neglected, in turn suggesting a misleading symbiosis between economic and societal interests.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Annika Richterichhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7501Media-Tech Companies as Agents of Innovation: From Radical to Incremental Innovation in a Cluster2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Ana MilojevicLeif Ove LarsenDuring recent decades new players, forms, and practices have been entering the journalism field, prompting a re-examination of journalism’s professional and organizational boundaries. Many scholars argue for expanding the scope of journalism studies beyond the newsrooms to encompass actors labelled as strangers, peripheral players, or interlopers. Those actors do not belong to traditional journalism but are becoming involved in the production of news, challenging journalism borders from the inside and out. Their influence has been growing and scholarship is increasingly mapping out these strangers and assessing their role in journalism innovation. In this article, we examine the role of one type of implicit interloper in journalism innovation: media-tech companies. We consider companies that provide video management and virtual reality services as implicit interlopers, due to their connection to journalism through the boundary object of news production and lack of claim over journalistic authority. We argue that media-tech companies have been under-researched based on a review of literature on innovation according to Holton and Belair-Gagnon’s (2018) typology of interlopers. Therefore, we examine what kind of innovation comes from the periphery of journalism, and the prerequisites for and the role of those innovations in the context of a specific cluster. We conducted a case study of Media City Bergen based on a thematic analysis of semi-structured elite interviews with executives of media-tech companies. Our findings show how media-tech companies bring innovation to production and distribution, content, and content consumption. Furthermore, they show how disruptiveness and the degree of innovations change with the maturation of the cluster.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Ana Milojevic, Leif Ove Larsenhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/7459Journalistic “Innovation” Is Hard to Hate, but Actual Change Is Just Hard2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Jane B. SingerWho is opposed to “innovation”? For most newsroom publishers, managers, editors, and reporters, the word connotes progress; it implies a strategy for achieving success—and dodging failure. But innovation inescapably entails change: Doing and thinking about things differently means giving up the old as well as embracing the new. This commentary recaps journalists’ response over 30 years of digital news. It suggests that calls for change meet with initial resistance, typically on normative grounds; only over time do practitioners normalise the innovation, incorporating it into their perceptions and routines.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Jane B. Singerhttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/8152Conceptualizing and Contextualizing Media Innovation and Change2024-02-29T10:28:35+00:00Frank HarbersSandra BanjacScott A. Eldridge IIAn innovation and change discourse has become central in journalism studies scholarship concerned with highlighting solutions to the many challenges confronting media in the digital era. Although with good intentions, these debates have been predominantly technocentric in their imagination of media’s future, inadvertently directing its development towards a preoccupation with mastering digital technologies. On the one hand, media have strategically appropriated and exploited such technocentric discourse to position themselves within the field as leaders with considerable prestige and status. On the other hand, however, journalists and media professionals have approached technological innovation with caution, demonstrating innovation to be a gradual process with incremental changes that need to align with or reimagine practices that support journalism’s core ambitions and public service ideals. Drawing on the scholarly work of colleagues included in this thematic issue, in this editorial we conceptualize media innovation as a fuzzy and contested concept and call for an expanded research agenda that redirects our attention more firmly towards: exploring organisational and institutional innovation; considering the role of ancillary organisations, collaborative projects, and the various newly emerging innovative actors within and outside of the journalistic field; adopting bottom-up approaches to examine societal innovation and its public value and scrutinize questions around who benefits from change; and finally, paying more attention to the transnational as well as culture-specific contexts in which media innovations happens.2024-02-29T09:21:32+00:00Copyright (c) 2024 Frank Harbers, Sandra Banjac, Scott A. Eldridge II