What influences do online journalists have on their audiences, in comparison to mass media journalists?
While audiences for online journalism remain smaller than the audiences for mass media journalism, online journalists have the same influence on their audiences that mass media journalists have — by choosing which stories to report; by choosing which facts, quotes, and other story elements to include and which to exclude; by choosing to tell the story from a particular point of view. A crime story told from the point of view of the victim will elicit a different reaction from the same story told from the point of view of the criminal, for example, whether that story is presented in the morning newspaper, on the 6 o’clock TV news, or on the Web. The Web’s interactivity and hyperlinking gives the journalist more opportunities to examine multiple points of view in a particular piece than traditional, analog media. The lack of serious space limitations permits online journalists to develop a story more fully and to publish source documents and background material.
Related Questions
- How much choice do audiences of online publications have about what news and information they receive? Is it really that different to the information we are fed by the mass media?
- Are there online lesson plans relevant to: audiences, history of media, TV/video production, representation, and ideology?
- What influences do online journalists have on their audiences, in comparison to mass media journalists?
