Innovators and innovated: Newspapers and the postdigital future beyond the “death of print”

Abstract
Along with other cultural organizations, newspapers, through waves of digital disruption, have become subject to a dominant narrative of crisis. But newspapers have long participated in change. A constructivist approach, qualified by consideration of media materiality, draws attention to diverse but essential processes of innovation around them. We see a contraflow of migration from digital to print, opening up a shared media space; bonding strategies are bringing multimedia to ink on paper, while bridging via boundary objects such as QR (Quick Response) codes are connecting the two. Among other initiatives, development of automation of news production and experiments with transparency are further evidence of an active embrace of change by newspapers that calls into question the discourse on their demise. This analysis inductively develops a nuanced account of the role of the newspaper as an object and as an institution. It suggests a hybrid, multifaceted, enduring presence of print in the complex media ecology of the future.
Main Authors
Format
Articles Research article
Published
2017
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Inc.
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201703101621Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0197-2243
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2017.1289488
Language
English
Published in
Information Society
Citation
  • O’Sullivan, J., Fortunati, L., Taipale, S., & Barnhurst, K. (2017). Innovators and innovated: Newspapers and the postdigital future beyond the “death of print”. Information Society, 33(2), 86-95. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2017.1289488
License
Open Access
Copyright© the Authors, 2017. This is a final draft version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published by Taylor & Francis. Published in this repository with the kind permission of the publisher.

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