Uv Web 091916

Online journalism:
research methods
A multidisciplinary approach in
comparative perspective
Marcos Palacios
Javier Díaz Noci
(eds.)
argitalpen Zerbitzua
Servicio Editorial
www.argitalpenak.ehu.es
ISBN: 978-84-9860-191-6
Marcos Palacios
Javier Díaz Noci
(eds.)
ONLINE JOURNALISM:
RESEARCH METHODS
A multidisciplinary approach in
comparative perspective
ISBN: 978-84-9860-191-6
Contents
INTRODUCTION 11
1. TYPOLOGY OF ONLINE MEDIA 15
1.1. Introduction 15
1.2.Relevance of the Typologies 17
1.3. Proposal for a Cybermedia Typology 19
1.3.1. Typologies Centred on the Actions or Development of the 19
Cybermedia
1.3.2. Typologies Centred on Communication Models 21
1.3.3. Typologies Centred on the Elements that Make Up the 23
Cybermedia
1.3.4. Typologies Centred on the Aim of the Cybermedia 23
2. GENRES IN ONLINE JOURNALISM: A TYPOLOGICAL PROPOSAL 25
2.1. Criteria for the Classific ation of Journalistic Genres 25
2.2. Theoretical and Methodological Framework of Research in Genres on 27
2.3. Analytical Proposal 30
2.3.1. Rhetorical Criteria 30
2.3.2. Hypertextuality 31
2.3.3. Multimediality 32
2.3.4. Interactivity and Participat ion 34
2.3.5. Temporality 35
2.4. Infographics 36
3. NEWS AND DATABASE ARCHITECTURE 39
3.1. Search methodologies for news architecture 39
3.1.1. Theoretical Context and State of the Question 39
3.1.2. Structure in the Cybermedia 42
3.1.3. Analysis o f the Hierarchy of Elements 43
3.1.4. Applied Model for a Case Study 44
3.2. Methodologies of Database Analysis in Online Journalism 46
3.2.1. Theoretical Context and State of the Question 46
3.2.2. Databases as Paradigm and Metaphor 49
3.2.3. From the Syntactic Web to the Semantic Web 50
3.2.4. Methodology of Analysis 51
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES IN JOURNALISM DESIGN ON INTERNET 53
4.1. Origins of Research and Methodologies in Cybermedia Design 54
4.2. Proposal for Combining Traditional and Innov ative Methodologies 56
4.2.1. Descriptive Methods 56
4.2.2. Interview and Questionnaire Put to Experts 59
4.3. Studies Centred on the Audience 60
4.4. Complementary Methodologies 65
4.5. Final Presentation of the Results 65
5. NARRATIVITY 67
5.1. Hypertextual Narrativity 67
5.1.1. Theoretical Bases for the Study of Hypertext 67
5.1.2. Superseding Lineality: Hypertext as Intertextuality 68
5.2. Methods of Researching the Hypertextual Narrative 70
5.2.1. Hypertextual Structures 70
5.2.2. The Semiotic Approach 79
5.2.3. The Rhetorical Dimension 80
5.2.4. Hypertext and Cognition: the Psychological Approach 82
5.3. Reading Hypertexts 83
6. METHODS OF RESEARCHING PARTICIPATORY JOURNALISM 91
6.1. State of the Question 91
6.2. Methodology of Weblog Analysis 93
6.2.1. Profile of Bloggers 93
6.2.2. Blogs and Journalism 94
6.2.3. The Journalist-Blogger 97
6.3. Citizen Journalism Within and Outside the Professional Media 98
7. PRODUCTION ROUTINES 101
7.1. The State of the Question 101
7.2. Methodological Proposals for the Study of the Profession and 104
Production Routines in Online Journalism
7.2.1. Quantitative Methods 104
7.2.2. Qualitative Methods 107
8. MEDIA CONVERGENCE 111
8.1. Conceptual Note on Media Convergence 111
8.2. International Studies on Media Convergence 114
8.3. National Studies on Media Convergence 116
8.4. Methodologies for the Study of Media Convergence 117
8.5. A Particular Case: Analysis of Information Flows in News Agencies 122
8.5.1. Demarcation between Convergence and News Flow 123
8.5.2. Analytical Proposal 125
9. TEACHING ONLINE JOURNALISM AND ITS EVALUATION 131
9.1. The Impact of Digital Technologies 131
9.2. Study of Changes Teaching 133
9.3. Research Methodologies 136
9.3.1. Survey 137
9.3.2. Content Analysis 138
9.3.3. Discussion Groups and Focus Groups 138
9.3.4. In-depth Interview 140
BIBLIOGRAPHY 143
LIST OF AUTHORS 179
Introduction
Journalism on digital networks, and specifically on Internet 1, is a rela-

tively recent phenomenon, whose spread began in approximately 1994, in
parallel to that of the World Wide Web. Study of this new communicative
phenomenon began simulta neously in several countries. This, in its turn, was
helped by the new possibilities for communication amongst academics -
electronic mail, predating the WWW, was, and is, one of the most widely
used tools of the university community. The spread of these n ew forms of
global communication helped to raise mutual awareness between research
groups, making it possible to form increasingly broad and cohesive net -
works.
Brazil and Spain are two countries where a determined effort has been
made to understand the phenomenon of online journalism and its many di -
mensions. The paths followed by the research groups of the two countries
ran in parallel until, at a certain point, they came together due to the in -
creasingly evident need for transnational collaboration. Ther e is a key date in
both Brazil and Spain that marks the start of studies of Internet journalism:
1996. That was the year when two lecturers at the Federal University of Ba-
hía (Brazil), Marcos Palacios and Elias Machado, published their pioneering
work Manual de jornalismo na Internet [Manual of Journalism on Internet].
In the same year, several lecturers at the University of the Basque Country
(Spain), including Koldo Meso and Javier Díaz Noci, published a work with
similar characteristics El periodismo electrónico. Información y servicios en
la era del ciberespacio [Electronic Journalism. News and Services in the
Age of Cyberspace]. These authors are being joined by others, and there has
been a steady production of many articles and books on digital journa lism.
Undertakings that were initially scattered and cautious are now being
combined in the two countries and networks are being formed that are de -
veloping different research projects covering different aspects of the study of
this phenomenon, which is be coming increasingly familiar. In the belief that
unity brings strength, and out of the need to make their existence and work
known internationally, an agreement to consolidate the research networks
was signed in 2006 with the support of the Ministries of E ducation of both
1
This is known by different names. In English the customary term is onlne journalism.
In Spanish the most widely used terms are periodismo digital (digital journalism) and ciber-
periodismo (cyberjournalism), with the latter preferred by Spanish researchers. In Portuguese
the term employed is webjornalismo (webjournalism).
12 ONLINE JOURNALISM: RESEARCH METHODS
countries 2. This agreement includes a total of fifty researchers, coordinated

by Marcos Palacios, of the Federal University of Bahía (Brazil), and Javier
Díaz Noci, of the University of the Basque Country (Spain). The network
has a permane nt character and its aim is to expand by means of different
initiatives in both Europe and Latin America. In fact, there has been collabo -
ration between universities of the two continents through initiatives like the
European COST and Alfa actions. We are thus endorsed by our experience
and by works that have received recognition from different institutions.
One of the first concerns of this network, and its different members, is to
identify the most important questions that can be detected in the study of
journalism on Internet and, consequently, to apply suitable methodologies
for their research. We believe that this is the first step in building a solid and
coherent field of study. And we are thus dedicating our initial efforts to this,
with the aim, once we have consolidated this essential starting point, of
carrying out comparative studies. Only through knowledge of what has al -
ready been achieved internationally, and the application of standardised
methods and techniques, will it become possible to real ise works of similar
quality, in order to establish a dialogue with our colleagues of the interna -
tional scientific community.
That is the reason for this book. It is intended as a letter of introduction,
and also as the first link in what we hope will be a long chain, the corner-
stone of a building that will be able to withstand the winds of academic
fashion. We believe that this new form of expression, digital journalism, is
here to stay and that its future development must be accompanied by appro -
priate academic monitoring.
This book is also an invitation. An invitation to dialogue and discussion,
essentially with students, professionals and researchers. We are conscious
that we are far from having exhausted the possible questions and areas of
activity - not even the methodological points of view. Nor is that our inten -
tion. On the other hand, we present a series of questions that we consider to
be preferential for our research, relevant questions with an international
wealth of bibliography and methodolo gy that should be born carefully in
mind. This is also a series of questions that have already been dealt with to a
2
This was the project CAPES/DGU 140/07 in Brazil, and the program PHB2006 -0004-
PC in Spain, titled Periodismo en internet: estudio comparativo de los cibermedios España-
Brasil [Journalism on Internet: Comparative Study of the Online Media Spain -Brazil]. As a
result of this, the I Brazil-Spain International Symposium on Online Media (Spanish Ministry
of Science and Education code PHB2006 -0005) was held from 3 rd to 7th December 2007 in
the Communications Faculty of th e Federal University of Bahía in Brazil, dealing with re -
search methodology in online journalism. Similarly, as a corollary to the Symposium, the
course on Tendências e cenários futuros no jornalismo digital [Tendencies and Future Sce-
narios of Digital Journalism] was held at the same centre from 10 th to 14th December 2007.
INTRODUCTION 13
greater or lesser extent in the international scientific community. They are

thus questions where dialogue is clearly possible and desirable .
It is not our intention to have the final say. Rather, to give an account of
efforts made and others yet to be made, of a work in progress. To this end,
the first seminar -symposium on research met hodologies in online journalism
was held at the Federal University of Bahía in December 2007. The com-
plete proceedings have been published in Portuguese and Spanish by that
university. This common proposal has emerged from that first meeting.
The book opens with a chapter dedicated to media typology written by
Guillermo López, Jaime Alonso and Marcos Palacios. The next chapter, on
genre typology in digital journalism, is the work of Lia Seixas, Javier Díaz
Noci, Xosé López, Concepción Edo, Ainara Larrondo and Tattiana Teixeira,
who wrote the section on infographics. Luciana Mielniczuk, Javier Díaz
Noci and Ramón Salaverría prepared the chapter dedicated to narrativity.
The chapter on participatory journalism was written by Claudia Cuadros,
Koldo Meso, André Holanda, Marcos Palacios, Jan Alyne Barbosa, Bella
Palomo and David Domingo. The authors of the chapter on database archi -
tecture and are Xosé Pereira, Manuel Gago, Suzana Barbosa, Beatriz Ribas
and Carla Schwingle. The part dealing with design is the work of Bella
Palomo and María Ángeles Cabrera, and that de aling with reading is by
Graciela Natansohn and Javier Díaz Noci. Pere Masip, María Á. Cabrera,
David Domingo, José Larrañaga, Xosé López, Xosé Pereira, Koldo Meso,
Zélia Leal Adghirni, Thaïs de Mendonça Jorge and Fábio Henrique Pereira
worked on the methodologies applicable to the study of production routines.
The chapter concerning research in the processes of media convergence,
which is of such importance for the digital media, was written by José Al -
berto García Avilés, Pere Masip, Ramón Salaverría, Ch aro Sádaba, Idoia
Portilla and Beth Saad. The perspective on information flows on digital net -
works, and the methodological approach to this, is the work of José Afonso
da Silva Junior. Elias Machado, Diego Kerber, Elaine Manini, Xosé López,
Xosé Pereira, Moisés Limia Fernández, Carlos Toural and Pere Masip are
responsible for the chapter on the teaching of online journalism and for pro -
posing study methodologies.
The editors, Javier Díaz Noci and Marcos Palacios, were helped by Pere
Masip, Koldo Meso and Guillermo López in the tasks of editing the book.
The necessary process of refining and standardising very diverse texts, all of
them interesting and containing relevant contributions, has resulted in these
chapters that while brief are very dense. Proof of this is the abundance of
citations and the bibliography, which we have chosen to place at the end of
the book. It seemed essential to try and give an account not only of what is
being done by the authors of the book, but also by those who have worked
on this question internationally. Our contributions have been built on theirs,
and we hope that using our modest proposals as a foundation, others will
develop further contributions. The editors of the book assume responsibility
for all the mistakes and shortc omings the book might contain. Its possible
attainments are due to the dedicated work of all the authors, to whom are
owed the merits this book might contain.
Javier Díaz Noci

Marcos Palacios
Salvador de Bahía,
December 2007
1
Typology of Online Media
1. INTRODUCTION
There is already consensus, both academic and professional, that Internet

publications have acquired a journalistic status at least equivalent to that of
other conventional media, such as the press, the radio and the television
(Flores Vivar and Miguel Arruti, 2001; Estévez, 2002; Álvarez and Parra,
2004; Meso, 2006). More significant than the increase in the number of
digital publications is their qualitative consolidation on the media market.
The communication companies now consider Internet as a strategic factor
for their future (Cornella, 2002; Cerezo and Zafra, 2003; Aguado, 2004).
The first catalogue of the media present on Internet in Spain was com-
piled by Armañanzas, Díaz Noci and Meso (1996), who employed the
methodological scheme that Jacques Kayser (Kayser, 1974) had established
for the analysis of French newspapers, with the introduction of some adjust-
ments. The book Medios de comunicación en internet [Mass Media on Inter-
net] (Meso y Díaz, 1997), rather than a catalogue with scientific characteris-
tics, was intended as a repertory, as complete as possible, of the first genera-
tion of Spanish online media, or cybermedia. It has been followed by other
works of a more local scope (Meso, 2004).
The first database of the Spanish cybermedia was compiled as part of the
coordinated project of the Ministry of Science and Technology entitled “The
impact of Internet on the mass media in Spain” (the methodological criteria
can be found in Salaverría, 2005).
In the Brazilian case, there has been no process of systematic classifica-
tion of journalistic production on Internet, only fragmentary and barely sys-
tematic processes can be found. The Jornal do Commercio Online, of the
city of Recife (Pernambuco), was the first Brazilian journalistic publication
to appear on Internet. Created in 1994, it was distributed through the Gopher
of the municipal computer company of Recife. The edition was totally trans-
positional, consisting of the daily distribution of the first page of the printed
edition of this journal and the weekly distribution of the Cadernos de Infor-
mática e Meio Ambiente [Notebooks on Computing and the Environment].
Internet was still a system that could only be accessed through academic
and government institutions, which were linked to the world network
through the RNP (Rede Nacional de Pesquisa – National Research Net-
work), as a backbone for connecting Brazilian researchers nationally to
Internet. Initially established in only a few Brazilian cities, the RNP had
close to five thousand registered users in 1991. The year 1994, a period of
marked expansion when close to 400 teaching and research institutions of
the country joined the network, saw the inclusion of the majority of univer-
sities and government research institutions and the registration of close to
60,000 users.
The exponential growth in the number of users and, in parallel, of news-
papers available on Internet occurred from 1995 onwards, with the
establishment of commercial Internet networks in Brazil. At the end of 1996,
there were 740,000 registered Internet users on the commercial network, a
figure which reached 10 million users with home access to Internet in 2000.
A master’s dissertation, defended by Marcelo Sávio de Carvalho (2006) on
the post-graduate engineering program of the Federal University of Río de
Janeiro, offers details of the first years of the Web’s implementation and
growth.
The first attempt to draw up a balance of the situation concerning jour-
nalism on Internet took place following the commercial implantation of
Internet in the country, as a chapter of a work produced as a manual for
journalism students (Machado and Palacios, 1996). The census was not in-
tended to be an exhaustive one, it simply reported on the most important
publications. Fourteen newspapers and five weeklies were listed. The publi-
cations were described according to the following parameters: 1) historical
summary of the project; 2) system of production of the news items; 3) origi-
nality of the project; and 4) interactivity with the public.
The following year, André Manta (1997), as part of a work specialising
in journalism, carried out at the Federal University of Bahía, prepared a
guide to Internet journalism, in which he sought, amongst other things, to list
and describe the Brazilian periodical publications. Twenty-nine newspapers
were listed.
It was only in 2001 that a more systematic effort was made to create a
catalogue and describe the state of the question in online journalism (Miel-
niczuk, Palacios et alii, 2002). By means of a prior approximation taking the
form of a census, carried out between August 2001 and August 2002,
followed by observations through a unified questionnaire, 44 publications
were examined and catalogued. They were identified on the basis of two
criteria:
a) Daily editions, freely accessible on Internet, with a prior printed edi-
tion.
b) Control of the print run of the printed version by the IVC (Instituto
Verificador de Circulação – Institute for the Verification of Circulation), the
body that checks the volume of circulation of Brazilian newspapers.
TYPOLOGY OF ONLINE MEDIA 17
As a referential parameter, the system of research employed the work

carried out in 1998 in the University of Indiana (United States) by Tanjev
Schultz (Schultz, 1999), which had taken a census of 100 American online
daily vehicles of a commercial type. While Schultz’s research was only cen-
tred on the aspect of interactivity, the Brazilian initiative widened the scope
of study to include other characteristics identified as specific to online jour-
nalism: multimediality, hypertextuality, personalisation and memory. The
work was republished in a second version that included seven Portuguese
newspapers besides the 44 Brazilian ones (Palacios et alii, 2002b).
2. RELEVANCE OF THE TYPOLOGIES
Online media can be classified according to: the objective or aim pur-
sued (Alonso and Martínez, 2003); the public to which they are directed; the
application of the professional, structural, editorial and ethical criteria of
journalistic activity; the use made of the possibilities offered by cyberspace
(López, Gago and Pereira, 2002); and even by the constant renovation or
updating of contents.
The University of Santiago has been one of the first to make a classifi-
catory proposal for cybermedia, taking as a reference their level of dyna-
mism, and to this end proposing the design of a test based on a scaled calcu-
lation of the “degree of adaptation of hypertextuality, multimediality, inter-
activity and frequency of updating” (López, Limia, Isasi, Pereira, Gago and
Calvo, 2005). This proposal of categorisation responds to an interest in
asserting the autonomy of the online media as independent entities with re-
spect to the traditional mass media. A similar concern can be found in the
respective research works of the academics Meso (2004) and Díaz Noci,
Meso, Larrañaga and Larrondo (2007).
The typologies of cybermedia aim to show taxonomies or classifications
of a new communicational reality (the cybermedia) that has arisen under the
cover of the Information and Communication Technologies. The relevance
of elaborating typologies principally resides in the fact that they serve to
structure/organise/understand a reality that, due to its novelty, is dispersed
and/or little defined. The present discourse on cybermedia requires the study
of typologies since, at present, some of these media are to be found in a more
or less consolidated state, while others are still in a phase of definition or
conceptualisation.
Sketching typologies of the cybermedia is also useful insofar as they
cover three levels of knowledge: firstly, the initial state of the question (that
is: what those structures that we refer to as cybermedia are); secondly, what
characteristics they possess (defining/identifying features); and, thirdly, the
dynamics that are to be found amongst them, that is, what type of relation,
influence and interaction predominates amongst them.
And that, amongst other reasons, is because in the scenario we are ana-
lysing, characterised as it is by a plurality of forms and levels of communi-
cation, the attention traditionally paid to mass communication must
necessarily be extended to encompass other proposals that have an
increasing presence in the new media.
The mass media extended the frame of reference, frequently separating it
into two: the direct cognitive framework, provided by the immediate setting,
and corresponding to the sphere of interpersonal communication; and the
indirect cognitive framework, mediated technologically and characteristic of
mass communication. This is complementary to, and perhaps competes with
the preceding framework on the occasions when the two enter into conflict.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the science of communication
has turned to the analysis of mass communication, and in particular the study
of its effects (McQuail and Windahl, 1997).
Nonetheless, in spite of the emphasis on the study of mass communica-
tion, the latter is no more than the most visible level of reference of a plural-
ity of communicative forms, which Denis McQuail summarises as the
processes of global, institutional/organisational, intergroup, interpersonal
and intrapersonal communication (1999: 35-38). Additionally, Enric Saperas
(1998: 111-117) underlines the need for the analysis of communication to be
widened. He extends it to include the communicative forms that have tradi-
tionally been overlooked by research that has concentrated on the effects of
mass communication, and he redefines the field of study due to the close
interrelation of the different levels and forms of communication in the con-
figuration of communicative processes.
This is exactly the same diagnosis as that made by Josep Gifreu (1996:
60-68), for whom “the social phenomena experienced and known as
communicative phenomena cover a great quantity and a very wide variety of
situations”, which Gifreu divides into four categories: interpersonal commu-
nication, group communication, organisational communication and mass
communication. Finally, this state of things has led authors like Rodrigo
(1989, 2001) and Valbuena (1997) to confirm the previous hypotheses and to
configure a framework of study of the Theory of Communication that covers
the plurality of communication and does so, besides, starting out from the
interrelation amongst the different levels of communication.
This framework of study can only be strengthened, and also made con-
siderably more complex, on the Internet, given that the technological me-
dium includes both those communicative forms characteristic of mass
communication and those that belong to the immediate setting (which in
their turn can be diversified in several senses). The abovementioned plurality
of forms and levels of communication might pose a substantial problem

when considered from the perspective of their categorisation within a mini-
mally operative typology (López García, 2005b).
Facing an object of study such as we are analysing here (the typologies
of cybermedia), we believe that there should be no pretension or vocation
towards closure (that is, any attempt to offer a definitive and conclusive
classification). Instead, it is necessary to understand that the greater the
number of taxonomies covered, the greater the possibilities of perceiving the
global and complex reality of the cybermedia (classified in certain more or
less defined categories), as well as their characteristics and the dynamics
established amongst them.
3. PROPOSALS FOR A CYBERMEDIA TYPOLOGY
As can easily be intuited, cybermedia typologies vary according to the

concept or idea we hold of these media. In a panorama as open, rich and
diverse as Internet communication, approaches and definitions concerning
what exactly the cybermedia are succeed and – far from causing confusion –
complement each other, giving rise to a profuse range of typologies that
serve to understand the phenomenon of online communication from different
viewpoints.
Below we present a list of some of the main typological proposals of cy-
bermedia that have emerged to date. From our point of view, and without
attempting to be exhaustive, it can be said that there are four outstanding
lines:
a) Typologies centred on the actions or development of the cyberme-
dia.
b) Typologies centred on models of communication.
c) Typologies centred on the elements that make up the cybermedia.
d) Typologies centred on the aim of the cybermedia.
3.1. Typologies Centred on the Actions or Development of the Cyber-

media
By a typology that classifies the cybermedia according to the actions or

development of the cybermedia, we are referring to those initiatives that
classify such media according to how they employ the elements (potentials)
that are inherent to them. In this sense, it is highly relevant to consider the
proposal made by López García et al. (2005), since they carry out a classifi-
cation according to what they understand as “the level of dynamism of the
online media” (2005: 45). They explain this as follows:
The concept of dynamism, inherent to the very definition of a cyberme-

dium, alludes to the degree of use that the new media make of the possibilities
offered by the online format – application of hypertextual, multimedia and
interactive techniques and frequent updating.
It is thus practical to determine the level of dynamism of an online medium
on the basis of the “degree of adaptation” achieved in the following indicators:
a) Hypertextuality.
b) Multimediality.
c) Interactivity.
d) Frequency of updating (2005: 45).
Finally, the authors explain the relationship between the degree of

adaptation and the level of dynamism of the cybermedium:
The expression “degree of adaptation” refers to the degree to which the

potential parts of cyberspace – multimediality, hypertextuality, interactivity and
frequency of updating - are adapted to the mould configured by the contents
and user of a specific online medium. The greater the “degree of adaptation”
achieved by each of the four indicators, the greater the resulting degree of
dynamism of the cybermedium (2005: 45).
Besides this typology with its classification according to the level of dy-
namism, these authors contribute another typology that, in our opinion, is
also susceptible to inclusion in what we have established as typologies cen-
tred on the actions or development of the cybermedia. In reality, this is a
double typology: on the one hand, a typology of cybermedia containing spe-
cialist information, and another of cybermedia containing general informa-
tion.
As the authors point out, Internet has changed the proposals on which
the discipline dealing with journalistic specialisation was traditionally based,
which divided the object of study into four broad themes: politics,
economics, society and culture. It has now become necessary to introduce
new categories, such as, amongst others: cybermedia containing economic
information, political information, social information, scientific information,
health and technical cybermedia, cybermedia containing information on new
technologies, etcetera. The authors also explain that another typology that
could be applied to the cybermedia containing specialist information would
be a generic taxonomy based on the level of dynamism, which we have ex-
plained.
With respect to cybermedia containing general information, the authors
opt either for a classification based on the degree of dynamism (such as the
case of the specialist cybermedia) or for a typology according to geographi-
cal criteria, in line with what has traditionally been done with the general
press and audiovisual media: “Traditionally, the general press (and not only
the printed press, also the audiovisual media) has been classified according
to a geographical criterion. So that we can speak about the general press at
four levels: national, regional, provincial and local” (López García et alii,
2005: 62).
3.2. Typologies Centred on Communication Models
The proposals for classifying cybermedia situated in the study of the

communication models found on Internet are highly relevant when the aim is
to offer a clarifying perspective on the global working of all the elements
(including the cybermedia and other forms of communication) of the World
Wide Web. There is a double difficulty: in the first place, the cybermedia
and other forms of communication must be identified; and then they must be
grouped within the different communication logics or meanings (the
different models). Guillermo López García, the author of a typology of this
kind, explains this difficulty:
Offering a clear and systematic compendium of the very diverse forms of

communication made possible by the Web … is extremely difficult, if we bear
in mind not only the abundance of communicative forms existing on the Web,
many of them complementary and interchangeable, but also the fact that this
field (the theorisation of the types of content and of the different communication
models on the Web) is one of the least studied amongst all of those covered by
the subject (López García, 2005a: 16).
Starting from the hypotheses advanced several decades ago by Marshall

McLuhan (1996) about the systematic spread of communication technolo-
gies and media in everyday life, and taking account of the early typologies
concerning communication on Internet devised by Slevin (2002) and Morris
and Ogan (2002), the taxonomy of López Escobar distinguishes between
interpersonal communication media and collective communication media
(López Escobar, 1997: 18-19). Hence, within the first group, he distin-
guishes between “synchronic communication (chat rooms, P2P networks and
network games) and asynchronic communication: e-mail, distribution lists,
newsgroups, forums of debate, wikis, surveys and virtual communities”
(2005b:79). And within the collective communication media, the author
distinguishes between “means of representation: personal pages, weblogs,
web pages of associations, institutions and companies” (2005b:80); and
“global media: portals and cybermedia” (2005b:81).
Within this general classification, the cybermedia are those websites
whose essential aim is the development and transmission of news contents,
that is, those websites that play the role of the social mass media on Internet.
Their differential characteristics would essentially be: a) primacy of properly
journalistic contents (facing other types of offer, such as, for example, the
sale of products, discussion spaces, etc.); b) subjugation to current news in
their subject matter; and c) use of journalistic and professional criteria in the
generation of contents (López García, 2005a: 169-170).
In turn, this author (López García, 2005a: 176-182) establishes several
differentiations within the field of the cybermedia:
- On the one hand, a distinction is made between cybermedia that are
the representation on Internet of the “conventional media” (printed newspa-
pers, radio stations and television channels), which gradually began, as we
have seen, to deploy their contents on Internet as well, and those media ex-
clusively developed on Internet.
- On the other hand, attention is also paid to the distinction between
general and specialist cybermedia.
- Finally, a differentiation is made according to whether or not the con-
tents of the cybermedium are professional. This difference, which in princi-
ple contradicts the third of the specific characteristics of cybermedia that we
saw above, arises on Internet with the parallel development of two types of
practice: on the one hand, there are the so-called “counter-information” or
“alternative communication” media. Such cybermedia not only renounce the
criteria of newsworthiness that is traditional in journalism, but also in their
management and configuration they work as communities of users – not as
media companies – who are nearly always responsible for generating their
contents. This happens in media such as Nodo50.org or the different versions
of Indymedia. On the other hand, mention should be made of the different
practices related to what has come to be called “citizen journalism”, which in
its most extreme version involves the development of journalistic media
through the collaboration of the public. In Spain we do not find any big citi-
zen media apart from the “alternative communication” media we mentioned.
Furthermore, some of the experiments carried out in this respect (such as
Reportero Digital [Digital Reporter] which emerged from Periodista Digital
[Digital Journalist]) had shortcomings in terms of their success with the
public, audience involvement and quality of content. However, it is
increasingly normal for the big media to involve the public in generating a
part of their content (as occurs, for example, with the “Yo, periodista [I,
journalist]” section of the newspaper Elpaís.com), as well as the use of par-
ticipatory tools (for example, the possibility of the public commenting on the
news) and systems proceeding from Web 2.0 (such as the insertion of videos
from YouTube and similar systems) as part of the news offer of the principal
cybermedia.
3.3. Typologies Centred on the Elements that Make Up the Cybermedia
A characteristic example of the typology centred on the elements that

make up the cybermedia is that which classifies them according to the type
of contents that, in a more or less dominant way, they contain. Thus, for
example, the Teléfonica report for the year 2000 established a classification
of contents that could well serve, at present, for establishing a taxonomy
concerning their use, that is, indicating which media employ them and how
they employ them. Thus, the typology proposed by this report refers to in-
tangible, tangible, service and infomediation contents.
Another example of the typology centred on the elements that make up
the cybermedia is proposed by Alonso (2005), who distinguishes between
the different degrees of participation/involvement of the subjects who par-
ticipate in the cybermedia. A double level is presented: on the one hand, a
basic distinction is made between the types of agent: manager or user. In the
second place, he goes further into each of these: the manager can be a pro-
ducer or a presenter (of contents); while the user can be passive, active or
determinant.
3.4. Typologies Centred on the Aim of the Cybermedia
A typology centred on the aim, or finality, involves classifying cyber-

media according to why they have been developed or elaborated. Such a
finality can acquire many dimensions, but the concrete examples given in the
proposal of Alonso and Martínez (2003) are: cybermedia with a predomi-
nantly news orientated aim; with a communicational or relational aim; with a
service aim; and cybermedia whose aim is infomediation or intermediation.
2
Genres in Online Journalism:
a Typological Proposal
1. CRITERIA FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF JOURNALISTIC

GENRES
To date, the examinations made of the genres in the online media have
had a descriptive, exploratory and conservative character; while no mor e
than an initial approach to the study of these particular species, they have
been valid and effective. These analyses consider the principal expressive
forms on the basis of their similarities to, and differences from, the tradi -
tional genological model of the printed press. They thus pursue characteristic
aims of comparing the printed with the digital press. The conceptual defini -
tion of the object of study sets out from the theory of genres in journalism
consolidated in recent years, to which is added t heoretical futurology re-
garding the new expressive forms and tendencies in the construction of
messages.
Genres are models that make it possible to present the contents of the
mass media in an adequate and comprehensible form. Researchers start from
the supposition that the media are a criterion defining discursive units, which
are not even put into question. That separation by media resulted in an ab -
sence of dialogue between researchers within the same field, influenced by
the adoption of methodologies for better explaining the characteristics of the
medium under analysis - on the basis of structuralist semiology (Stuart Hall),
for example, or cultural studies and the theories of interaction (Erving Goff -
man). On the other hand, the studies of journalisti c genres in the printed
format placed the theories of journalism in the foreground and favoured the
analysis of objects of social activity in relation to their products. In the ma -
jority of cases, these are classification criteria that act on the purpose o f dis-
cursive production. As Marques de Melo says, “first, grouping the genres in
categories that correspond to the determinant purpose of the narratives (… ),
and second, seeking to identify the genres on the basis of the structural na -
ture of the observable narratives in journalistic processes” (Marques de
Melo, 1994: 62).
Today, the field of journalistic research is still striving to resolve a false
paradigm of journalistic activity: the limit between news and opinion. The
initial typologies have an Anglo phone origin and the most widespread of
these are based on the distinction between story and comment, between the
fact and the commentaries it gives rise to. For example, José Marques de
Melo set out from criteria that strengthen the difference of purpose between
“reproduction of the real” (informing) and “reading of the real”
(commenting), basing himself for this purpose on the systematisation of Luiz
Beltrão. Other typologies have been proposed that do not depend on the pur-
pose behind the writing, but on the function of each text (Gomis, 1989).
Other proposals have been accepted and recognised that take account of
criteria that are more or less linguistic, pragmatic and rhetorical (Borrat,
1989; Casasús and Núñez Ladevéze, 1991; Núñez Ladevéze, 1995). The re
are also other subsequent typologies, elaborated in the 1990s, that diverge
from the first model cited (Sánchez, 1992; Sánchez and Ló pez Pan, 1998).
The exhaustion of the classical categorical paradigm of genres referred to by
some critical authors is reflected in the inability of this system to render the
new species that have emerged in recent years in the printed press and, more
recently, in the digital media. For the latter, a provisional proposal has been
elaborated (Díaz Noci and Salaverría, 2003) .
Genres of online journalism(Díaz Noci and Salaverría, 2003)

News genres - News item
- Reportage
Interpretative (Reportage of current events, special reports,
genres documentary dossier)
- Chronicle
- Interview
- Forum or Debate
Dialogical - Chat
genres (Online interview, interaction with personalities,
interaction amongst users)
- Survey
- Traditional: editorial, comment, criticism, letters
Opinion
to the editor, article, column, cartoons, etc.
genres
- Networked debates: forums, chat.
Infographics - Individual and collective infographics
GENRES IN ONLINE JOURNALISM 27
2. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF

RESEARCH IN GENRES ON INTERNET
The need to rigorously consider methodologies and to propose new pro-

cedures for observing the online journalistic phenomenon ( Kopper et al.,
2000: 501) is a further symptom of the changes undergone by the traditional
theoretical and practical paradigm of the discipline.
In the field of communication there are qualitative, quantitative and ex -
perimental techniques of proven validi ty that can be applied within a reno -
vated perspective to the study of genres on Internet, starting in the first place
with the development of a content analysis of the news items. This type of
examination enables recognition of the formal and textual char acteristics or
elements inherent to the online media and is valid for effecting an initial
approach to the state of the question of the species.
The determination of the larger and generalizable configurative struc -
tures associated with functional typologi es (García Berrio and Huerta, 1992:
143) thus proves to be a valid linguistic criterion for the empirical observa -
tion of these features in order develop a taxonomy of online journalistic texts
and, consequently, a theory of online journalistic genres.
Since 1995, the area of linguistics has paid considerable attention to the
theories of genre. With the exceptions of David Bolter and Marshall
McLuhan, linguists have favoured documentation and the computer sciences
- principally the North Americans Thomas Er ickson, Shepherd and Watters,
Yates and Sumner, Ryan et al., Crowston and Kwasnik and Tom and Camp -
bell. These researchers, concerned about the role of the characteristic tech -
nologies in configuring the digital genres 1, take as a basis for Genre Theory
scholars such as Carolyn Miller, Charles Bazerman, Carol Berkenkotter,
Devitt, Huckin, Freedman and Med way, of the North American Genre
School (NAGS), John Swales and Vijay Bhatia, interested in the pedagogical
implications of the academic genres, and Micha el Halliday, interested in the
application of the genres in language teaching. For its part, the New Rhetoric
(Toulmin, Perelman and Olbrechts -Tyteca) has foregrounded the notions of
purpose and context, and the focus on the communication situation created
by the new media to the point of consolidating what is today the chief con -
1
“As genre theory is applied to digital media rath er than speech or writing, a
couple of differences in emphasis have emerged. One of the chief differences is that
those studying the digital medium are paying more attention to the role of technical
features in shaping the evolution of digital genres. [... ]” ERICKSON, Tom (1999).
“Rhyme and Punishment: The Creation and Enforcement of Conventions in an On -
Line Participatory Limerick Genre”, Proceedings of the Thirty-second Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences, January, Maui, Hawaii
<http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/limerick.html#anchor3302129>.
cern of the theories of genres, whether in linguistics, semiotics or discourse

analysis: the situation of communicative exchange. As summarized by Irene
Machado:
Classification wa s replaced by interactive relations. The concept of genre

abandons the hierarchical scale and moves on to evaluate interaction. The
consideration of genres in the age of digital culture involves checking not only
the way in which messages are organized and articulated from the viewpoint of
their production, but also their action on communicative ex change, that is, their
process of reorganization by the devices of mediation (Machado, 2001: 13).
The strength of socio-rhetoric thus resides in certain key not ions: the
rhetorical situation, the typified rhetorical action, the rhetorical community
(Miller, 1984), the discursive community (Swales, 1990) and recurrence
(Bazerman, 1994). The fact that these situations are recurrent is what makes
possible their clas sification by analogies and similarities, extracting similari -
ties and differences, in this way constructing types (Machado, 2001: 13).
The regularity in the properties of those situations gives rise to recurrences
in form and in content. For Bazerman, the notion of recurrence is linked to
recognition. The discursive community is today understood as “a group that
works together. It upholds its repertoire of genres, with evident rhetorical
traces and the strength that validates the activity of the community” (Hemas;
Biais-Rodrigues, 2005: 127). Genre as social action provides us with a less
technical and more socio -historical perspective (Marcuschi, 2004: 17). One
of the present challenges of linguistics is to relate the notions of discursive
community and rh etorical community with the notion of virtual community
(VC) to reach a more operative definition in studies on the digital genres.
The context, meanwhile, does not appear in the research of the linguists,
perhaps because communicative exchange was conceiv ed in a sphere where
the limits of space and time dissolve, permitting a synchronic or asynchronic
exchange, in a network of any size, without defined geographical limits.
For its part, semiotics, incited by the multimediality of these new media,
by the hybridization of the communicative systems, moved on to defend and
investigate the notion of genre in an environment where it appeared
anachronistic. Irene Machado drew attention to the North American re -
searchers in the field of documentation (especially Er icsson), but also to
Mikail Bakhtin. Bakhtin began the discussion of genres, previously restricted
to the field of literature, in other areas. His concept of dialogism seduced all
of those who wished to work with everyday discourse, or who needed to
understand the sphere of recognition, and even to analyze hybridization and
plurality. Revised, reinterpreted, placed in relation, the concept of genre
accepted by the majority of researchers is that of Bakhtin: “Relatively stable
types of enunciations”.
The pri ncipal research methods are the pragmatics of communication,

discourse analysis, (with Charaudeau and Maingueneau as the main refer -
ences), critical analysis of discourse (Van Dijk), cultural studies, the theory
of interaction (Goffman), and the classifica tory theories. In linguistics, the
most studied methodologies are linguistics of the text, conversational analy -
sis, socio-discursive methodology (Bakhtin, Adam, Bronckart), socio -
semiotic methodology for the studies of textual and discursive genres, and
socio-rhetorical methodology (Miller, Bazerman y Swales) also used for the
digital genres.
Analysis of the changes in newsmaking in the digital media is a question
of interest to journalism. The parameters are constituted by aspects such as
time (instantane ity/continuous updating), the number and type of interlocu -
tors (interactivity), the textual format and its extension (hypertextuality), the
degree of automatization of the operations, the method of storing, searching
for and handling texts (memory), and t he wealth and variety of signals, that
is, of text, audio and image (multimediality).
Except for style, subject and function, all of the other criteria are
common to the two fields. Style, subject and function follow the tradition of
linguistics, and have also been elements in the analysis of journalistic genres
since the 1960s. Both these and the other parameters are composed of more
than one aspect, such as for example, the textual format (continuous text,
independent sequences, fixed structures) and the relation between partici -
pants (known, anonymous and hierarchized). The aspects of each parameter
are covered by four levels: presence, absence, irrelevance for the definition
of genre and lack of definition with respect to presence and relevance. The
similarity of the method resides in its analysing the properties of the new
medium. For its part, linguistics places an emphasis on the levels of rele -
vance and is concerned with the “emergent genres”.
The basic methodological approach set out takes account of the charac-
teristics determining the configuration of digital texts and their classification.
The scientific community has pronounced itself on these, pointing to hyper -
textuality, multimediality and interactivity as basic characteristics
(Kerckhove, 1999: 114; Deuze, 2001). However, it is possible to add some
others: a) the temporal dimension, which includes phenomena such as syn -
chrony and asynchrony (Bardoel, 2002); b) the continuous renovation of
information – through replacement or accumulation; c) t he period of time for
which it is opportune for the news to remain on the Web, or when it is linked
to other subsequent news; d) memory and personalization (Machado et al.,
2004). Memory is an especially important characteristic for Marcos Palacios,
with its multiple, instantaneous and accumulative form; although this is also
an enhanced feature, it is not completely new with respect to other media.
Memory, combined with instantaneity, hypertextuality and interactivity, are

what represent a break with the p revious media formats 2.
This section proposes a series of characteristics based, firstly, on the
predominance of certain rhetorical or other techniques; secondly, on the
potentials of the hypertext, especially in the typical resulting structures,
which are measurable; thirdly; on the potentials of multimediality; and
fourthly, on interactivity.
3. ANALYTICAL PROPOSAL
3.1. Rhetorical Criteria
The rhetorical criteria take up proposals of journalism and editing in

which the science of the text has had a notable e cho, basic postulates based
on the operations proposed by Quintilian ( inventio – multilineality and poly-
acroasis; dispositio – hypertextual structures; elocutio – multimedia re-
sources; action – interactivity; memoria - memory).
Criteria of rhetorical classification

Topoi Parts of the discourse
Narrative genres Inventio: Multilineality and
Interpretative genres polyacroasis
Dialogic genres Dispositio: Hypertextual
Argumentative genres structures
Actio: Interactivity
Elocutio: Multimedia re -
sources
Memoria: Memory
2
Other authors propose other parameters, which are always similar, for
characterising the emergent genres. Thus, in his book Hipertexto e gêneros digitais,
Luiz Antônio Marcuschi (2005) proposes a classif ication that sets out from a
linguistic viewpoint, and from the postulates of, for example, David Crystal (2001),
above all the viewpoint of pragmatics, the linguistics of the text, conversational
analysis and discourse analysis. Kevin Kawamoto (2003: 4) s peaks of
hypertextuality, interactivity, non -linearity, multimediality, convergence and the
personalization of contents. In reality, it seems to us that non -linearity is a feature of
hypertext, that personalization could be considered a form of interactivi ty and that
convergence refers more to work routines than to the real object of study, that is, the
informative digital text. And Nora Paul and Christina Fiebich (2002), of the
University of Minnesota, propose certain Elements of Digital Storytelling that, in
reality, talk of the same things using different names.
The criteria of predominance of certain topoi in each text (narrative, in -

terpretative, dialogic and argumentative genres) are completed with an
analysis of the hypertextual structures of each item analyzed and the em -
ployment of the multime dia, interactive and temporal possibilities. In this
way, the inherent characteristics of digital texts, which are distinctive of the
new model, represent the basic variables of their analysis and of the genres
linked to them. There are similar procedures linked to the characteristics of
the digital media that are of proven efficacy for determining the degree to
which they meet the criteria of cybermediality – the extent to which a me -
dium can be considered a cybermedium (López et al., 2005). The analytica l-
descriptive methodologies proposed, linked to the examination of hypertex -
tuality, multimediality, interactivity and temporality, prove to be well -
founded and hence justify their operational use.
3.2. Hypertextuality
The study of hypertextuality is one of the priorities of research in the

genres and their techniques of discursive construction. This research is
aimed at the exploration of digital texts on the basis of the new prototypical
structures with which they are related. The empirical study of the hy pertex-
tual genres requires an adapted and operative method that makes it possible
to determine in what way these online journalistic forms are provided with a
coherent superstructure and how this, assembled through content nodes and
links, manages to guar antee fulfillment of the basic traditional functions of
these forms, their meaning and communicative efficacy. Commensurate with
these aspects, it is appropriate to propose procedures based on the integration
of inductive focuses, on the one hand, directed at the analysis of the hyper -
textual structures that the cybermedia prototypes currently present, and in -
ductive focuses, on the other, based on the reflection of an ideal model of
structuring for Internet.
To this end, the design of methods of observation centered on the func-
tionality of the hypertext as an organizational structure of contents seems to
be the most appropriate. In this respect, the hypertextual models have a theo -
retical and formal foundation that indicates what basic elements are to be
analyzed within the hypertextual system contained by each prototype.
Hence, analysis should be focused on its simple dimensions, on the basis of
two conceptual categories of analysis: the composition and the structure of
the hypertext.
Composition refers to the level of use of links and nodes; it represents a
parameter of the hypertext that can be evaluated through a quantitative and
qualitative analysis of these classic elements. The node, whatever its type –
textual, sonorous, visual, audiovisual, graphic – represents a unit of infor -
mation that is shown on the screen when a link is activated, and is identifi -
able through words, groups of words or icons that, when clicked, lead to
another, different content (node).Through the use of nodes – understood as
units of information – and coherently organized links one obtains the digital
text, in this case an informative one, as the expression or form of the hyper -
document. This is not so much a long product as a deep one.
Thanks to this capacity for creating stru ctures of nodes, links become the
basic nucleus of hypertextual systems; hence analysis of the latter requires a
taxonomy of links that is as exhaustive as possible, drawn up on the basis of
different criteria that can be combined, and adjusted in each cas e to the con-
crete aims of analysis posed by the research. In this respect, it is convenient
to propose a taxonomy based on typologies that are sufficiently recognized
and that consider the finality, purpose and mode of exploration of hyperlinks
(Cantos et al., 1994; Codina, 1997; 2000: 119-128), as well as the docu-
mentary and narrative function fulfilled by the links ( Salaverría, 2005a: 124)
and, in all cases, the particular characteristics presented by the item of analy -
sis.
With respect to the analysis of hypertextual structure, its typologies have
been sufficiently identified and classified (Díaz Noci and Salaverría, 2003:
125-132; Powell, 2001: 100-111; Orihuela and Santos, 1999: 39 -42; Codina
(2003: 156-157), and are basically divided into axial -structured and network-
structured hypertexts. The axial -structured hypertexts, in their turn, divide
into lineal structures and arboreal structures, with a third class, that of
parallel structures, which are often a combination of several lineal structures
arranged on the basis of an arboreal axis. Based on of all of these, uniting all
of the levels amongst themselves (and at times all of the nodes), the graticule
structures are obtained. This type of analysis is useful for determining the
degree and type of coherence established between the nodes - intranodal,
internodal and structural (Engebretsen, 1999; 2001). It also makes it possi -
ble to determine the breadth and depth of the superstructure of the genre and
the scope of its macrostructure of contents, which clarifies the rhetorical
aspects of the genre, not only the merely formal ones. Different tools are
proposed for describing these structures, such as the design of graphic
schemes that enable visualization of the navigational possibilities in their
totality and the type of relations of content that the linkages between nodes
offer for each form.
3.3. Multimediality
Both the researchers and the professionals of communication unani -

mously refer to multimediality as an inherent characteristic of online jour -
nali sm. This quality, which consists of combining different communicative
codes – text, image, sound – in one informative discourse, is indeed a key

concept for investigating the characteristics of online journalistic contents
and genres. These elements can be arranged in mere juxtaposition or in an
integrated way.
Multimedia language
Elements employed: Combination of ele ments:
1. Text Juxtaposition
2. Sound Integration
3. Image
a. Still
b. In movement
4. Infographics
5. Autoexecuting scripts (applets Java,
Flash...)
The first contributions concentrated on theoretically defining the concept

in the field of communication (Feldman, 1994; Dahlgren, 1996; Jankowski
and Hanssen, 1996; Tannenbaum, 1998; Cuenca, 1998; Salaverría, 2001;
Deuze, 2004). On these foundations, research h as been carried out in recent
years that has applied the concept through different research methods.
The most common methodology employed to date for the analysis of
multimediality has been content analysis, that is, study of the communicative
formats empl oyed by the cybermedia, with the aim of calibrating the degree
of use of each of the textual, iconic and sonorous codes. In short, these
studies have been directed towards identifying “ levels of multimediality”.
Although there is other research that has em ployed these techniques of
content analysis to evaluate multimedia resources (Beyers, 2006), the most
influential work in this field has probably been the study made by the Euro -
pean network COST A20, under whose auspices a vast analysis of multime -
dia formats and content was carried out on the main digital newspapers of no
less than 16 European countries (Van der Wurff and Lauff, 2005). The va -
lidity and applicability of this methodology was subsequently tested in other
analogous research in the digital pr ess in Spain (Salaverría, 2005b), Peru
(Yezers’ka, 2007) and even smaller geographical regional areas such as the
Basque Country (Díaz Noci et al., 2007). Other research has studied the
degree of development of multimediality in certain genres characterize d by
their multimedia development. Outstanding amongst these genres are inter -
active infographics (Schroeder, 2004; Cores, 2004) and multimedia
reportage (Larrondo, 2004).
Another methodological approach to the study of multimediality in the

cybermedia tha t has been much less explored is the theory of uses and grati -
fications, which analyses the reasons motivating people to select certain
options instead of others. Work has been carried out that identifies the mo -
tives for which users of the cybermedia feel more or less inclined to explore
certain multimedia elements rather than others (Zerba, 2003). Not far from
this focus, we find the successive Eyetrack studies (Adam et al., 2007),
which have identified the patterns of ocular movement when facing the web
pages of journalistic publications.
3.4. Interactivity and Participation
Analysis of this variable is focused on the study of its different dimen -

sions. The first of these concerns the type of interactivity permitted, inclusive
(open code journalism) or auth orial (user participation is permitted but not to
the extent of intervening in the production of the news item) (Light, 1998).
This can be further extended since, depending on the type and degree of
interactivity applied, the resulting structures can be classified in the
following way:
- Random: The user has no prior knowledge of where he will be led
by the proposed links, which add surprise and ludic elements.
- Fixed: Can only be altered (through replacement) by the author.
- Relational: Gathers information on the users and organizes the infor -
mation displayed accordingly.
- Contributive: Permits the user to intervene in the contents (generally
by adding things, as in forums).
The degree of dialogism promoted by the item must also be taken into
consideration. Interactivity has taken different forms, some of them multiple
(a forum, a chat room) that in their turn might, or might not, have a modera -
tor, and also forms of one to one communication. There are also forms of
asymmetric communication, between one interlocu tor on one side, and nu-
merous interlocutors on the other (for example, an interview with readers).
Similarly, consideration must be given to the form of temporality of the in-
teractive communication established, bearing in mind that this might take
place in synchronic or asynchronic form.
The way this interactivity is carried out is another aspect to be
considered. This technique might be dialogic (electronic mail, forum, chat
room, SMS) or it might be based on the personalization of its different
forms: search systems or systems for adapting the user’s interface to his
needs (Paul and Fiebich, 2002). With all of these variables we can draw up
the following table:
Interactivity and participation

Type of interacti- Degree of dialo- Temporality Technique Intervention
vity gism - Synchronicity a) Dialogic of the
- Inclusive - Symmetric - Asynchronicity - Electronic medium
(open code jour- - One to one mail - Moderation
nalism) - Many to - Forum - Absence of
- Authorial many - Chat moderation
Resulting - Asymmetric room
structures - One to - SMS
- Random many b)
- Fixed - Many to Personalisation
- Relational many - Database
- Contributive search
- Interface
configuration
3.5. Temporality
The characteristics of the new medium have brought a substantial

change in the times of production and reception. Ev ents can be reflected in
cybermedia discourse in a more agile way and without concern for restric -
tions of space. The density of events, a measurable variable that is defined
by the number of events per unit of time, is much greater, due to digital
technology, because there is less discrimination over what events are to be -
come news items.
To start with, the distinction between synchronism and asynchronism
that divided the printed media and audiovisuals has faded. Audiovisual news
productions no longer only involve synchronous reception, instead they can
proceed from the news archive, to be downloaded and consumed by the user
when he feels like it. This results in a ubiquity of information. All of this
adds a new element: tempestivity, that is, the period of continuance of a
news product, its relevance – the time for which we can make it available
without its becoming obsolete, either considered as a discreet unit in itself
(one of the day’s news items, for example), or because it is then included as
contextual information for another more recent news item.
Information can be subjected, on the other hand, to continuous updating,
either by accumulation, the addition of new data, references, documentation
or news linked to the main story; or by replacement, tha t is, a new (digital)
text replaces the earlier text, which has become obsolete; this often occurs
with the latest news (the “palimpsest effect”). The characteristics noted give
us the following table:
Temporality and tempestivity

Temporality Tempestivity
- Synchronism - Permanence
- Asynchronism Period
- Continuous updating
By accumulation
By replacement
4. INFOGRAPHICS
A particular case requiring research is digital infographics. While au -

thors like Peltzer (2001) indicate that the first examp le of graphics
journalism, or infographics, in the world press was published in 1806 by The
Times of London, the use of this discursive form became really significant in
the 1980s, especially with the graphic revolution promoted by the newspaper
USA Today. According to Stovall (2004: 132), other printed vehicles had
already used graphics journalism before, for example the Chicago Tribune,
but it was USA Today that effectively made the innovation by giving value to
editorial design, and doing so on the basis of the successive opinion surveys
that sought its public -type, above all through quality graphic resources,
which included the famous weather maps. According to Stovall,
Graphics journalism combines words and images to present ideas and in -

formation in ways that cannot be accomplished by text or illustrations alone.
The best graphics journalism helps viewers understand – and picture – the
information. It gives insights into the topic. And it opens up the possibility that
viewers will find meanings and in terpretations beyond those intended by the
journalists (Stovall, 2004:130).
In spite of the passage of more than twenty years since the start of the
systematic use of infographics by the press, we can affirm that research with
this news resource as its object is still rare and dispersed. If this observation
is valid for the printed media, the same can be said of so -called multimedia
infographics or animated infographics. This can be explained by the novelty
of the phenomenon; it should be recalled that the Society of News Design
(SND) only began to award prizes for infographics of this nature in the late -
1990s (Salaverria and Cores, 2005: 158).
The volume of bibliography on printed infographics can be considered
reasonable, above all with respect to the num ber of titles published in the
United States, France, Portugal and Spain. Multimedia infographics is
usually mentioned in broader studies on digital journalism, especially in
chapters dedicated to discussions on the journalistic media in cyberspace, but
there are no specific works on this question, except for those of a technical
character, that is, explaining the use of tools and programs for the production
of infographics of this nature.
The books and chapters on infographics, especially those by Peltzer
(2001), Valero Sancho (2001), De Pablos (1999), Salaverría (2005a and
2005b) and Stovall (1997 and 2004), have an exploratory character. In the
work by Valero, for example, there is also a clear descriptive chapter, which
leads him to propose a typological classification of infographics on the basis
of the elements that constitute it (interactivity, movement, hypertext and
design), both with respect to the form and to what he calls qualitative
characteristics. Just as he had done for infographics published in the printed
vehicles (2001), he proposes a typological separation into collective and
individual infographics. He presents a range of characteristics that can trans -
form digital infographics into a visual journalistic genre on the basis of (1)
usefulness (informative, meaningful, functional and concurrent) and (2)
visuality (comprehensible, aesthetic, iconic, rheologic – the study of its dy-
namism – and verbal typographic). Salaverría and Cores (2005a: 150 -151)
classify infographics as a form of the new s genre. However, they prefer the
term “multimedia infographics” and argue that “in itself, it supposes a hy -
pertext, independent of the structure in which it appears embodied” (2005a:
157).
We would argue that a suitable form for constructing a theory of this
object – and even of providing a more efficient and less empirical practice in
editorial offices – is through the case study, applied in all its complexity,
because it favors two principal focuses: understanding how infographics is
used, on the basis of the study of the quality press, and, consequently, why
this resource is adopted.
The typology that we propose is as follows:
We divide infographics into two groups. Encyclopedic infographics,
which is centered on explanations of a more universal charact er, such as, for
example, details of the workings of the human body. It usually has a
generalist character. This is not the case with journalistic infographics, on
the other hand. This is concerned with aspects that are closer to singularities,
and is fair ly common in such cases as accidents, elections, etc.
Both groups are divided into independent and complementary. The latter
is infographics directly linked to a specific news item or reportage, acting, in
this case, more as a mechanism for improving the r eader’s understanding.
Independent encyclopedic infographics is characterized by its not
accompanying any material in particular, and by its dealing with broad
issues. Complementary specific infographics attempts to set out, or narrate,
the event in a diff erentiated or singular way (singular aspects), comple -
menting a news story or reportage.
Independent infographic journalism is more unusual. It appears as a to -

tally differentiated form of narrating an event, normally through a combina -
tion of complex resources. Infographic reportage is one of its variants. We
base ourselves on the supposition (Teixeira, 2005) that reportage can be de -
fined as a text that is able to provide in -depth contextualisation to an event,
or to specific aspects of a current issue.
Besides these broad groups and subgroups, it is important to specify that
any of the categories can be individual or composite, when they bring to -
gether two or more cases of infographics to form another single case of
greater complexity.
Finally, prior eve n to infographics, there is what we call proto -in-
fographics, that is, embryonic forms of infographics that are characterized by
the absence, or the insufficient presence, of one or another of its essential
elements, such as the front page, which serves to situate the reader, and other
complementary elements that are essential in aiding understanding. In this
case, we would be speaking of first generation infographics.
Empirical research must provide validation of this typology of in -
fographics on Internet and, at the same time, make it possible to understand
the reason for such uses and functions. As a procedure, it seems to us essen -
tial to adopt as a procedure the realization of a structured interview.
3
Information and Database Architecture
1. SEARCH METHODOLOGIES FOR INFORMATION

ARCHITECTURE
1.1. Theoretical Context and State of the Question
Systems of information management are the great technical advance that

has been applied to journalism in the first decade of this new century. The
creation of a structure that enables information storage on database protocols
has made it possible to establish a new scenario in the relationship between
news, publishers, editors, journalists and users. This technol ogical advance
involving the use of databases for contents management has already pro -
gressed beyond the first models, which were based on web archives that
resulted in the processing of an enormous quantity of documents that, de -
pending on the case, could become unmanageable (Díaz Noci and
Salaverría, 2003: 196).
On the basis of this advance the so -called Content Management Systems
were created, known by the acronym CMS. The definition of a CMS is a
computer application that solves the problems of relation s between the ele-
ments requested by users and the products created by journalists. In spite of
the existence of high quality publishing systems (OpenCMS, Joomla, Word -
press), the majority of the online media have opted to create their own tools,
making it possible to adapt the medium’s production routines to the new
tool. Programmers, designers and journalists participate in this process, and
it is here that it becomes essential to draw attention to a new profile of the
journalist, that of “information arc hitect”, someone combining the
methodologies of news archivists and journalists, and even the development
methodologies of computer systems managers (Díaz Noci and Salaverría ,
2003: 199).
These new tools, essentially based on information mechanisms of crea -
tion and storage, make it possible to establish a new value for information,
contributing new production mechanisms, much simpler than those existing
a mere five years ago. Above all, they make it possible to set up the relations
between the different elements that make up a news product, whether
drawing on the documentary foundations of the medium itself, or calling for
information from other external sources.
Analysis of the work of the managers will enable researchers to recog -

nise their efficacy in new s production and in the recovery of data, whether
requested by the journalist or by users.
Information architecture thus researches the organisation, labelling,
representation and organisation of contents. It is a very wide framework that
necessarily conne cts the study of the conception, production and distribution
of the cybermedium, and makes it necessary to know, at the same time, its
internal structure and the public and external organisation of that informa -
tion. The need to methodologically connect th e back-end, the editorial sys-
tem of the cybermedium, with the front-end, its visible face, seems essential
in much research due to the nature of the object of study: in an editorial sys -
tem, the registers of databases store, along with the public news fie lds
(headline, introduction, body of text… ), a fair number of private fields that
label and relate that content to its setting.
We cannot determine the scale and dimension of those relations in the
public part of a cybermedium without knowing the medium’s internal struc-
ture and the processes of labelling, placing in relation and storage of its
content, which only take place in the back -end, or in intermediate zones,
prior to its general publication. The public area is thus the final end of a
more complex system that has a direct bearing on everything represented in
the public area.
Now, in recent years the cybermedia have added to the complexity of,
and greatly diversified, the formats and containers holding the information
that is presented to the user. This point has been reached where the totality of
the online quality media are multi -channel publications, which have
differentiated versions depending on the technological formats for
visualising that data or the differentiated uses made by the consumer of the
latter. In this way, unlike earlier formats, where the object of study was
limited by a determinate appearance, more or less coherent in all of its parts,
the cybermedia are becoming populated by a heterogeneous structure of
content representation, with numerous extensions, exceptions to the common
rule and differentiated spaces of representation.
Versions adapted to mobile phones or PDAs with reduced viewing sur -
faces, RSS channels, versions for television, message services by telephone
or electronic mail, user-generated printed newspapers, personalised front
pages and interfaces, etc., are making the object of study more complicated,
insofar as an intermediate layer is added to this, making it necessary to take
decisions that restrict or widen the research methodology. Alongside re-
search in the area of production, or research in the final product, Internet has
produced an intermediate zone in the last seven years, where the content is
emancipated from its container in an abstract way. This intermediat e zone,
exemplified in the XML, represents the most abstract level at which the in -
INFORMATION AND DATABASE ARCHITECTURE 41
formation is found in a “pure state”, obtained from the user’s demands on

the database, but without having obtained a final output format.
With the immaterial technologies o f content production and consump -
tion, growing quantities of information were available and had to be
understandable to the user for it to be minimally apprehended. The map of
the websites, the page links and the possibility of using an integrated data -
base system with ever more information led the North Americans to sys -
tematise the information architecture for the World Wide Web. Concern with
this area, which was becoming consolidated and that was left largely under
the control of whoever produced the information, always took the form of
composing maps, so that the data could be recovered easily. At present, in -
formation architecture has come to form part of both the international flows
(organisation, navigation, levels of information, search systems) and the
integration of managerial and communicational aspects (mission, video,
content, functionality, growth, expansion of a product); or as Schwingel
(2003) proposes in structural terms as a) the structure of information and b)
the navigational structure of a specific product.
Employing the concepts of Manuel Castel ls, Beth Saad Corrêa (1999)
discusses the context of digital media at that time and the role of the jour -
nalist, as well as the new skills the latter would have to develop. She identi -
fies two routes for the professionalisation of journalists in the information
society: 1) the news architect; 2) the manager and his abilities. Finally, she
also identifies him as an agent of relationships and knowledge.
Prepared between 2000 and 2002, the master’s thesis of Schwingel
(2002) systematised the responsibilities, qualities and training needed by
members of teams developing products and services for the Web. Similarly,
she identified and structured the form of working of such professionals.
In a form specifically applied to the area of online journalism, the con -
cept of artificial intelligence (AI) came into use, based on the narrative of the
experience of preparing the Panopticon contents publication system of the
Communication Faculty of the Federal Unive rsity of Bahía. At that time,
information architecture was understood as: a) the flow of information, the
hierarchy of contents arranged in an online journalistic product; and b) the
flow of navigation, that is, how the readers could “construct” a specific
narrative.
Elias Machado (2004a and 2004b) discusses the function of artificial in -
telligence in the creation of narratives in cyberspace. Basing himself on the
discussion on digital journalism in databases, promoted by the Portuguese
Professor Antonio Fidalgo (2004), the work of the Spanish researchers
López, Gago and Pereira (2003) on information architecture and the clarifi -
cations of Raymond Colle (2002), referring to the databank and databases,
Machado proposes a “lengthening” of the concept to also include the
“screenplay function”. He insists that this function has so far been little ex -
plored in the studies of information architecture, in spite of its being “what
most conditions the work of the creator” (Machado, 2004), in this case, the
journalist s.
1.2. Structure in the Cybermedia
In the organisation of the elements of an editorial system of an online

medium, we can distinguish three broad areas that represent different func -
tions within the system and that have become indispensable in recent ye ars,
inasmuch as the possibilities of the cybermedia are expanding, with an
orientation towards the construction of informative communities that
establish relations between the contents generated by journalists and users.
The organisation of production is centred on all those elements needed
for the system to function and that enable the contents to be placed within
the system, to be represented and recovered. Its main function is to situate a
specific content within the database and make it possible to cla ssify and or-
ganise it. Formally, this architecture includes the system of categorisation
and labelling, that of chronological annotation, that of delimitation of the
graphic position of the element in the front -end, and the relational tables that
make it possible to connect one element with a finite or infinite number of
other elements. Robertson (Robertson, 2002) defined the basic requisites of a
system of this type: the separation of content and presentation, multiple
authorship (and thus the need to share a structure by all the producers), the
reuse of the content and the use of metadata.
The organisation of distribution corresponds to the design of the struc-
ture of that content which is to be shown to the public. It segments and typi -
fies the classica l elements of journalistic content (headlines, introductions,
credits, photographic captions, videos, etc.), as well as any other element of
the system which is to be shown to the public within a surface, according to
the relevance that that informative el ement might have in a specific context.
The organisation of participation designs structures to streamline the
interaction of users with the product and, where necessary, the interactions
between users. It attempts to connect the organisation of distribution
established by the medium with the users’ uses and consumption. The or -
ganisation of participation designs typified containers to hold the content
created by the user and formulas for this content to be represented on the
cybermedium, in a relationship that is more or less close to the content of the
editing.
1.3. Analysis of the Hierarchy of Elements
Traditionally, decision -making concerning hierarchy has been in the

hands of those responsible for editing (Armentia et al., 2000: 188), but it is
now necessary to contribute a new perspective to the concept. It is not only a
question of ordering elements on a page following the relevant journalistic
criteria, but also of structuring the workings of a tool to increase the value of
the published informati on. For that reason, a correct methodological analysis
of the hierarchies of a cybermedium will help the researcher to discover the
efficacy in the transmission of information.
In order to analyse the hierarchy of a medium, we set out from the con-
ception of Campbell and Goodman dating from 1988, which was made
known as the HAM (Hypertext Abstract Machine) model. These two authors
based themselves on the existence of three levels, or layers, in the architec -
ture of a website: the upper layer, which is the presentation level where the
user interface is found; the second layer, known as the intermediate level, or
HAM level, which is where relations are generated and the format of the
hypertextual system is determined. Finally, they define a third level, call ed
the bottom layer, which is where the database with the stored information is
located.
The researcher should study both the hierarchization of elements in the
graphic presentation (upper layer) and the level of relations established with
the intermediate layer, the site of connection between information recovery
and the databases where this is stored. A computer analysis of the structure
of databases underlying any dynamic system is of less use in research fo -
cused on the field of communication, since we would be venturing onto
ground that corresponds to engineering.
The most efficient methodology for determining the degree of success of
the intermediate level is to study the logical relations between the informa -
tive contents. In this deductive logic, the researcher should analyse the sys -
tem’s efficacy in enabling the user to localise the information sought: either
through guided models (such as the case of a cybermedium that establishes a
protocol to sell a service); or through tree models (in which the user seeks
information and the system establishes mechanisms for providing the infor -
mative contents sought, such as the case of information related to the main
news item); or, finally, by analysis of the process of hierarchization from the
logic of the superimposition of hierarchies . In this case, the cybermedium
recovers for the user the connections arising in the places where there is a
coincidence between the user’s interest and the information stored by the
cybermedium.
1.4. Applied Model for a Case Study
Following the precepts of the Grupo de Pesquisa en Jornalismo On-line

[On-line Journalism Research Group – GJOL], the methodology to be
adopted for the proposed research is a hybrid one, and its principal aspect
will be conceptual discussion of the pra ctice of online journalism, which
must be complemented by case studies in journalistic newsrooms and or -
ganisations (Machado and Palacios, 2007). Thus, the proposal of a
methodology for the study of information architecture will have as a first
stage:
1.4.1. Bibliographical Review of the Object of Study
What is sought at this initial stage is to make a review of the bibliogra -

phy, relating not only to the definitions of information architecture (Wür -
man, Rosenfeld and Morville; Hurst; Garret; López, Gago and Pereira;
Schwingel; Gago), but also to its applicability to online journalism (Díaz
Noci and Salaverría; Salaverría; Gago), and to how specific points of
problematisation can be chosen, bearing in mind questions of the product’s
usability, visual appropriate ness and technological options (which would
lead to specific definitions and the drawing up of a specific bibliography).
Finally, it is necessary to analyse some concepts that can be understood as
“advances” in information architecture through the appearan ce of other fac-
tors (interactive factors, community formation, automatized publication of
contents, management systems), such as gatewatching (Bruns, 2006) and
findability (Morville, 2006).
Parallel to this, the object of study must be delimited: which pr oducts
have a referential character (the big media, with influence on a specific so -
cial group) or have an innovative or experimental character (Machado and
Palacios, 2007). Criteria can also be observed such as originality, represen -
tativeness and divers ity (Barbosa, 2007).
It is recommended that this research should be centred on the interface
of the message with its mode of production, which, following Santaella
(2001), represents the form in which the media determine the constitution of
the languages they carry, the possibilities these open up and the limits they
set, as well as the specificity of the communication process and the resulting
genres. The use of a mixed methodology, as described by Palacio and
Machado (2007), leads us to the study of cases that, following Gil (1991),
present the following advantages: a) stimulation of new discoveries; b) em -
phasis on totality; and c) simplicity of procedures.
Once the choice has been made, an asystematic observation of four to

six months is recommended, in order to elaborate the techniques for
obtaining data, as well the working premises and hypotheses.
1.4.2. Description of the Information Architecture of the Object
Observation of the information architecture employed by the journalistic

product can be undertaken for a period of at least fifteen days. It is suggested
that the architecture of the product be analysed, both as a whole and in each
subject, in order to form an idea of the dimension of the work of each jour -
nalist individually, or even to view the sub ject itself. Therefore, thinking
about the product can be done in macro terms (the screens that serve as a
model to demonstrate the AI solution adopted and the navigation flow)
(Melqui Jr., 2007). However, in line with what was developed for the
Panopticon (Schwingle, 2003), that is, the macro and micro analysis of the
product itself, it will perhaps be interesting to observe each subject as if it
were a micro-site, with its own flow diagram composing a narrative struc -
ture, as well to observe the interactive and multimedia resources employed.
The following is a summary of the online journalistic product:
Macroarchitecture
A) Description of the product’s macroarchitecture;

B) Sketch of the flow diagram of the macroarchitecture;
C) Description of the interactive res ources used in the macroarchitec -
ture;
D) Description of the multimedia resources used in the macroarchitec -
ture.
Microarchitecture
E) Definition of the area of the product to be described. This might be a

genre, a section or even the daily edition;
F) Daily capture of the chosen area, with an attempt to identify the sub -
ject’s narrative structure;
G) Sketch of the flow diagram of the subject;
H) Description of the interactive resources used in the subjects;
I) Description of the multimedia resources used in the subjects.
- Elaboration of the categories of analysis, processing of the material
Comparison and analysis of the flow diagrams and the interactive and
multimedia resources employed. In accordance with the aims of the research
and with the aid of the bibliograph y, definition of the categories of analysis.
- Conceptual definition of the particularities of the AI product
Description of the AI of the online journalistic product according to its

editorial position, genres, sections, market position, seeking to adva nce con-
ceptually in accordance with the bibliography employed.
2. METHODOLOGIES OF DATABASE ANALYSIS IN ONLINE

JOURNALISM
2.1. Theoretical Context and State of the Question
In general terms, the studies related to databases that conform to the

perspective presented here are aligned with an evolutionary phase of online
journalism classified as third generation (Mielniczuk, 2003; Pryor, 2002), or
even on the developmental edges of what is perceived as a fourth generation
(Barbosa, 2005a, 2005b, 2006a, 2006b, 200 7a, 2007b; Schwingle, 2005).
Alongside information architecture and the systems of contents
management, databases are a primordial element of what we consider to be a
basic triad in the construction and administration of cybermedia. The three
elements mak e up the internal structure of a cybermedium and condition its
administration, organisation, the recovery and presentation of its contents,
and even its diffusion, circulation and the way in which users interact with
the online digital journalistic product .
Starting in the early years of the XXI century, we can find the works of
researchers who widened the conceptual dimension of databases in
journalism and online journalism. Specifically in the work of the following
authors - Colle, 2002, 2005a, 2005b; Fid algo, 2003, 2004, 2007a, 2007b;
López, Gago, Pereira, 2003a; López, Gago, Pereira, 2003b; Machado,
2004a; 2004b, 2004c; 2006; Lima Júnior, 2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2007;
Quadros, 2004, 2005; Barbosa, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2005a, 2005b, 2006a,
2006b, 2007a, 2007b; García et al, 2005; Holovaty, 2005, 2006a, 2006b;
Gago, 2006, 2007; Pereira, 2006; 2007 - we find a conceptual approach that
proceeds to the consideration of databases as a specificity of online
journalism, widening their meaning and attributing them wit h their own
status. This is in opposition to the approach that considered them as sources
for the production of journalistic material, that is as tools, according to some
systematised studies in the 1990s (Koch, 1991; Meyer, 1993; Garrison,

1998; Paul, 1999).
Raymond Colle (2000) analyses (and also applies) the method of data
mining and KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases) for the
implementation of a journalistic product in cyberspace, also including the
notions of content organisation for visualisation a nd publication. His study
details terms and explains the processes for carrying out data mining,
discovering useful information hidden amongst the registers inserted in a
journalistic database, generating online statistics by means of systems of
meta-information and showing the ways in which that content can be visual -
ised.
António Fidalgo (2003, 2004, 2007a) was one of the first to analyse the
specificity of databases in the structuring and organisation of information in
a digital product. One of the concepts introduced by this researcher was that
of semantic resolution. According to Fidalgo, this concept rightly seeks to
determine the contribution of databases to journalism, collaborating in the
construction of a theoretical reference table. He explains th at just as the
quality of a digital image increases with an increase in its graphic resolution,
that is, the number of pixels per square centimetre, so does a plurality and
diversity of online news about an event increase the information concerning
it, thus raising its semantic resolution (Fidalgo, 2007a: 93).
The researchers of the Novos Medios (New Media) group of the Univer-
sity of Santiago de Compostela (USC) in Galicia, Spain – Xosé López Gar-
cía, Manuel Gago and Xosé Pereira – are also pioneers in the study and
realisation of projects that place an emphasis on databases, associated with
the other two elements of the basic triad: information architecture and sys -
tems of content management. Since 2003, in the series of publications they
have produced, these authors (López; Gago; Pereira, 2003a; López; Gago;
Pereira, 2003b; López García et al, 2005; López, Gago, Pereira, 2006; Gago,
2006, 2007; Pereira, 2006, 2007) have analysed the applicability of what
they consider to be the technical format (databases , DB) and the conceptual
format (AI) for the creation of content management systems (CMS) as dis-
tinctive features of the new dynamic pattern for cybermedia. Employing
their own models of analysis of information architecture, such as diagrams,
practical na vigation tests and use of the Web, the researchers from Galicia
have proposed characteristic technical definitions of the dynamic, rather than
static, sites.
In a dynamic system, the ensemble of databases that store all of the jour -
nalistic information is the primordial component (Pereira, 2007: 194). The
researchers of the Novos Medios group, in their articles and books of 2006
and 2007, extended their respective analyses – centred on the methodology
of information architecture – in order to verify in greater depth how the cy-
bermedia are evolving in the environment of continuous and frenetic change

represented by the Internet.
They examine the resources of what is known as Web 2.0, such as RSS
(Really Simple Syndication) or the social markers for the dist ribution and
sharing of contents (for example, Menéame, Del.icio.us, etc); the growing
use of free software in the newsrooms of journalistic websites; the participa -
tion and more intensive interaction of the users of cybermedia (pa rticipatory
journalism); the phenomenon of blogs. In addition, they consider how Flash
technology collaborated in the creation of specific genres in online
journalism (for example, interactive computer graphics) and how it at pre -
sent carries all types of application for geolocati on, for multimedia, for au -
dio, video and photography reproduction and for advertising; and how new
concepts, such as mash -up (programming adapted from an external site
which is made to interact with a database), are delineating new paths for the
treatment and presentation of journalistic contents. As Manuel Gago (2007)
points out, in a scenario of constant evolution and change, a cybermedium
increasingly involves more software and less hardware, since, converted into
a platform, it is capable of relating j ournalistic news, analysis and interpreta -
tion with databases whose content is flat, administrative, meteorological or
commercial, amongst others (Gago, 2007: 110).
The Brazilian researcher Elias Machado, lecturer at the Federal Univer -
sity of Santa Catarina (UFSC), in articles produced in 2004, sets out the con-
ception that confers a particular status on databases in online journalism,
through the identification of three simultaneous and complementary func -
tions: a) as a format for structuring information; b) as a medium for models
of multimedia narrative; and c) as a memory for the published contents. It is
in keeping with the conception of databases as a contemporary symbolic
cultural form, which structures the majority of the products of the new mass
media (Manovich, 2001), that Machado should announce the status of the
DB as a cultural form with its own status. In support of his hypothesis, he
employs the principle of transcodification – described by Manovich as what
permits all the objects of the new ma ss media to be translated into other for-
mats. Elias Machado argues that the future of journalistic organisations on
the Web is conditioned by their ability to transfer the skills, boosted by data -
bases, of automatically storing, classifying, indexing, con necting, gathering
and recovering huge quantities of data in creative types of narration.
Walter Teixeira Lima Júnior developed part of an applied research pro -
ject in conceptualising a framework for the production of intelligent soft -
ware for searching in journalistic sources (Lima Júnior, 2006a, 2006b,
2007). The methodology employed is based on intersecting the areas of so -
cial communication (journalism), computing, cognitive psychology and an -
thropology. Taking the formation of the conceptual base as a starting point,
he made use of the UML (Unified Modelling Lan guage) method, from the
computer sciences, to define the programs to be used in the production of the
software. According to Lima Júnior, the decision to use UML models was
taken since it is a model containing flexibility, and in order to be able to
guarantee a better adaptation of the conceptual flow in some programming
languages, such as Java or Labview.
2.2. Databases as Paradigm and Metaphor
Suzana Barbosa (2007) characterises databases as a key aspect in

inspiring the designation of a paradigm in the transitional stage between the
third generation (Mielniczuk, 2003; Pryor, 2002) and a fourth phase of evo -
lution towards cyberjournalism. Her work, whose empirical corpus involved
22 cybermedi a, also coined a new metaphor (the aesthetic of the database)
for the presentation of journalistic contents in the cybermedia.
This author conceptualises the Online Journalism Database (OJDB) as
the model followed by databases for defining structure and or ganisation, as
well as for presenting contents of a journalistic nature, in accordance with
specific functionalities and categories, which will enable the creation, main -
tenance, updating, availability and circulation of dynamic digital journalistic
products. The OJDB Model possesses a set of 18 functions, and seven cate -
gories: dynamism; automatisation; interrelation/hyperlinking; flexibility;
informative density; thematic diversity; visualisation.
The research, which had an exploratory character, employed multidisci -
plinary theoretical -conceptual bases – from journalism to the new mass me -
dia, from diffusionist theory to computer sciences – adopting the case study
method as an illustration (Machado, Palacios, 2007) to found its arguments,
demonstrating its validity and proving or refuting hypotheses. This proce -
dure, used in research developed in the area of the Grupo de Investigación
en Periodismo On-line (On-line Journalism Research Group - GJOL), en-
ables the reality of the concept to be contrasted with the diversified reality of
the objects studied in the cases, making it possible, when necessary, for the
concept being tested to be reformulated to incorporate aspects that had been
rejected until then. In the research of the GJOL, a case study therefore
supports arguments in order to advance working hypotheses pointing to a
much wider reality, making it possible to identify concepts and variables that
can be studied quantitatively. It thus differs from more traditional case
studies, which have as their res ult descriptive studies of highly delimited
objects, without many wider conceptual ambitions.
Machado (2000) indicated tendencies of a new modality of journalism
that included users in the process of production, exploited the potential for
storing and recovering information instantaneously, and exercised online
control of the informational materials of the newspaper. For the researcher,

skill in recovering information from databases became essential for the
operations in the chain of production of the news item and was incorporated
as a basic function of journalists, adding complexity to the work that had
always been done by the professionals of the area. Subsequently, Machado
stressed that there was a tendency for the archive to cease to be “dead” and
for it to become part of the production process of online journalism,
becoming “alive” and decentralised. “In the space of the networks the main
function of journalistic archives is both to encourage and to direct the ex -
change of data for the production of news items, reportages or commentar-
ies” (Machado, 2001).
2.3. From the Syntactic Web to the Semantic Web
At present, studies on the indexing and recovery of information on the

Web include a new tendency: the semantic web. In accordance with the re -
searchers in the fields of Information Systems and Information, the semantic
web will mean an evolution of the Web as we know it (Hyvönen, 2002; Fei -
tosa, 2006). Beyond permitting searches for textual documents, images,
sounds and videos on web pages, beyond permi tting the incorporation of the
user’s production into the system of circulation of networked digital contents
and a facilitated use of free software, the great promise of the semantic web
is to permit a more efficient and intelligent use of the networks. W ith the
support of ontologies (Feitosa, 2006), computers will be able to manipulate
the terms much more effectively, enabling the information to become more
useful and significant to the user.
In 2001, the Web’s creator, Tim Berners-Lee, started the debate on a
new concept, the semantic web. The concept, which he coined together with
James Hendler and Ora Lassila, had a great impact in the academic world, as
it offered an ambitious vision of the future of the World Wide Web (Mor -
ville, 2005). The authors basically explained how the semantic web would
structure the meanings of website contents, creating an environment that
would enable the intelligent agents, which move from page to page, to gather
information useful for each user, all in an automated form. T o obtain effi -
cient results, a series of rules of inference must be combined with ontologies
and structured representations of the information, which to be successful
must be connected to a single global system of information. The semantic
web will permit machines to understand semantic documents and data. If it is
suitably projected, the new Web will be able to promote the evolution of
human knowledge (Berners-Lee, 2001).
The capacity for finding useful information is termed findability by Peter
Morville (2005); this is the quality that systems possess of being localisable
and navigable. Setting out from the concept of the ubiquity of machines,
Morville presents a potential world where everything can be easily found
through intelligent systems. He recognis es that we are still not there yet, but
there are many indications that we are close to an age marked by really effi -
cient and useful answers.
With the achievement of the semantic web, the cybermedia will advance
from a phase in which the automatization of processes still requires inter -
pretation and establishment of relations by professionals, to a phase in which
it really will be possible to trust in results obtained on the basis of generic or
specific searches, with greater or lesser degrees of control by users. Data-
checking will be done by automatised systems and the answers given to the
user will have a significant relevance in the processes of production of in -
formative material.
2.4. Methodology of Analysis
An outstanding characteristic of the works researching the subject under

review here is the plurality of the theoretical and methodological universe on
which their analyses and analytical foundations are based.
Multidisciplinarity in their conceptual and theoretical framework is conse -
quently reflected in different methodological options concerning the forms
of exposition, discovery and justification in approaching the object of re -
search. Thus, we note that research limited to databases in online journalism,
in general terms, is more attuned to the methodological triangle (Conde,
Galera, 2005), since it manages different perspectives, techniques and types
of method. The origin of the term “triangulation” as it is used in the social
sciences is to be found in the proposal of multiple operationalism made by
Campbell and Fiske (1959). But Denzin (2003) subsequently widened the
concept by identifying four types of triangulation with a broader meaning,
simultaneously utilised in a single research project in different types of
method and data, and even d isciplines.
Although research in databases has not yet employed the Delphi method,
we believe that this strategy could be used in order, for example, to evaluate
the system of production in the cybermedia, the level of use of databases in
cybermedia newsrooms and the degree of skill of professionals with respect
to their understanding and use of interrelating links in the informative pieces.
Additionally, this method examines how databases are used in processes of
indexing and recov ery of journalistic conte nts, and how content management
systems in fact assure the industrialisation of the productive process in
online journalism. Created in the 1950s, Delphi is a qualitative estimative
technique with a broad scope that extracts and refines the collective opin ion
and experience of a panel of specialists. Its main characteristics are:
- Iteration: several rounds are made, whose number can be es tablished

beforehand or determined in accordance with a criterion of consen sus
amongst the participants or of stability of individual opinions.
- Return: before the second and subsequent rounds, the results of the
previous round are sent to all the participants.
- Anonymity: the participants are approached by mail.
Finally, it should be noted that the case study method is consi dered the
most suitable for researching contemporary phenomena within their real
context, according to Robert Yin (2005). Besides this, the case study is
amongst the most widely employed methods in research in communication
(Lopes, 2001), being the most suitable for exploratory research and particu-
larly useful for generating hypotheses (Machado, Palacios, 2007).
4
Research Methodologies in Journalistic Design on
Internet
Scientific research in the field of the design of cybermedia in general,

and of more concrete aspects such as infographics in particular, is scarce and
therefore necessary. The small number of experts who theorise on this ques-
tion, the volatility of the tendencies and the fact that the close relationship
between design and the news message itself is frequently overlooked hinder
the development of specific research methodologies for this area of
knowledge in the specific field of journalism. Other lesser, but no less im -
portant, difficulties in research in cybermedia design are the absence of gra -
phic manuals in the newsrooms, the constant formal updating of the cyber -
media and the non -existence of a single design model to imitate, amongst
others. Specific literature on the question is also scarce, although attention
should be drawn to the recent appearance of the work Diseño periodístico en
Internet [Journalistic Design on Internet] (Larrondo and Serrano, 2007).
A valid research methodology in this question requires a commonly
accepted concept of design as a starting point. In this respect, it should be
borne in mind that the concept of design on Internet includes new areas of
study directly related to design that did not exist in the traditional mass me -
dia, such as accessibility, interactivity, usability, navegation and the perso -
nalisation of contents, amongst others (Cabrera, 2000: 45).
Before the appearance of Internet, the concept of design was already ex-
tremely broad, including its constituent elements as well as the structure and
the basic principles governing it. Now, the new resources that permit the
projection of news messages in cyberspace must be added to those elements,
structure and basic principles or norms.
Before approaching any research in the design of cybermedia, it should
be recalled that the evolution of technology directly affects news design,
which is why the results of research in this question and the methodologies
applied in its attainment will require constant updating.
The possible studies of design range from the most general to other more
specific perspectives and, depending on this, different research typologies
can be established according to the object studied in each case . In this res-
pect, we make a distinction between those that study design in the most ge -
neral way and those that approach it with a more specialised gaze. In our
understanding, research centred on the study of design in general considers
amongst its analyti cal variables the structure and all the news elements, as
well as the principles relating to design. Compared to this research, more
specific studies are centred on in -depth research into a particular element or
a concrete part of design, infographics for example, or also photography
(Yuste, Sandoval and Franco, 2006), slide shows (Paul and Ruel, 2007:b),
usability (Schumacher, 2005), multimediality (Ruel and Paul, 2007:a), etc.
In the work methods employed there is a predomiance of quantitative
over qualitative methods, and of arithmetic over semantics. Even in the latter
case, the results do not capture the level of efficacy of the graphic presenta -
tion. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods renders the
reasons for design efficacy, which i s why a mixed or combined methodology
helps to complete the results of research in cybermedia design.
1. ORIGINS OF RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGIES IN CYBER-

MEDIA DESIGN
In spite of the small number of scientific studies on this quesiton, we can

find research of a general and of a specialised type. The first type of study
was needed for the creation of a theoretical corpus on the question that
would compensate for the scarcity of specific literature. On the other hand,
the latter – the specific studies – favour specialisation and deeper research
within the discipline itself. It is advisable that both types be developed, but,
without any doubt, the general studies help in the comprehension,
contextualisation and justification of the specialised studies.
In this respect, the first thesis defended in Spain on the design of news -
papers on Internet (Cabrera, 1998) facilitated understanding of the charac -
teristics that are specific to the design of cybernewspapers compared to those
inherited from traditional newspaper desig n. The results were obtained from
an analysis of 30 newspapers from around the world present on Internet, on
the basis of a common file. In this case, interviews with experts (persons in
charge of the digital editions) completed the results. This first stu dy was
followed by another doctoral thesis that analysed design in general in the
Spanish cybermedia (Castaños, 1999).
Up to the year 2007, sixty doctoral theses related to Internet had been
defended in the Communication Faculties of Spain. Sixteen percent of these
were linked to design, in some cases centred on more specific aspects, such
as hypertextuality (Batista, 2000; Pérez, 2002), multimediality (Canet,
2001), usability (Ramos, 2002; Lerma 2004), personalisation (Ramírez,
2003) and interactivity (Ce brián, 2005).
The qualitative focus within the methodology applied in those studies
proceeded from reviewing the different paradigms established for research,
such as positivism (or objectivism), the interpretative paradigm and the criti -
RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES IN JOURNALISTIC DESIGN ON INTERNET 55
cal paradigm, suggested by Neuman (1997), Blaikie (1993) and cited by

Wimmer and Dominick (2001). The majority of those studies set out from an
interpretative perspective, using the methods of the theory based on the case
study to carry out data collection, classification an d analysis.
The case study method is an efficient tool of qualitative research that
consists in empirical investigation, utilising numerous sources of evidence to
study a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context, where the
limits between the ph enomenon and its context are not clearly apparent (Yin,
1994).
To date, the majority of the methodologies employed have been based
on descriptive methods for the observation of the medium based on an ana -
lytical file, which can be completed by means of surv eys or interviews with
other experts (persons in charge of cybermedia) as a method of heuristic
evaluation, and with users as a method of investigation; or by means of the
focus group technique, which is defended by Nielsen (1993), Rubin (1994),
Dumas and Redish (1999) or Scheneiderman and Plaisant (2006) to consoli -
date the results of the evaluation.
There are research studies based on analysis of the contents of the cy -
bermedia where interesting results have been obtained concerning the sub -
ject of design on Internet. This is the case with the international study coor -
dinated from Holland by Van der Wuff and Lauf in 2005, in which certain
design characteristics of online European newspapers were analysed in com -
parison with the traditional press. Concretely, th e insertion of photographs,
multimedia and advertising elements were observed. However, this com -
parative content analysis did not have design as its exclusive object of study.
Other research studies, such as those of Nielsen, Paul and Ruel on
usability, or those of the Poynter Institute on the user’s eye movement facing
the screen, help in understanding design efficacy starting from a concern
with the user.
In spite of the contribution of these types of study, shortcomings can be
detected in the methods employed when it comes to answering the motiva -
tions for the user’s interest in the design elements or characteristics that have
most attracted his attention. Thus, the merits of the methodologies employed
could be improved by techniques of analysis that would help in determining
what motivated the user’s interest in the different presentations of the infor -
mation. Complementary methodologies are considered in order to achieve
those results: focus groups with users, interviews and questionnaires or sur -
veys.
At present, new research studies related to design are underway, con-
cretely on the design of interfaces for mobile formats, the use of digital
photography in the cybermedia, or the relation between the design and con -
sumption of cybermedia by young people (Larr ondo and Serrano, 2007: 70).
Other studies that have a bearing on design, although not as direct as the
above, proceed from the confluence of different disciplines for undertaking
research centred on design: the relation of typography with structuralism, t he
influence of the theory of deconstruction on journalistic design or the study
of software as the space where the theory of design is put into practice.
2. PROPOSAL FOR COMBINING TRADITIONAL AND INNOVA-

TIVE METHODOLOGIES
As in any research, the establishme nt of a conceptual theoretical frame -

work in the first phase is an essential starting point in order, in this case, to
analyse the evolution of design from an historical perspective or, simply, to
contextualise the object of study and generate the state of the question. The
scant existing bibliography in print makes it necessary to have recourse to
Internet as the main source of information for completing this first phase.
The theoretical approach to design as a research object requires
knowledge of the essential characteristics of online communication, as well
as of the repercussions of the systems of production, distribution and recep -
tion in the final presentation of the informative message. The continuous
technological changes affect those systems and desi gn, hence the
methodologies employed in the few existing studies require constant revi -
sion.
2.1. Descriptive Methods
The descriptive methodology, based on observation of the medium, is

the most widely extended amongst the scholars who, in the field of Commu -
nication, centre their object of study on design. It is applied both to analyse
the complete structure of the web page and to study the inclusion of more
specific elements, such as images, multimedia elements or interactive ser -
vices. The starting point, onc e the object of study has been delimited, is de -
signing the analytical file. A proposal is presented below of the fields to be
included on this file, divided into two blocs , the head and the body:
a) Head of the file
? Name of the cybermedium
? Place of publica tion
? URL
? Date of analysis
b) Body of the file
? Frequency of updating
? Correspondence between the name of the cybermedium and URL
? Existence of a prior register
? Possibility of subscription
1) Contents:
o Includes pages of the printed version
o Access to archives
o Breaking news section
o Scrolling of real time information
o Language applied in news contents
o Language applied in advertising
o Multimedia elements (audio/vídeo/Flash)
o Personalisation of contents (newsletters, headlines sent to
electronic mail, PDA, RSS)
o Promotions
o Static and dynamic image, in colour/black and white, on
front page only or also in the interior, pod casting
o Services (games, puzzles, obituaries, classifies advertise -
ments, e-commerce)
2) Accessibility and research:
o Internal/external search engine
o FAQ
o Site map
o Internal/external links related within the texts
o Special technical requirement (QuickTime, Acrobat
Reader… )
o Possibilities of feedback (email addresses of editors or sec -
tions, letters to the editor, forums, chat, blogs, surveys,
commentary on articles, space assigned on the web page,
sending in collaborations)
o Application of hyperlinks (in images, texts)
o Errors detected
3) Disposition of elements:
o Scheme of screen structure
o Vertical/Horizontal/Mixed menu
o Inclusion of free tools in the design of the cyberme dium
(use of Youtube, Google Maps, Blogger… )
o Option for creating different front pages (with most popular
news items, news items that have received the most com -
ment, most highly rated news items)
4) Analysis of elements:
o Masthead (name, colour, typography, size… )
o Headlines (link, colour, type of lettering, size… )
o Text (number of links, type of lettering, size, number of
lines, inclusion in image format… )
o Hypertext (typography, colour unvisited, colour once

visited… )
o Photography (number, colour or b/w, link, animation, added
commentary… )
o Photo caption (frequency, colour, extension, link… )
o Icons (number, function, size, colour… )
o Separating lines (number , function, size, colour… )
o Boxes (number, function, size, colour… )
o Advertising (quantity, placement, size, c olour, animation,
link… )
o Infographics (quantity, type, fixed, animated, colour or
b/w… )
o Other
Descriptions can be centred on the study of a concrete case or on a
selection of several media. This will make it possible to make comparisons ,
as in the case of studying the influence of blogs on the redesign of the cy -
bermedia, or for comparing the presentation of the printed with the virtual
media. Another sub-method can also be applied, the chronological -sequen-
tial method, which makes possible an analysis of the formal evolution of the
medium from a temporal perspective.
Another exploratory technique, widely employed in recent years for
describing practices related to design, is the construction of an individual or
group blog. Web pages like Visualmente, Maquetadotes, Diseño de Informa-
ción, News Designer.com, Typographica or Infografistas have a regular
commitment to criticism of mass media design, as the following image
shows.
Figure 1: Blogs specialising in design are a reference point for researchers in this
question
The development of networked work has made possible the emer gence
of new techniques applied to descriptive research. One example of a
cooperative system is the construction of wikis. A project carried out on the
“Media Design Research” postgradua te course of the Piet Zwrat Institute of
Rotterdam, and which can be found on the website
http://www.designtimeline.org/cgi -bin/archive/timeline.cgi , consisted in
making an open research study on the first decade of website design.
Through a pre-established chronological order, the users of the site have
analysed the suitability of tools that appeared in this period; they have added
images, commentaries, posed questions and, in shor t, constructed a collec-
tive history of Internet, summed up in 768 entries.
Wikis are not aesthetically attractive products, but they are a method of
group research that is being increasingly employed.
2.2. Interview and Questionnaire Put to Experts
Interviews with experts and questionnaires put to graphic designers

make it possible to analyse the degree of adaptation to the new multimedia
applications and to obtain direct knowledge about the process of production
(for example, to determine whether infographic s are first planned for the
online version and subsequently adapted for the printed version). Interviews
are also the best method for establishing the existing resources, for deter -
mining the possible shortcomings in personnel dedicated to design tasks or
for indicating the retraining courses in which they take part, where this is the
case. The form of the interview can range from an informal conversation to a
highly structured self -administered questionnaire, facilitating current quali -
tative and quantitativ e data that is obtained through annotations, the com -
plete transcription of dialogues or the tabulation and analysis of the data.
Although in theory interviews and questionnaires can be conducted over
the telephone or by email, face to face encounters are m ore recommendable
for the study of design (Knight and Jefsioutine, 2002).
2.3. Studies Centred on the Audience
2.3.1. Analysis of Logs and Tags for Studying Navigation
The constant process of redesign of the media on Internet makes it

necessary to examine the performance of each change in format using
audience measurement techniques. Two of these are the systems for
analys ing logs (archives of data gathered by the web servers) and tags (data
gathered from the user’s browser by a remote system), which make it possi -
ble to evaluate page navigation and thus adapt the website to the users’
habits.
Analysis through log files is the form traditionally used for analysing the
traffic on web sites. It permits analysis of the server’s log files, which gather
all the page positions visited through this server. This technique emerged as
a tool for the continuous evaluation of the architecture of a website.
Analysis through page markers or tags is more recent and is replacing
analysis through logs because of its advantages. Throu gh this technique, an
HTML or Java code is introduced on each of the pages to be audited. Subse-
quently, the data extracted can be stored on a remote server and can be
accessed online through a web interface without any need for downloading.
These two techniques make it possible to determine the number of visits
made to, or the time spent on the website by users and, depending on this
data, the positive or negative influence of each new aesthetic can be de -
duced. However, this is an essentially quantitative m ethodology that is used
for verifying the success of redesign, but it does not provide knowledge
about user behaviour and requires completion through the use of qualitative
methodologies.
2.3.2. Usability Test
In recent years a current has emerged that, rather than analysing design
as an end in itself, considers design as a tool for obtaining concrete goals.
These goals have basically been concentrated into two: attempting to create
user satisfaction and inviting participation by the reader. On his website
Useit.com, Jakob Nielsen, an expert in usability, makes several recommen -
dations to be applied in these tests that make it possible to determine the
behaviour of the website user, to measure the impact he has on a service or a
section, and to quantify his prefer ences. Determination of the sample is a
basic starting point. To obtain quantitative results, which provide significant
statistics reflecting demographic or group differences, it is necessary to test
many users. However, Nielsen argues that if what is soug ht is the location of
usability errors on a website, an analysis of fifteen users is more than suffi -
cient, as can be seen from the following figure, although six users will come
close to 90% of the total errors.
Figure 2: Source: Jakob Nielsen's chart fro m his March 19 th, 2000 Alertbox
Column.
To select a sample that will make it possible to investigate and analyse

users’ needs, it is also necessary to select people who have no connection at
all with website design, usability or product quality measuring techniques,
market research or the advertising world (Kuniavsky, 2003: p.99).
A basic usability test can be carried out in five hours, with the time dis -
tributed as follows: 30 minutes during which the members of the project
determine the key questions; 30 minutes for deciding how to recruit the
users; two and a half hours for testing five people; 30 minutes for analysing
the data and another 30 minutes for presenting the conclusions.
In the following figure, the Usability.gov website reflects the complexit y
that these studies can achieve.
Figure 3
The object of study can be a real product or a prototype, as in the case of

Newspad. The second is the preferable option, as it makes an exploratory
survey possible before the product appears on the market, determining its
efficacy and providing prior knowledge on the degree of acceptance
generated in its potential audience.
In some cases, usability studies make use of the technique of monitoring
the course of the gaze, since this not only reflects what the user sees but also
where a problem has been detected. The results obtained from this
methodology have a worldwide repercussion, but also require a high invest -
ment in infrastructure. Eye tracking studies require a laboratory to prevent
the subjects from being di stracted, and in Spain the company alt64 has used
Tobii 1750 monitors and ClearView analytical software to capture eye
movements precisely.
Figure 4: Representative image of Eyetracking. Source: http://disel-project.org/
This system includes a camera camouflaged in the monitor and infrared

lighting that enables the confection of thermal maps with dark areas, where
the pupil has not stopped, and hot areas, where the majority of users have
rested their gaze. The most criticised aspects of this technique, centred on
the visual behaviour of users, are that the equipment cannot measure their
degree of comprehension, nor how much of their reading or scanning of the
screen is retained.
2.3.3. Legibility Test
The legibility t est can be considered the direct predecessor of usability

studies. Enabling comfortable reading has been a constant concern since the
middle of the XX century. At present, the most widely employed technique
for analysing screen reading is very similar to t hat used with printed media,
and consists in measuring the velocity of reading in different situations, de -
termined by differences in font size, line spacing, alignment, line breadth
and typography (Richaudeau, 1987).
Other methods employed are the memorisation test and comparative
tests. The latter consist in presenting pairs of screens so that the user makes a
single and instantaneous choice, in this way, for example, expressing a
preference for characters in upper or lower case, alignment, background
colour or typography, or for determining the efficacy of enhancement
through colour, the effect of blinking or the change of style in certain parts
of the text.
2.3.4. Accessibility Test
Another method related to audiences is the accessibility test. The process

has been automatised through the online services offered by dozens of sites
such as t.a.w., Ocawa or Hera. By simply introducing the URL address and
the level of analysis, it is possible to determine whether a site permits indis -
criminate access to information in accordance with the universa l standards
contained in the document “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0” 1
prepared by the World Wide Web Consortium. There are three levels of
accessibility, and the corresponding tests form part of the annexes:
? Priority 1. A web page content developer must satisfy this point
of verification. This is a basic requirement. Otherwise, one or more
groups of users will find it impossible to access the document’s infor -
mation.
? Priority 2. A web page content developer must satisfy this point
of verification. Otherwise, one or more groups of users will encounter
difficulties in accessing the document’s information.
? Point 3. A web page content developer can satisfy this point of
verification in order to improve access to the website. Otherwise, one or
more groups of users will encounter some difficulty in accessing the
document’s information.
Other websites have specialised in offering more concrete improve -
ments, related to the use of colour (Accessibility Color Wheel, ColorDoctor,
Color Laboratory, Colour Blindness Simulator), the reproduction of mp3
files (the ccMP3Player of NCAM), cascading style sheets (CSS Analyser) or
images (Image Analyser).
1
The norms are available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ and
the complete list of websites with online tools that evaluate accessibility can be
found at http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/complete.
2.4. Complementary Methodologies
To the above methodologies can be added all those with a qualitative

character that contribute new data that are not extracted from the quantitative
results and that help in a better understanding of the context, the reasons for
consumption of, and interest in, certain information, the impact of the design
on people (sensations, influence, etc.). It would be worth considering the
methods of psychology, perception, semiotics and other areas related to de-
sign, from which novel results can be obtained. Also worth considering in
the design field is the Delphi m ethod, which makes a prospective study
possible.
2.5. Final Presentation of the Results
In the final presentation of design related studies there is a necessary

combination of verbal and visual contents; a hybrid proposal of texts and
images since, as Marsha ll McLuhan and Quentin Fiore reflected in The Me-
dium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, design itself is considered to
be an explanatory tool.
Due to the constant variations that are taking place on Internet, it is also
advisable to include a final g lossary that will help to clarify the new con -
cepts.
5
Narrativity
1. HYPERTEXTUAL NARRATIVITY
1.1. Theoretical Bases for the Study of Hypertext
Research in the news hypertext has barely begun. The theory of hyper -
text dates from further back: to 1945, if reference is made to the famous
article by Vannevar Bush “As We May Think” in Atlantic Monthly, and to
1965, if we set out from the first time the term was used, in a communication
that Ted Nelson presented to that year’s national conference of the Associa-
tion for Computing Machinery in the United States.
The canonical, or at least foundational, definition is that of Nelson him -
self (1965:140): “Non-sequential writing with links controlled by the
reader”.
In our opinion, a good definition of hypertext is given by María Teresa
Vilariño and Anxo Abuín González in the introduction to the collective book
Teoría del hipertexto. La literatura en la era electrónica [Theory of the Hy-
pertext. Literature in the Electronic Age]:
The hypertext [… ] is a type of interactive, non -sequential, non -lineal (or

multi-lineal) text, that is, one not based on a fixed sequence [… ] its
sequentiality can vary considerably in the course of reading (Vilariño and
Abuín, 2006: 20).
This of course contrasts with the concept of narratology formulated by

Mieke Bal, who emphasises that “c ompared with other forms of art – archi-
tecture, the visual arts – a written linguistic text is lineal”, while recognising
the existence of a double lineality, that of the text and that of the fable. In
any case, Bal also indicates that there are ways of b reaking rigid lineality,
such as deviations in the sequential order. This, applied to the hypertextual
structure, would be a lineal with deviations. Superseding unilineality,
however, does not mean a break with sequentiality.
What seems clear is that a spe cific narratology of the hypertext is re -
quired. A narrative that distinguishes, as David Crystal does, between the
interrupted text and the non-lineal text, “which can be read in a multidimen -
sional way”. Crystal draws attention not only to the properly hypertextual,
ramified structures, but also to the proliferation of lists and matrixes, and to
the graphic eclecticism shown by the Web (Crystal, 2001: 196 -197).
Although the concept of hypertext dates from the 1960s, the study of
hypertext as an area of scientific knowledge can be traced back above all to
the 1980s. A good overview of the first twenty years of research in hypertext
is provided by Daniel Cunliffe in the pioneering scientific journal in this
field, The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, which emerged from
the ACM Hypertext conferences. The theory of hypertext is not sparing in its
criticisms of, and warnings about, the still limited degree of hypertextual
development of the World Wide Web. The latter is, obviously, an enormous
global, world system of information, but it is far removed from the com -
plexity achieved by computer hypertext programs like the pioneering Hyper -
card. Special criticism is directed at the fact that the semantics of the hyper-
links on the Web are excessively localis ed.
1.2. Superseding Lineality: Hypertext as Intertextuality
Lineality is a widespread concept, but it is not free of problems.

Different authors, from different viewpoints, have placed it in question, if
not to negate it, then at least to try and define what its essence is. Hence,
Marcos Palacios, in a text titled “Hipertexto, fechamento e uso do conceito
de não-linearidade discursiva [Hypertext, Dating and the Use of the Concept
of Discursive Non-Linearity]”, tries to overcome the conceptual confusion
surrounding linearity and proposes a pattern following Gunnar Liestøl’s
concept of closure (Liestøl, 1987: 87-120). That is, how the openness and
plurality of itineraries of a hyperdocument is conjugated with the expectation
of an ending that will provide mean ing and coherence – at least in traditional
terms – to that narrative. This is a psychological concept, a concept of com -
pleting the reader’s task. Given that the reader does not always know the
structure of the document, rather than read in the traditional sense of the
term, frequently he must first explore the structure, if this is not a conven -
tional one – subject to reading pacts like the majority of the (online) news -
papers, for example.
Once he is acquainted with the structure, that is, when the reade r of a
specific hyperdocument has become “expert”, he no longer explores or
scans, but searches for concrete information. Therefore in that more or less
complex structure, which is more or less familiar or unknown to him, the
reader establishes, or tries to establish, his own linearity or linearities. His
task is not so much to seek narrative closure, as to determine the iter he will
follow. It is thus useful to distinguish between discourse and narrative. Dis -
course, which is necessarily sequential, is the concrete form acquired by
NARRATIVITY 69
narrative through the process of reading, or recovery, of information; a dis -

course is always lineal.
In the opinion of Gérard Genette, hypertextuality is no more than a form
of transtextuality, a term equivalent to intertextuali ty. A hypertext is the
relation between a text B (hypertext) and a prior text or text A (hypotext). He
thus takes up the definition of intertextuality given by Julia Kristeva, for
whom this is a case of “perception by the reader of the relations between a
work and others that preceded or followed it”. It is thus a concept that refers
more to reception (reading) than to production. In short, it is more a question
of defining a relation of kinship or filiation. In our opinion, it would be in -
teresting to proceed further and to see to what extent the hypertext, as we are
defining it here, is closer to her concept of paratext, that is, “those aspects
and elements that surround and envelop the text and that in some way define
its intention”.
From a psychological perspective, Peter Whally refers to the “myth of
lineality”. For this author, a hypertext is in reality more structured and
hierarchical than a conventional text. In his opinion, the hyperlinks of a hy -
perdocument frequently do not provide a truly cohesive reference. Only se-
lectivity is cohesive, according to Whally, when the author chooses a series
of facts that are necessarily connected with others, thus giving rise to lineal -
ity (Whalley, 1993: 7-17).
The same warning is given by Eric Espéret, who point s out that when
this concept is used, in reality three levels are being referred to: the organi -
sation in minimum linguistic units; the mode in which the information is
stored in the medium; and the mode in which the reader controls access to
that information. For Espéret, the organisation in sentences and paragraphs
(nodes) is similar in texts and hypertexts. The differences begin at the level
of storage, which in the case of hypertexts is not directly within the reach of
the reader, but corresponds to the computer system (this is where the concept
of interactivity comes into play). The systems of navigation (macrostructure
of the hyperdocument) and information recovery find no comparison in the
printed text. In reality, Espéret proposes to replace the opposition between
lineality and non -lineality – or, better put, between unilineality and
multilineality – with different degrees of flexibility in the access to informa -
tion. In the final instance, he adds, the key lies in the control given to the
reader in that access to information, which will always be guided by the aim
of efficacy and thus of coherence. Every experiment carried out in this
respect, he concludes, needs as precise a representation as possible of the
structure of the hypertext, given that every reading strategy requires a mental
representation (Espéret, 1996: passim).
On the contrary, Martin Engebretsen insists that the non -lineality of the
news hypertext contributes to the characteristic of objectivity, which is
similarly not free of problems . From an epistemological approach, Engebret -

sen asserts that the possibility of updating the content helps to take the jour -
nalistic information closer to the ideal of objectivity. Similarly, this Norwe -
gian lecturer believes that the replacement of the n arrative structures of the
journalistic genres by other networked hypertextual structures also results in
a gain in objectivity, almost certainly because the latter has a representation
that is closer to the process of human thought. To date, however, the use of
these hypertextual structures, more open than lineal ones, is far from being a
widespread practice in the cybermedia, with some exceptions. As Ramón
Salaverría has shown:
After ten years of evolution of the cybermedia, the real balance is much
more modest [… ]. The contents offered by digital publications nowadays show
a notable neglect by the journalists for these new expressive possibilities [… ].
We find ourselves facing a professional reality of slow and gradual changes
(Salaverría, 2005).
2. METHODS OF RESEARCHING THE HYPERTEXTUAL

NARRATIVE
2.1. Hypertextual Structures
2.1.1. Reticularity of the Structures
The structure of nodes and, above all, links, is what has probably re -
ceived the most attention from researchers. The non-lineal, open, arboreal
structures have especially attracted the efforts of those who study the hyper-
text from the viewpoint of literary theory. The structure, as a cognitive and
referential organisation, is indeed a very important element within the aims
of research like that of Luiz Marcuschi, who refers to works on hypertextual
coherence as a response to the interests of readers, and to the generation of
sequences through an hierarchical arboreal distribution, a distribution in the
form of a list, or in traditional lineal form.
Leão (2001) and Landow (1995) note the existence of two differentiated
structures of hypertext: one that is less complex, termed arboreal, similar to
trees which have a central axis; and another, with a greater degree of com -
plexity, that is organised in a netw ork. The first type of structure would be a
digital book, while the second evokes the idea of interconnected networks.
In the arboreal hypertext, “the central text functions like a stem. The
annexes (footnotes, glossary, bibliographical indications, etc.) are subordi-
nated to this body, like the branches of a tree” (Leão, 2001, pp.60-61).
NARRATIVITY 71
Figure 1: Hypertext in arborealt form and networked structure, according to Leão

(2001)
In the networked hypertext, the idea of a central trunk is not found, and
the weave of connections, which is established between the lexias, is a much
more complex one, since, in theory, it does not respect any type of apparent
hierarchy in the organisation of the information. This idea evokes the idea of
a rhizome.
2.1.2. Models of Hypertextual Narrative
Salaverría and Díaz Noci (2003) present a series of models of hypertex -

tual narrative that can be applied to journalism. As there are different models
and the hypertextual structure is more complex than a lineal one, writing a
news item in that format is not a simple task. Salaverría (2005) warns that
the mere fact of inserting links into texts is not sufficient for the construction
of a hypertextual narrative.
In general terms, the authors present two hypertextual structures: axial
and reticular. The former are structures organised around a central body,
which can, in some cases, show one or several parallel sequences.
Figure 2: Lineal axial structure

Figure 3: Parallel multilinear axial structure
The reticular structures do not answer to an axial structure, rather they

evoke the idea of a rhizome. In Salaverría’s opinion, such a model is not the
most suitable one for relating journalistic facts, it being more appropriate to
employ reticular models in information complementa ry to the main narra-
tive.
Figure 4: On the left, one of the two more simple models of hypertextual narrative
proposed by Salaverría and Díaz Noci (2003).
Research done by D. Dee-Lucas in 1996 produced some highly

interesting results:
1) The arboreal structure is easier and quicker, so long as a clear search
criterion is specified.
2) Lists result in slower and more difficult access.
NARRATIVITY 73
3) The traditional lineal text results in a quality search, but is even

slower.
Similarly, the greater the segmentation, the slow er but surer the search,
with a reduction in the number of mistakes. And this is precisely where the
concept of coherence comes into play. Once again, it is necessary to recall
the theories of Martin Engebretsen on intranodal, internodal and hyper-
structural coherence. Or, as Stuart Moulthrop has stated, on the one hand,
digital texts are structures of rupture, but, on the other, they are works in
continuity, “in consonance with the patters and rhythms of the news indus -
tries” (Moulthrop, 1997).
This research has been completed and qualified in later research by
Herre van Oostendorp. The most important qualification arises from the
discovery that “readers with weak initial knowledge elaborate a less coherent
situational model if they read a hypertext provide d with a contents map, than
if they read the same document without a contents map”. A contents map
helps in understanding the macrostructure, but not the microstructure. Put
differently, better results were obtained with uninitiated readers using a hy -
pertext with little structure. The fact that a contents map helps - as shown in
the study of Dee Lucas - navigation and memory (aspects that we will de -
velop in more detail in later chapters), does not mean that it is also useful for
comprehension (Oostendorp, 2004: 143-154).
2.1.3. Importance of the Hyperlink
Many researchers have pointed out that the central element of hypertex -
tual structures is the hyperlink. In the field of literary studies, for example,
Susana Pajares Tosca speaks in her thesis and in several articles about the
poetic value of hyperlinks. These are not just a technical means for relating
two or more nodes, but are the very axis of the hypertextual structure, of the
narrative. Other researchers, specifically Marcos Palacios and Luciana Miel -
niczuk, have referred to the paratextual value of hyperlinks; the hyperlink is
thus an innovative element because it includes and puts into relation the
characteristics of intertextuality and multimediality.
2.1.3.1. Gunder
Gunder (2002), on the basis of a description and analysis of hyperlinks

(a task that she calls linkology), proposes a methodology for analysing the
ensemble of hyperlinks of a literary hypertextual narrative. This author es -
tablishes categories and codes for the identification of the type s of hyper-
links, and the flow of those hyperlinks within the web page. Gunder is partial
to the skeleton of the hyperdocument and the relations it itself establishes,
whether the junction is unidirectional or bi -directional, whether it is visible

or hidden, for example.
2.1.3.2. Trigg
Equally interesting is the study Trigg developed in the early 1980s, in

which he proposes the elaboration of a taxonomy for the types of hyperlinks.
The central concern of this research is with scientific texts disseminated on
the digital networks and, while not the first, this is one of the pioneering
works on this question. The author divides hyperlinks into two broad catego -
ries: normal hyperlinks and hyperlinks to commentaries. By normal hyper-
links , he understands lexia s belonging to different scientific works, while the
junctions of commentaries refer to lexias dealing with a proposition or data.
We will consider the normal hyperlinks, which serve to delineate the
different parts of a scientific text, since they offer a broader typology and are
of greater interest to what concerns us here. Trigg (2002) divides them into:
- Citations: These are quotations from other authors.
- Bibliographical review: The word used by Trigg is background and
this refers to the presentation of works already developed by other
authors, or by the same author who prepares the hyperdocument.
- Futures: Links that are activated when new works on the subject
appear.
- Refutation: Revocation of ideas of other authors.
- Concordance: Acceptance of ideas of other authors.
- Methodology and data: Work routines, presentation of data.
- Generalisation and specification: The author offers no explanation of
this question, hence interpretation of what these links mean does not
appear to represent any difficulty.
- Abstraction and example: Similar to the previous entry.
- Formalisation and application: Refers to the systematisation of no -
tions that lead to a theory and its application in order to obtain prac -
tical results.
- Argumentation: The author divides argumentation into f our
subcategories: deduction, induction, analogy and intuition.
- Solution: This does not necessarily deal with the solution of the
problem raised in the research, but instead to the advances made by
the researcher.
- The following bloc belongs to the same group, but Trigg draws
attention to the very close relation existing amongst the nodes of the
text that they interconnect. The author warns that in general it is
necessary to read both lexias.
NARRATIVITY 75
- Summarisation and details: The ideas contained in one lexia are de-
tailed in another.
- Alternative vision: A new point of view for interpreting the ideas
presented.
- Rewriting: The ideas are identical, but the wording is different.
- Simplification and complexification of the ideas presented.
- Explication: Develops explana tions of certain parts of the work.
- Updating: Presents new information.
- Continuation: One lexia presents the sequence of another.
The author warns that these divisions do not function in a stationary way
and that the functions of the links can occur concom itantly, that is, a single
link can attend to more than one function at the same time (Trigg, 2002).
This work is both extensive and specific with respect to the use of hypertext
in the distribution of scientific works; nonetheless it serves as a starting point
for other fields.
2.1.3.3. Nielsen
Jakob Nielsen identifies three types of hyperlink. We can say that this is
a classification as regards the function they perform:
- Structural navigation links: These links summarise the structure of
the information al space and enable users to go to other parts of the
space. Typical examples are the buttons of the initial pages and the
links to an set of pages subordinated to the current page.
- Associative links within the contents of the page. Those links are
normally underlined words (although they can also be image maps),
and they point towards pages with more information on the anchor
text.
- List of additional references. These are links offered to help users
find what they are looking for if the current page is no t the correct
one (Nielsen, 2000:53).
2.1.3.4. Leão
Lucia Leão (2001), concentrating on the technical aspects of the elabo -

ration of the hypertext, distinguishes between disjunctive and conjunctive
links: the latter refer to the idea of simultaneity and the former to optionality.
The disjunctive links refer the reader to another lexia. Similarly, the con -
junctive links also perform this task, but they provide the experience of con -
comitance, since they make use of the resource of a simultaneous window,
which might be another window of the navigation program that opens, or a
smaller window called a pop up viewer.
2.1.3.5. The Classification of Lluís Codina
A very thorough classification is proposed in chapter 3 of Manual de re-

dacción ciberperiodística [Manual of Online Journalistic Newswriting] by
professor Lluís Codina, of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona,
around the following criteria for a typology of hyperlinks:
Criteria for the analysis and/or establishment of links

1. Route
Type of route provided by the links
2. Logic
Logical principle followed by the links
3. Degree
Number of nodes participating in the links
4. Exploration
Mode of exploration that they produce
5. Authorship
Who establishes the link
6. Commutation
Mode of commutation between nodes that is produced
Source: Codina, 2003.
On the basis of these criteria, Codina distinguishes the following types

of hyperlink:
1. According to the route:
1.1. Sequential: they maintain the structure and cohesion of the hyper -
document.
1.2. Non-sequential: they permit access to a section (or level) without
passing through the preceding sections.
2. Logical criterion:
2.1. Structural.
2.2. Semantic.
3. By degree, or number of linked nodes.
3.1. 1:1 links, the typical junctions of the WWW.
3.2. 1:N links.
3.3. N:1 links.
4. By the form of exploration:
4.1. Embedded in the text itself.
4.2. Superimposed, from an index, list or summary.
5. By authorship:
5.1. Author’s links.
NARRATIVITY 77
5.2. Reader’s links (for example, commentaries in a weblog, or the en -

tries on a wiki website).
6. By commutation:
6.1. Substitution links: the destination node re places the node of origin.
6.2. Superimposition links: a new window opens, without closing the
window of origin.
The determination of the type of links is equally important when

investigating the narrativity of journalistic texts on the WWW.
2.1.3.6. McAdams
From a journalistic perspective, Mandy McAdams (2002) draws atten -

tion to the fact that online narrative has already been the subject of
discussions on fiction and literary studies, while this has not happened with
journalism. The same can be said of the use of the hyperlink, although, as we
shall see, there are authors, such as McAdams herself, who draw up rules
and advice on the use of the link in hypertextual narrative and propose
classifications of a technical type. There are neither specific studies on how
links are being employed in digital newspapers, nor well founded writings
on how this resource should be used in hypertextual news items.
2.1.3.7. Mielniczuk
When studying journalistic hypertextual narratives, Luciana Mielniczuk

(2003) proposes, on the basis of an exploratory study, a preliminary typology
of hyperlinks.
In this categorization, hyperlinks are divided into three groups: one re -
ferring to the navigation of the product (conjunctive and disjunctive links);
another group referring to the universe and scope of the links (internal or
external); and, finally, a group referring to the organization of the informa -
tion, in which the links can be divided into editorial, service or advertising
ones. The editorial links can in turn be divided into narrative or or ganiza-
tional ones. The former are associative, while the latter are of reference for
navigation.
Navigation
Conjunc -
tive
Disjunc -
tive
Universe
Internal
External
Organization
of the publi-
cation
Editorial
Organiza-
tional
Narrative
Event
Detail
Opposition
Exemplification or particulari -
zation
Complement or illustration
Memory
Services
Adver-
tising
Figure 4: Typology of links proposed by Mielniczuk (2005)
2.1.3.8. Palacios and Mielniczuk
Also from the perspective of journalism, these authors defend the

idea that the link performs paratextual functions, following Genette (1997),
since they are an element that: a) presents the principal text; b) offers the
transaction between the world of the reader and the world of the text; c)
carries out the transition between these two worlds; and d) is situated on the
frontiers of the principal text and establishes its limits (Palacios and Mielnic -
zuk, 2001).
To conclude this question of classifying and typifying lin ks, we will
briefly refer to the conception of Ricardo (1998), who explains that the hy -
NARRATIVITY 79
perlink acquires different meanings and degrees of importance depending on

the discipline that studies it. The author cites the case of literature and
documentation. In the first case, the link has an essential function related to
the possibility of intertextuality, while in the other discipline, it is an instru -
ment permitting more flexibility and access to information.
2.1.3.9. Classification of Online Journalitic Links by Pérez Marco
In the case of the news item, a particular typology of links has been pro -
posed that takes account of the traditional and novel uses of the genre on the
Web (Pérez Marco, 2004).
1. Para-informative service links: links to documentation (search ser -
vices, databases, etc.), links to service information and links to com -
plementary resources for the reader (games, chats, letters to the edi-
tor, dispatch of news items, etc.).
2. Meta-informative links: navigation maps, user assistance, indexes of
the structure of the electronic edition.
3. Informative links: exterior (sources exterior to the medium) and inte -
rior (updated information, relational information, information that
contextualises and broadens the news item, textual and multimedia –
images, infographic s, sound, video).
4. Iconic links for moving: icons, arrows, buttons, etc.
The same need to adapt the links to the particular hypertextual charac -
teristics of each prototype has been observed for reportage. In the case of
this genre, the discursive rhetorical analysis has been made on the basis of a
typology taking account of the greater richness brought by the hypermedia to
its characteristic discursive categories (antecedents or background,
contextualisation, broadening, documentation, etc.), as well as to i ts tradi-
tional functions as a deep and well -documented genre. Together with these
uses, the classification of links for reportage also takes account of other uses
that are characteristic of online journalistic forms, based on the updating of
contents, as well as novel types of consumption - multimedia and participa -
tory.
2.2 The Semiotic Approach
It is obligatory when speaking of semiotics to mention the Italian au -

thors, starting with Umberto Eco. In his The Absent Structure, Eco recalls
that a part of semantic analysis deals with narrative structures: Propp, To-
dorov, Greimas, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Genette or Morin have all concerned
themselves with this. And this inevitably leads to rhetoric. A possible rhe -
torical path for the analysis of hypertextua l structures is the application of
Quilian’s model, or model Q, “which is based on a mass of nodes

interconnected amongst themselves by different types of associative links”;
besides, this is a model that envisages the incorporation of new information -
it is a creative model. It is a question of seeing if there are “systems of rules”
or whether, in the case that concerns us here, the journalistic hypertext, the
tendency is to work, as in teaching journalistic newswriting, “by repertories
of examples, or models of behaviour” (Eco, 1968,1999:19-21). That is,
whether we are seeking grammaticalization or textualization. “In the first
case,” Eco recalls in his A Theory of Semiotics (1976) (Spanish version:
Tratado de semiótica general, 1977), “the combination of discrete units is
what generates texts [… ]; in the other case, society directly generates texts
that appear as macro-units (from which, when necessary, the rules can be
inferred) which, above all, propose models to be imitated” (Eco 1977, 1988:
199, 222).
2.3. The Rhetorical Dimension
Researchers like Jean Clément have referred to the rhetorical figures of

hypertextual discourse. This is a case of reductionism, into which rhetoric
itself had descended, especially during the XIX century, when it was reduced
to a mere repertory of figures. Clément basically enumerates three: synecdo -
che, asyndeton and metaphor. In the first case, synecdoche means in the case
of hypertext that the fragment (the node, the hypertextual scene) is taken for
the hyperdocument in its totality. It is, contrary to the case of the printed
text, a dynamic fragment: with each node – which we must remember is
coherent in itself – the reader tends to imagine the whole; but each new node
towards which he advances obliges him to reconfigure the overall vision of
the hyperdocument that he is discovering. It is therefore an exploratory
figure.
Asyndeton, a figure that consists of suppressing the term of union
between two prepositions, is transferred to the hypertext in the sense that
each node “floats” on the screen, without any evident union, or one that is
temporarily constructed, with the other node(s) of the structure.
Finally, according to Clément (1995) , metaphor enables each node to be
presented to the readers according to the itineraries for which it was written.
That is: its coherence, to put it differently, is constructed according to a
higher coherence. This is a figure that is especially extolled by cognitive
theory, which considers it to be the principal mechanism by which abstract,
conceptual processes are understood. Perhaps that is why Bruce Westley
affirmed that the mass media triggered cognitive flows of an “indirect,
unilateral and anonymous” nature (Westley, 1967), a paradigm to which the
hypertext brings a profound change. Th us, as Élida Lois says:
NARRATIVITY 81
The convergence of apparently separated fields of knowledge, such as those

of literary and computer theory, is a further sign of that paradigm change that
has been observable in the contemporary episteme; since in the electronic
multimedia editions the possibilities are multiplied of replacing the traditional
notions of lineality, centre, margin and hierarchy with those of multilineality,
nodes, nexuses and networks (Lois, 1997).
Another author who has rehabilitated rhetoric as a descriptive

perspective for studying hypertext is Espen Aarseth. He even presents what
he considers to be the most important characteristic of the hypertext, non -
lineality, as a rhetorical figure, but not as a trope. Non -lineality can include
bifurcation, li nks and jumps, permutation, computation and polygenesis.
Bifurcation is the simplest figure and is evidently non -lineal; according to
Jay David Bolter (Bolter, 1991), every bifurcation is a hyperbaton.
According to Aarseth, links are the most relevant figu res of the hypertext;
they function at the syntactic level, given that they separate and order the
units of information, the lexias (Aarseth, 1997). According to Manuel Gago,
lexias can be minimum dependent units or minimum interdependent units,
according to the level of autonomy they offer with respect to context. This
distinction is not merely a technical one but also concerns textual coherence.
If in the cybermedia, Gago indicates, “a minimum unit of content contains a
certain relational value”, it manag es in this way to “increase depth [… ], fa -
vour the possibilities of user personalisation [and] reduce the costs of content
elaboration”, that is, it favours a modular conception of journalistic informa -
tion (Gago, 2006: 114-116).
The search for totality, even when the reader is circumscribed to the
node, is an aporia, and when a new node is revealed, we find ourselves
facing an epiphany. This is a case, according to Aarseth, of the dialectic
between searching and discovery, which is moreover typical in game s.
Narration is not part of the game, although description is. Recurrence, ana -
lepsis (the flashback) and updating are also rhetorical resources, in this case
kinetic ones, and they have been inventoried by Michael Joyce (Joyce,
2000).
However, authors like J. Yellowlees Douglas (1992) or Lev Manovich
maintain that the rhetorical figures of the hypertext can be reduced to two:
metaphor and metonymy. In the opinion of the former and of Stuart
Moulthrop, a hyperdocument is a metonymic linguistic network, whic h leads
to a metaphor of the (cyber)text as a whole. Facing a metonymic reading
(each node in relation to the whole), and being uncertain about the complete
network of nodes and about what lies beyond the next link, Moulthrop and
Yellowlees propose a cartographic reading, where reading is done from a
map that enables the whole structure to be visualised.
The rhetorical dimension of the study of the hypertext has even attracted
anthropologists, as a study of the modes of transmission of the culture under
study. There are those, like Juan Carlos Rodríguez (1999), who see in the
hypertext the possibility of democratising culture, as it changes the dominant
voices, or at least offers the possibility of polyphony, modifying the concept
of authorship and authority (both from the Latin auctoritas). The anthro-
pologists who have, occasionally, directed their attention to the changes
brought by the hypertext have emphasised its concomitances with
postmodernism and semiotic theory, especially with the ideas of Roland
Barthes, Michel Foucault and, above all, Jacques Derrida and his concept of
decentralisation. They also have recourse to the dialogic concept of the eth -
nographist S. Tyler (1991).
At the start of the 1990s, one of the principal theorists of the literary hy -
pertext, Greg Ulmer, proposed an experiment that in part followed the theo-
ries of Derrida, above all the concept of “apparatus”, taken from the critical
cinematographic current, as a “social machine”, more ideological than tech -
nological. Ulmer compared three textbooks, one of them classical - the
Rhetorica ad Herennium, the St. Martin’s Handbook and an electronics
book, and reached the conclusion that it was too early for a codification of
hypertextual rhetoric, although an effort of conceptualisation sh ould be made
(Ulmer, 2001).
2.4. Hypertext and Cognition: the Psychological Approach
The connection between hypertext and cognitive science is a field of in -

vestigation that has attracted many researchers, in spite of its producing re -
sults that are not fully conclusive. Marie-Laure Ryan (2004: 292), for exam-
ple, has highlighted the relation between narrative and the cognitive theories.
Facing this, there is the position of those who consider narration as a form of
representation that varies historically and culturally.
Peter W. Foltz (1996) proposes an analysis based on the predictions of
comprehension, especially bearing in mind coherence, that is, how any hy -
pertext, like any other text, seeks primordially to offer information to the
reader in an understandable form. The models of comprehension concentrate
on what will be remembered by the reader, on the context, legibility and
coherence, and the aim. In the so-called Kintsch model, there are three levels
to be taken into account: a superficial understandin g of the words, the
meaning of the text and a general understanding based on the text and on the
context. The coherence to which they refer is semantic, as Munhoz de
Moraes (2004) also points out. They also make mention of the mental repre -
sentation (coherence graph), which takes the form of an hierarchical struc -
ture, a macrostructure in inferential terms. This is a question of its overall
NARRATIVITY 83
coherence, of the macrostructure that Van Dijk speaks of. In every (hy-
per)text, there are some parts that can be identified as necessary for
establishing that coherence, which is why they can be employed for
predicting the comprehensibility of its reading. As every node or textual
section in a hypertext is connected to other nodes, each of these “jumps”
must anticipate a certain coherence, which frequently obliges the reader to
infer the necessary information for joining these itineraries and providing
them with an understandable meaning.
Peter W. Foltz proposes two textual experiments that can be applied to
the study of hypertexts:
1) Comparing the level of comprehension and the reading strategies of
the same contents presented in the form of lineal text and in the form
of two hypertexts. To avoid incoherent nodal jumps in the second of
the hypertexts, a prior micropropositional analysis of the text was
made, determining which phrases were the ones that acted as the
axes of ideas.
2) Verbal reports of the strategies of the readers of hypertexts: this
completes the first experiment, which determined that the reading
strategies in each of the three texts and hypertexts were very similar,
and attempts to discover the reasons for those strategies. Of the six
subjects involved in the experiment, two were asked to search for
concrete information, and the other four were asked for a general
understanding. While they were reading, they were asked to explain
what they were doing. At all times it was revealed that priority was
given to the search for coherence.
The researcher Patricia Wright (1993) has referred specifically to the
jumps m ade by readers within a hyperdocument. For example, empirical
studies have shown that readers like to be able to jump from a concrete point
of the hyperdocument to a glossary explaining terms they do not understand.
The desire to indeed make a jump (that i s, follow a proposed hyperlink) de-
pends largely on the design, and even on the form in which it is represented
(a word or an image). Another preference of users, brought to light by the
studies, is for a general diagram or a “site map” (or a map of the hy per-
document). On the production side, creating effective hypertexts means pro -
viding them with strategies that can be anticipated by the reader and that
facilitate his work : searches, for example.
2. READING HYPERTEXTS
The changes not only in the productio n but also in the reception of the
new journalistic messages have given rise to studies proceeding from
different fields, such as rhetoric for example. Tomás Albaladejo insists that
“it must be borne in mind that the digital recipient is another type of
recipient and also a new type of reader, and that he accedes to the informa -
tion that he is offered on the screen in a different way from that of the tradi -
tional recipient” (Albaladejo, 2006 ).
From here, different authors have proposed certain approaches to the
strategies of reading the hyperdocument that, in the final analysis, are varia -
tions on what Italo Calvino proposed in 1980 (Calvino, 1980):
1. The first-level model reader, who tries all possible ways of
understanding the labyrinth frequently formed by a text, when facing
what Licia Calvi called a “narrative of multiplicity” (Calvi, 2004: 37).
Francilaine Munhoz de Moraes also observes this characteristic
amongst the characteristics of online journalism. One of the possible
strategies, unless there is a digression or an exploration of the structure
itself, as we shall later see occurs when reading hyperdocuments, is to
seek a predetermined objective and orientate all of the reading towards
this. Or there is the search: in fact, as Licia Calvi makes clear , searches
through user interfaces are a typical form of navigation through com -
plex hypertextual structures.
2. The second-level model reader, whose aim is to understand the laby -
rinth in itself, its paths and structures.
This is precisely what Lucia Santael la develops in another book, Nave-
gar no ciberespaço [Navigating Cyberspace]. This Brazilian researcher ar -
gues that many types of readers have developed historically, and that today a
reader has emerged who navigates “in the liquid and non -lineal archite ctures
of hypermedia in cyberspace”. She therefore proposes a typology of reading
that takes as its starting point not the difference between types of language
nor formats or channels – which, as we have seen, are the basis of many
definitions of multimedi ality – but instead the sensorial, perceptive and cog -
nitive skills of the act of reading. Santaella speaks of three types of reader:
1. The contemplative, meditative reader of the pre-industrial age,
corresponding to the culture of the book.
2. The dynamic read er, of a hybrid, fragmented and ephemeral world,
exposed to a multitude of signs, corresponding to urban culture and
the newspaper.
3. The reader of virtual spaces, an immersive reader , who combines
several senses in the process of reading, who not only reads but also
searches and tries to solve problems.
For Lucia Santaella (2005), hypermedial reading is commutable between
different mediatic levels . It has a centrifugal effect, because the link invites
the reader to make a receptive jump between several fragments or planes,
through an associative logic, which takes concrete form in personalised and
NARRATIVITY 85
untransferable cognitive maps, “rhizomatic semiotic” maps. It is also a to -

pographical reading.
More concretely, Santaella discovers three types of reading in Int ernet
users: the wandering Internet user, who sets in motion the mechanism of
abduction (she follows Pierce), the most fragile of arguments, and wanders
or skims through the hypertextual offer; the detective Internet user, guided
by inductive inferences, w ho follows the itineraries that are proposed in a
disciplined way, setting in motion the logic of what is probable, through a
self-organised process of trial and error, from which he learns through ex -
perience; and the cautious Internet user, who is guided by deductive mecha -
nisms and is familiar with the informative tools by which he navigates, and
who has adopted the general schema underlying the processes of navigation
as his own. “In the communicative context of hypermedia”, concludes Lucia
Santaella, “the Internet user reads, listens and looks at the same time. This
gives rise not only to the development of new modes of looking – there is no
more looking in an exclusively optical way, but also of reading in a new way
and of learning with increasing spee d, jumping from one point of the infor -
mation to another, forming unstable and fleeting combinations”.
The researchers at the Università Católica di Milano, Gian franco
Bettetini, Barbara Gasparini and Nicoletta Vittadini (Bettetini et al., 1999:
60 and ff.), who we have already mentioned, approach the study of hyper -
textual discourse from the semiotic point of view, as the convergence of
three spaces:
1. The logical, semantic space, the topological organization of the con -
tents and their hierarchization. Stud y of the logical space places the
accent on an analysis of connectivity, and essentially follows the
foundational postulates of Theodor Nelson. The Milanese
researchers are not sparing in their criticisms of George Landow,
“who denies the existence of any structure in hypertextual construc-
tion, falling back on positions inspired by post -structuralism”. From
the viewpoint of classical rhetoric, this logical space would
correspond to the dispositio. Its main characteristics are multilinear -
ity and polysemy.
2. The space of action, or interactive space. In the first place, the multi -
linearity of the hypermedia structures, their reticularity and connec -
tivity impose a new form of reading, whose typological forms are,
following Bettetini et al.(1999: 122 ff.), as follows:
a) Exploration, whether in a form predefined by the author,
through the active cooperation of the reader, or through the
options of the proposed itineraries.
b) Consultation.
c) Searching.
d) Learning.
In short, these forms of reading would correspond to those proposed by
Ramón Salaverría in Manual de redacción ciberperiodística [Manual of
Cyberjournalistic Newswriting]:
1) Skimming, in which “the reader acts motivated by a specific search
for a certain content, which he tries to find through a superficial read ing of
the most outstanding items of a fair number of nodes”.
2) Exploration, “a type of navigation in which the reader aims to recon -
noiter a broad hypertextual territory but without a specific informational goal
[and through which] the reader does not so much seek to find a concrete item
of information but to scrutinize extensive (horizontal) and deep (vertical)
areas of the hypertext, in order to gain a general idea of the contents and
structure of the ensemble”.
3) Searching, “when the reader has a perf ectly defined informative pur -
pose and is not interested in anything else [… ] he knows the structure of the
hypertext that he is navigating, hence his movements from node to node are
carried out in a well-orientated and sure way [… ] even enabling him, if h e
has the requisite tools (that is, automatic search engines) to eliminate the
internodal itinerary and jump directly from the starting node to the destina -
tion node”.
4) Digression or “serendipity”, “aimless movement in which the
pleasure of reading deriv es from the movement itself rather than from the
information effectively obtained”.
According to the EyeTrack07 study, referred to above, three quarters of
the readers of the printed press are methodical ones, who read on Internet
from top to bottom and then reread some pages, using the menu and the
navigation bars to find information. On the other hand, when it comes to
online newspapers, half read methodically and the other half do so by
scanning or skimming for news items, without this altering the volum e of
information that both groups read. The presence of graphic elements, espe -
cially in colour, navigational elements and links increases comprehension by
as much as 15% (Rovira, 2007). This is the difference, highlighted by
Vanessa Ribas Fialho, between scanning and skimming; the latter mode of
reading “requires knowledge of the organisation of the texts [… ] the ability
to infer ideas”, and works on “complex discursive systems, socially
constructed by language, with easily identifiable patterns of organis ation,
configured by the socio -historic context that causes communicative activi -
ties” (Fialho, 2006). Above all, it is the genres that achieve this effect, which
would explain, at least in part, the success of the cybernewspapers, which in
their organisation and in the layout of their news items are so deeply in -
debted to the printed press.
NARRATIVITY 87
The modes of reading are also related to the psychological aspects of the
cybermedia. For example, to the so-called horizon of expectations, of which
reception theory speaks. The components of this horizon are “knowledge,
training, taste and aesthetic conventions”, on the one hand, and life praxis,
on the other, as explained by Luis Acosta (Acosta, 1989: 155). The aesthetic
of reception has also concerned itself with str uctures. Wolfgang Iser speaks
of strategies in the ordering of materials – an immanent author’s strategy;
but, at the same time, there are structures in the reader’s acts of
understanding – passive synthesis.
Vanessa Ribas Fialho recalls that every proces s of reading can be under -
stood on the basis of three models: an ascendant model, which considers
reading to be, above all, an operation of extracting information, which is
generally presented in a lineal form, and where the reader is a somewhat
passive subject; a descending model, in which the process of reading de -
pends on the reader more than on the text, and which consists, above all, in
an interpretation; and an interactive model, which is above all based on the
relation between both parties, author and reader (Fialho, 2006).
Narrativity and form of reading in cyberspace, which are often – and in-
creasingly so – indebted to the structural logic of databases, can be explained
by taking recourse to the concept of exploration. Lev Manovich, who is
highly c ritical of the supposed crisis of narration and instead favours the
description resulting from the predominance of databases, recognizes that in
reality it would be better to speak of “narrative actions” and “exploration”.
Although they are related, it is useful to distinguish between the modes
of reading, which principally refer to the cognitive skills of the reader and
his concrete aims in undertaking a search for information, and the modes of
navigation, which refer to the structure of the hyperdocuments and the
possibilities offered by the author and the system for the reader to move
between the items of information. Navigability is defined as “the possibility
that the user has of identifying on the screen the path marked out for him on
the basis of the corresponding design of usability”. Norm ISO DIS 9241-11
defines it as the union of three aspects: effectiveness, efficiency and satis -
faction.
1. Effectiveness refers to the finalisation of a task and the quality of the
results obtained.
2. Efficiency refers to the quantity of effort required to achieve a con-
crete objective.
3. Satisfaction, on the other hand, is related to subjective factors of the
user, and can be defined as the level of consistency between what
the user expects and what he receives.
Disseminate d throughout the world with great success, the research
techniques applied by Jakob Nielsen work on usability, that is, the rapidity
“with which the users can learn to use a certain thing, their efficiency in
using it, how much they remember about it, its degree of propensity to error
and how much enjoyment they derive from using it” (Nielsen, Loranger,
2007: xvi). Usability measures the quality of the user’s interaction with the
product or system, from the point of view of ease of learning, efficiency in
use, capacity for being remembered and, finally, the familiarity and “friend -
liness” of the page or website with which the user is interacting. Combining
quantitative and qualitative techniques with experimental groups, Nielsen
works with observational and behavioural research in order to see what the
users are really doing with the websites. From the methodological point of
view, Nielsen and others work on developing empirical techniques that cap -
ture the interaction between users and websites with commerci al ends.
Interaction is understood here in the strict sense, of clicking to obtain what is
wanted, or as it is termed by Primo (2007), “reactive interaction”, of the
stimulus -response type. These works observe the empirical behaviour of
reading web pages.
Usability verifies the efficiency of a system of predetermined mechani -
cal exchanges, and its presuppositions are based on a transmissionist and
lineal conception of communication. It supposes that an interaction is effi -
cient to the extent that the response (of the user) fits in with the offer, does
not generate conflicts of interpretation (is monosemic ) and feeds the balance
proposed by the system, through use (feedback). One of the problems of the
qualitative methods in reception and reading of the mass media is that their
validity is limited, given that it is difficult to generalise on the basis of small
samples or case studies. However, the utilisation of the concept of usability
in interpretative research is only justifiable in the absence of more suit able
hegemonic theoretical frameworks. Usability presupposes that the reading
(or the use of a web page) is mere decodification , when what is sought is an
understanding of interpretative, inferential and cognitive processes.
In general, there are no perceptible discussions of a methodological type,
questioning the validity of the techniques of information gathering or the
coherence between the theoretical frameworks employed and the research
instruments. In this respect, netnographies bring a tradition of m ethodologi-
cal reflection from anthropology that is worth incorporating. Many of the
analyses of users appear to take up those initial categories of the researchers
of the long and short-term effects of mass communications research: atten-
tion, selectivity , memory, observable behaviour: what attracts attention on a
website, where the user navigates, how much time he remains on a page,
what type of information he seeks . In the best of cases, relations are sought
between these questions and the socio-economic profile. There appears to be
an immediate, instrumental and empirical interest in knowing what the
reader of the Web does, opening up a shadow region concerning the
NARRATIVITY 89
processes of perception, recognition and interpretation, in relation to more

global processes that are socially, politically and culturally significant.
Moreover, it seems that the content was left aside because concern with
representation was forgotten, replaced by the technical novelties brought by
the forms of the new communication.
It is necessary to recover the best of reception studies, with reference to
their methodological audacity, while accepting that the semantic field of the
term reception adds little to the understanding of the processes unleashed in
contemporary societies, which are essentially mediatic and digitalised . Re-
ception studies inaugurated a tradition that understands media consumption
not as a stage of the communicative process, but as a new site from which to
rescue the creativity of subjects, the complexity of everyday life as a space
for producing meaning, and the desirous, ludic character of the relationship
with the media, as Jesús Martí n-Barbero observed in the 1980s.
Transdisciplinary and multi -methodological in character (they combine
ethnographies, semiotic analy ses, content and textual analyses… ), reception
studies arose in the shadow of the mass media, such as the radio and televi -
sion. Two aspects of the theses advanced by these studies should be revised
with respect to Internet: firstly, the idea concerning th e irreducible distance
(spatial-temporal and political) between the instances of production and con -
sumption. This has now been put into question by the possibilities for self -
publication, collaborative writing and open source journalism fostered on the
telematic networks, thanks to the instantaneity, accessibility and velocity of
publication on the Web. Secondly, the idea of a massive public explains
theoretical and political questions linked to mass democracy and the
generalist mass media . Not even the segmentation and fragmentation of
publics, brought about by the proliferation of television channels, put into
question so forcefully the classical idea of the public as Internet is now
doing. The relation between receivers and medium seems to be in the
process of becoming personalised: one now speaks of “person -computer”
interaction and no longer of media -public interaction.
6
Research Methods in Participatory Journalism
1. STATE OF THE QUESTION
The United States is the country where the greatest volume of studies
has been developed on participatory journalism, also known as citizen jour -
nalism, 3.0 journalism and open code j ournalism. The We Media report,
drawn up by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis (2003), has become
established as an international referent on this subject. Similarly, this form of
journalistic practice, which includes participation by the public, is attracting
the attention of different researchers from around the world, including Mark
Deuze et al.(2006), Axel Bruns (2005) and Stephen D. Reese, Lou
Rutigliano, Kideuk Hyun and Jaekwan Jeong (2007).
In the opinion of the physicist David Bohm ( cited in Duarte, 2003), the
broadening of concepts is beneficial when it overcomes the abusive use of
certain terms, making it possible to rethink meanings and permitting new
theoretical and methodological perspectives to emerge. However, generali-
sations compromise a scienti fic study, above all when we observe that the
actions of each current in order to achieve the same end the public’s partici -
pation - are intermixed with different communication policies, to cite just
one example. Some studies are concerned with the generalisations of those
currents (Mielniczuk, 2007), while others try to describe characteristics that
surpass the tenuous frontier of each current (Santos, 2007).
It is not our intention here to systematise concepts, but rather to show
their importance in the theoretical-methodological development of a research
survey. In that respect, recovering the public’s participation over the course
of the history of the mass media is becoming a recurrent methodology in
national and foreign studies. While researchers carr y out historical analyses
of such participation, demonstrating that the concern to give voice to the
citizen is not something new, value is attached in the research surveys to the
observation of communicative relations.
Empirical research in citizen journa lism is still at an early stage and the
methodological approaches vary greatly, seeking the most suitable perspec -
tive for dealing with the phenomenon. These perspectives include: structural
analysis of the opportunities for participation offered by the we bsites of con-
ventional media; content analysis of the “journalistic” material produced by
citizens; and interviews with journalists, promoters of citizens’ media and
citizens themselves in order to understand their attitudes and motivations.
From the conceptual point of view, a specific terminology has also emerged,
which has favoured semantic approaches and reflection on the indiscriminate
creation of new words (Scolari and Pardo, 2006).
Citizen journalism includes any form of participation by the audienc e
linked to current news (Hermida and Thurman, 2007). Many of the innova -
tions in this area do not proceed directly from journalism, but from Web 2.0
services (Cobo and Pardo, 2007), such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, etc.
As objects of study, blogs and their relation to journalism have attracted the
greater part of scientific work in this field, although more recently attention
has shifted towards other participatory tools.
The Dutch researcher Mark Deuze (2003, 2005, 2006) has produced
different works on participatory journalism. One of his main concerns is
precisely to try and understand the communicative relations established be -
tween citizens, journalists and media. Deuze (2006) analyses participation
as one of the essential elements of digital cultur e. In this author’s opinion,
that digital culture is formed by online and off-line phenomena. Conse-
quently, the evolution of the public’s participation in the media is accompa -
nied by a review of the classical and contemporary theoreticians of commu -
nication and related areas. That procedure makes possible the creation of a
model for case studies of online journalism, open publications and blogs.
Those cases are interspersed with the description of objects and realities, and
with a review and critique of the literature, together with the proposal of
concepts. In a joint research work, Mark Deuze, Axel Bruns and Christoph
Neuberger (2007), also adopt the case study to verify how the journalist is
preparing himself for an age of participatory news, when journ alists and
public work in a joint way. The practice of participatory journalism analysed
is from Holland, Germany, Australia and the United States. Amongst the
principal aspects investigated are the degree of participation by the user, the
role of professional journalists, the motivation of administrators and partici -
pants, conflicts between publishers and users, and perception of the success
and failure of the projects (Deuze, Bruns and Neuberger, 2007).
The contribution of researcher Axel Bruns (2003, 200 4) to research in
participatory journalism can also be seen in a series of articles with an ex -
ploratory character that resulted in the book Gatewatching. Collaborative
online news production (2005). This is a work of analysis and conceptual
construction based on case studies, such as Slashdot, Indymedia, Wikipedia,
Media Channel, Plastic and Kuro5hin. By means of this methodology, his
studies seek to determine the degree of openness of each website to partici-
pation by the public in three phases of news pr oduction: collection, publica -
tion and commentary.
With respect to methodologies of content analysis, it is also worth
drawing attention to the recent work (2007) of Reese, Rutigliano, Hyun and
RESEARCH METHODS IN PARTICIPATORY JOURNALISM 93
Jeong, of the University of Texas (Austin). Their research is based on an

analysis of articles in six of the most important political news blogs in the
United States, based on Technorati classification patterns. The research con -
centrates on four basic questions: a) To what extent do blogs link up with the
professional media and what type of links are involved?; b) How is the po -
litical affiliation of blogs related to their links with the professional media?;
c) How is the political affiliation of blogs related to their choice of links?;
and d) How is the political af filiation of blogs related to their links with
foreign authors and media?
The blog phenomenon is being monitored and characterised by Brazilian
researchers from different perspectives. Blogs are seen as personal journals
on the net (Carvalho, 2001; Sibilia , 2003 and Schittine, 2004), as a place for
conversation by virtual communities (Recuero, 2003, Primo and Samaniotto,
2005), as a system of communication that is transforming journalism (Re -
cuero 2003 b; Silva, 2003; Cuadros et al. 2005; Cuadros and Sponholz,
2006), as a space of authorship and identity on the web (Adghirni, 2006), as
a medium that is acquiring characteristics of tabloid journalism (Amaral and
Cuadros, 2006), as an opportunity for online socialisation by people with
special needs (Passerino and Montardo, 2007), as a medium with dialogic
and democratic potential (Aldé et. al, 2007), as a direct heir of
webjournalism (Escobar, 2007), as a journalistic form that is starting to gain
credibility (Christofoletti and Laux, 2006 and Christofoletti, 2007), as a
force capable of determining the activity of the traditional culture industries
(Bolaño and Brittos, 2007) and as a broadening of the field of journalism
(Palacios, 2007).
2. METHODOLOGY OF WEBLOG ANALYSIS
Studies of weblogs are centred on three aspects: the profile of bloggers,

the relation between blogs and journalism, and journalists as bloggers.
2.1. Profile of Bloggers
In Spain the development of the first research dealing with blogs and the
blogosphere started early. The profile of the blogger, in this first stage of
expansion, was that of a user with an advanced understanding of Internet.
Interest gradually increased in giving a more concrete form to the profile of
the creator and/or reader of blogs, which resulted in the first studies. The I
Survey of bloggers and weblog readers was outstanding in this respect. It
made use of a questionnaire designed by Gemma Ferreres (2004), based on
an online formula – employing a methodology similar to that employed by
the AIMC in its survey of Internet users.
The experience was repeated in successive years, although from being

an open survey it became a closed model. There were those who, just like
Ferreres, defended the value of online methodology as an especially appro -
priate method for analysing the pr ocesses of change and evolution of the
blogosphere (Garrido, 2006). There were also those, such as Pedro García-
Alonso (2006), who set out an analytical outline of the new phenomenon of
blogs from a university perspective.
Now, as José Luís Orihuela (2005) reminds us, the most documented
and relevant academic studies on the situation of the Spanish blogosphere
have been the collective works Do We Live in a Small World? Measuring the
Spanish-speaking Blogosphere (Tricas et al., 2003) and Revisting the
Spanish Blogosphere (Merelo et al., 2004).
Studies on the profile of the creators and/or readers of blogs have also
been carried out in other countries, such as the United States. The Pew Inter-
net Center has promoted some of the best known of these studies, based on
surveys, and Technorati makes available four -monthly reports that reflect the
state of the blogosphere based on the data of its weblog search-engine. The
latter case involves a quantitative vision that makes a census of blogs,
establishes the season al character of the creations, the volume of daily en -
tries and the predominant languages, making it possible to trace tendencies
and observe their evolution over time.
2.2. Blogs and Journalism
Public access to a global medium without publishers and the res ulting
popularisation of the blogs have meant that one of the central debates has
been about the relation between weblogs and journalism. The evolution of
the panorama of blogs in Spain between the two studies cited above reveals,
amongst other tendencies, that they have become a subject of research in the
field of communication and that they figure in many of the academic confer -
ences of this sector. This must have been the understanding of the Grupo de
Estudios Avanzados de Comunicación [Advanced Communic ations Study
Group – GEAC], of the Rey Juan Carlos University, which considered this
field of research to be of paramount importance (García de Madariaga, 2006;
Martínez-Nicolás et al., 2005).
Apart from the previously cited studies, several research surve ys have
provided a foundation for a better understanding of new media practices
involving innovative tools such as the blogs, as well as emergent emitters,
which are disrupting the way the mass media had been legitimised for a long
time.
Thus, Guillermina Franco, David García and Fausto Sainz (2006), of
Carlos III University, researched blogs as part of the added value services on
a digital medium like 20minutos.es. For their part, García Orosa and Capón
(2004) made a comparative study of the news agenda i n the traditional press
and in the blogs. Others, like María Sánchez (2006), setting out from a
broader research project, have sketched a mainly qualitative description of
the presence of confidential reports in blog format on the Spanish Web. At
the international level, the numerous works on the relation between weblogs
and journalism have normally taken recourse to interviews with bloggers
(Matheson, 2004a, b; Lowrey, 2006) and to content analysis (Wall, 2005).
Although a large part of the academic staff in Communication Faculties
are still unfamiliar with weblogs, experiences of using blogs as a tool for
research and teaching are beginning to appear (Orihuela y Santos, 2004), and
some research has been done making use of a questionnaire on the degree of
knowledge and use made of blogs by the academic staff of Journalism
Faculties (Meso, 2007). The study carried out by Donaciano Bartolomé
Crespo (2006) is very similar to this; he structured a questionnaire by adap -
tating the one used by Aliaga Abad (2004) c oncerning the degree of under-
standing and the use made of techniques and tools by university students in
Information Sciences.
From the formal point of view, the structure of blogs is very similar, as
they normally respect the template provided by the web where they are
housed (Bloggers, Periodista Digital, Blogia, Blogspot… ) or they make
minimal modifications, which is why graphic creativity is almost nonexis -
tent, with the result that their visual elements attract little research interest.
However, weblogs, understood as a specific type of web page, do require
for example a concrete analysis of usability (Nielsen, 2005). This determines
the presence of necessary elements, such as photography and an author’s
biography or profile, the distribution of entrie s by categories, a commitment
to regular updating of the content, its own domain name, scannability of the
text, and the application of descriptive headings, hypertexts that clearly indi -
cate destination, internal lists selecting the best entries and inter nal links
aimed at providing context.
The first research on the question in Brazil dates from 2003. In this pe -
riod, Raquel Recuero proposed in her articles a classification for analysing
the different types of blog. Jan Alyne Silva Barbosa (2003) sought t o sys-
tematise the constitutive elements of a blog (tools and pages) that form
mechanisms of interaction between bloggers and users. To observe the sym -
biotic relationship between journalism and blogs (Hiller, 2002), Barbosa
carried out a survey of bloggers to map some of the technical and social uses
and appropriations of the tools and web pages. Paulo Munhoz (2005),
through an exploratory cartographic study, had already sought to
characterise new forms of structuring the photographic message and models
of image production and circulation in blogs and in open publishing systems.
Artur Vasconcellos Araújo (2005) made a case study of blogs in order to

verify the uses that two media organisations made of this communication
system. To this end, he identified an d analysed quantitative aspects (volume
of material produced, through an analysis of the archives, frequency or
rhythm of production of material, size of the news story and nature of the
issues dealt with) and qualitative aspects (seeking to apply concepts derived
from enunciation theory to an analysis of the published texts). Other research
has also dealt with the influence of the blogosphere on the traditional media.
For example, Cuadros and Sponholz (2006) made a comparative study of the
use of journalis tic blogs in the principal media of Brazil and Germany. Bo -
laño and Brittos (2007) perceived that certain blogs, journalistic ones above
all, “have an influence on the agenda of the hegemonic media”. Josiany
Fiedler Vieira (2007) registered the evolution of blogs employing the con -
cept of remediation (Bolter and Grusin, 1999). In her case study of the blog
of the Brazilian journalist Ricardo No blat, she made a content analysis of
posts, showing the communicational interaction between blogger and reader,
the opinion of the author and the multimedia resources employed. The study
was supplemented with in -depth interviews with Ricardo Noblat and other
bloggers.
Earlier studies had already dedicated space to No blat, considered the
first Brazilian journalist to create a political blog. Inara Souza da Silva
(2006) verified that blogs were a source of information for journalists, using
different methods of research: case study, systematic observation, in -depth
interviews and content analysis of Noblat’s blog.
As the interest of the conventional media in this system of communica -
tion increases, there is a growth in the number of Brazilian researchers
interested in investigating aspects concerning the credibility of blogs.
Rogério Christofoletti and Ana Paula Laux (2 006), basing themselves on
field studies made in different countries, present blogs as a prestige system
and, using case studies, they analyse the communicational relation between
bloggers and readers.
When considering the diversity of the blogosphere, whi ch permits nu -
merous classifications that can range from personal diaries to news media,
many related surveys and articles seek to categorise blogs in order to under-
stand the phenomenon from different perspectives. In creating a typology the
researcher is certainly running risks, as Abraham Moles (1995) point out.
The risk of reducing reality to a few elements, the risk of separating the
groups and determining each one’s centre of gravity, the risk of excluding
certain different groups, albeit provisionall y. Hence the researcher should
present a set of coordinates when attempting to describe the most typical
characteristics of each group.
For example, Raquel Recuero rethought the typology of blogs she had
created in an earlier study on social interactions ( 2003a) in order to analyse
the journalism on the warblogs of the Iraq war (2003b). Her typology con-
tributed to the development of a great deal of research and inspired other
classification proposals, such as that presented in “ Blogs y las Transforma-
ciones del Periodismo [Blogs and the Transformation of Journalism]”
(Cuadros et al., 2005).
Palacios (2007) set out from the ideas suggested by Sorrentino (2006),
seeking to deepen and apply them to Brazilian cases. Applying the notion of
field, developed by the French sociologist Bourdieu, Palacios sought to
identify the effects in the journalistic field produced by the heterodoxy of the
emergence of blogs: Subversion of the place of emission ("Liberation of the
emitting pole"); Doubts on the physiognomy of t he field (Who is the jour -
nalist?); Tensions concerning the criteria of newsworthiness (What is
news?); Vigilance of the traditional media; Widening the debate (public
sphere); Blogs as promotion of so-called Public Journalism (participation,
grassroots journalism); Creation of a movement reaching beyond the tradi -
tional audience and formation of networks of participation.
2.3. The Journalist-Blogger
Ease of use has permitted an indiscriminate creation of blogs in all sec -

tors, with the journalists guild being one of the most active and committed to
regular updating. The survey is the most widespread resource for rapidly
obtaining information on the maintenance of the weblog and the author’s
profile. After searching the Web and locating the blogs that are the object of
study, a universe is built to which is the survey is then sent by electronic
mail in *.doc format, or a link to an online questionnaire is provided. Com -
panies like 2ask, QuestionPro, e -encuesta or Netquest facilitate the design of
these questionnaires and provide the results automatically, which expedites
the phase of gathering and analysing data. In this concrete case, different
studies centred on the figure of the news professional (Palomo, 2007) have
employed this method, as it is consider ed to be the most suitable for tracing
the profile of the blogosphere elaborated by journalists.
Besides the survey, the interview with experts is another method for di -
rectly determining how citizen journalism is influencing journalistic rou -
tines, since in this way professionals can confirm the use of tools like Flickr
or Buzznet. Authors like Jane Singer (2005) opted for content analysis in
order to compare the style and values of journalist-bloggers with “standard”
news.
3. CITIZEN JOURNALISM WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE

PROFESSIONAL MEDIA
The first research on the evolution of citizen journalism was centred on

the attitudes of the digital journalists of those media that encouraged
audience participation in news production (Schaffer, 2007; Paulussen et al.,
2007). Chung (2007), as well as Hermida and Thurman (2007), opted for in -
depth interviews as the principal method for understanding those attitudes,
which were mainly reticent and skeptical. For their part, Domingo et al.
(2007) favoured a structural analysis of the opportunities for participation on
the websites of newspapers from nine countries. In the United States, the
Bivings Group employed the content analysis file of the websites of the hun -
dred most widely distributed North American newspapers to deter mine the
degree of implantation of Web 2.0 tools in this sector, and to show the
interest existing in increasing interaction with the audience and providing the
latter with a greater role.
The newness of the concept of “participatory journalism” is an invi tation
for the constant discovery of new research possibilities in the subject. There
are new approaches proceeding from the field of design and others that use
the open system itself as a new tool to be applied in the research. For exam -
ple, early in 2007 a worldwide survey was promoted from the newspaper
OhMyNews to analyse other similar initiatives of citizen journalism. De -
scriptive methods are also applied from blogs like The Social Web in order to
analyse all the novelties related to citizen journalis m, while publications
specialising in the media sector, like Online Journalism Review, have
developed specific sections.
While there is a preponderance in the blog of the individual imprint of
the blogger, the main characteristic in the other forms of part icipatory jour-
nalism is collaboration amongst those involved. In the research undertaken,
we can also observe the attention paid to the international and communica -
tional relations provided by those forms, which incorporate tools and
methods dedicated to perfecting the information published through collabo -
ration amongst the participants.
Different Brazilian studies explore the potential of the production model
known as open source, whether in articles and monographs (Schwingel,
2004; Silva jr. , 2004; Ant oun, 2004; Holanda, 2004; Cuadros, 2005; Bram -
billa 2005, Breier, 2004; Evangelista, 2006; Primo and Träsel, 2006; Antoun
and Pecini, 2007; Beltrão, 2007; Fonseca and Lindemann, 2007) or in
dissertations (Rigitano, 2004; Munhoz, 2005; Brambilla 2006¸Holand a,
2007, Träsel, 2007). There is verification that open source journalism is
gaining ground as a basic concept for understanding the phenomenon
(Breier, 2004; Cuadros, 2005; Brambilla, 2005 and 2006). One should note
the lack of a specific proposal for “wi ki journalism”, in spite of the fact that
this model of publication has significant specificities. In the opinion of
Brambilla (2006), Wikinews does not form part of open source journalism,
since, according to this author, due to the lack of publishing aut hority the
news never surpasses the beta version. For the opposite reason, that is to say,
the upholding of the authority of an editor on OhMyNews, Holanda (2007)
does not consider this to be an open source form, while accepting the wiki
model as an extreme, but nonetheless valid, case.
Bambrilla (2006) centres his attention on the role of the journalist facing
this new participatory public. This researcher takes recourse to the biblio -
graphical search, to participatory observation and to interviews with ci tizen-
journalists of different countries chosen at random, with researchers in this
field and with members of the newsrooms of the Korean newspaper. Rather
than interest himself in content analysis, Brambilla concentrates on the inter -
action between journalists and public and its rules. To this end, he made a
description of the structure of the website and of the procedures involved in
the interaction of the user with the website.
André Holanda (2007) observes the relation of open source journalism
with the public through case studies: Indymedia, CMI, Slashdot, AgoraVox,
Wikinotícias and Wikinews. Marcelo Träsel (2007) uses content analysis
when seeking to establish the degree to which the contributions and inter -
ventions of the public broaden the journalis tic aspects of the articles
published in Wikinews and Kuro5hin, creating a journalism with truly mul -
tiple perspectives (Bruns, 2005).
7
Production Routines
1. THE STATE OF THE QUESTION
This chapter provides an approach to the reality of online journalists and

offers an introduction to the methods and techniques most used in the study
of the profession (sociological profile, working and professional conditions,
etc.) as well as to the work routines. As we shall see, there are methodologi-
cal tools for this purpose that have been put into practice in recent years in
Spain and Brazil in studies analysing the professionals of online journali sm
from different points of view.
Following some initial works of synthesis that attempted to depict the
general panorama surrounding online journalism, a broad range of studies
soon emerged that dealt with the study of digital journalism from more spe -
cific perspectives: design, digital narrative, information architecture, etc. In a
more limited form, different contributions have recently appeared that con -
centrate on analysing the incidence of Internet in the professional practice of
journalism, or the expectations that the new medium has raised amongst
professionals.
In Spain, the first research studies dealing with the use of Internet
amongst journalists were works that had a broad character, normally centred
on studying the working conditions of the pro fessionals. This research
approached the subject from a distance, barely touching on the concrete
question of the impact of Internet on professional practices. Worthy of men -
tion in this respect is the series of surveys that the College of Journalists of
Catalonia has been carrying out since 1992, in order to analyse the profile of
the professionals working in Catalan news production (Col·legi de Perio-
distes de Catalunya; 2000), to which must be added the recent works
forming part of the preparations for the Libro blanco de la profesión pe-
riodística en Catalunya [White Book of the Journalistic Profession in Cata -
lonia] (Soriano; 2004, Soler; 2004). Similar approaches have been under -
taken in the Basque Country (Cantalapiedra, Coca, Bezunartea; 2000), while
in Galicia there is the work of the Grupo Novos Medios [New Media Group]
(Ponencia de Comunicación, 2000; Colexio Profesional de Xornalistas de
Galicia, 2002).
The first notable contribution on the working conditions of digital jour -
nalists proceeded from the Grup de Periodistes Digitals [Digital Journalists
Group – GPD]. One of their reports on the labour and professional situation
of the digital journalist in Catalonia (Grup de Periodistes Digitals, 2003) set

out the principal problems affecting journal ists on Internet and defined the
profile of the digital journalist. A similar project was set underway in 2000
by the Consello da Cultura Galega [Galician Cultural Council]. This re -
sulted in the publication of the conclusions of research conducted in 2002 on
the professional attitudes and working conditions of the first online
journalists working in the Galician media. This study attempted to describe
not only the objective characteristics of the work of the new communicators,
but also their expectations and thoughts on the new medium (Colexio Profe-
sional de Xornalistas de Galicia, 2002; García, Túñez and López, 2005).
The most recent contributions to the study of the working and
professional conditions of digital journalists mainly proceed from the Basque
Country. These include the project directed by Meso on “Professional Atti -
tudes and Labour Situation of the Digital Journalist in the Basque Country”
and the research developed by José Larrañaga (2007) on the working and
professional conditions of the jo urnalists of Basque digital editions. Mention
should also be made of the contribution from the lecturers at the Rey Juan
Carlos I University José Mª García de Madariaga and Fernando Tucho
(2007).
It can be seen that research in the working situation and pr ofessional
attitudes of online journalists is still scarce, although interest in this question
is increasing. Even more limited, however, is research in the new
professional profiles resulting from digitalisation and media convergence,
and in the professio nal routines of the digital journalist. Micó (2006) and the
Grup de Recerca d’Interaccions Digitals (Research Group in Digital Inter-
action - GRID) of the University of Vic (2006) have undertaken the study of
the new professional profiles. Amongst their co nclusions, the authors ob-
serve that numerous professional figures have experienced changes in the
skills that were traditionally required for their work. In general, these trans -
formations are of two types: technological and functional.
A significant body of research is centred on analysing the impact of
Internet on the journalistic production of the traditional media. Setting out
from concepts like Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR), some researchers
approach the study of Internet as a medium of interactio n with the sources of
information. In this respect, the book O ciberespaço como fonte para os
jornalistas [Cyberspace as a Source for Journalists] (Machado, 2003), un -
dertakes a detailed analysis of the perspectives opened up by the digital net -
works in news production.
Other relevant studies include those, also carried out in Brazil, by Nélia
Del Bianco (2004) on the impact of Internet on the radios of São Paulo –
Jovem Pan AM and Bandeirantes AM. According to this author, Internet is
PRODUCTION ROUTINES 103
integrated into every phase of journalistic production. The Web enables

professionals to choose from amongst hundreds of newsworthy events.
Masip (2003, 2005) and Soriano (2005) have also worked on analysing
the new routines and functions resulting from the irruption of Inter net in the
newsrooms. Masip, making use of qualitative and quantitative methodolo -
gies, analyses how Internet has affected the professional practice of Catalan
journalists. His analysis confirms that there is an unquestionable presence of
Internet in the media newsrooms and that its use is fully integrated into daily
routines, although these routines have not been substantially altered. Internet
still plays a secondary role in the newsrooms of the traditional media.
The way in which Internet is involved in the process of accelerating the
cycle of news production in the traditional media has also been the object of
some research surveys. In a pioneering work, Brandão (1999) shows how the
introduction of the concept of the “information turbine” in the 1980s altered
the concept of news, now subjected to production in a state of continuous
flux. The search for production in “real time” made it necessary to perfect
the routines of journalists, routines that are now used on the Internet. Bianco
(2004) shows that, following the irruption of Internet, the capacity for
emitting a news item rapidly became a criterion of newsworthiness on the
radio, resulting in a greater shortening of the news cycle.
With the turn of the century, the first works began to appear that specifi -
cally analysed the process of production in the newsrooms of digital media.
Based on the sociology of journalism, these works sought to understand how
the communicational characteristics of Internet – interactivity,
hypertextuality, multimedia, insta ntaneity and memory – were incorporated
into the daily activity of newsrooms (Palacios et al., 2001).
The first works were produced by Zélia Adghimi (2001; 2002; 2004),
who painted a pessimistic panorama for the professionals who ventured into
the recently created market of digital journalism: routines marked by pre -
carious working conditions and by the impositions of production dictated by
the parameters of “real time”.
Following Adghimi’s contributions, Fábio Pereira (2004) analysed the
production routines of the regional publication Correioweb, whose small
newsroom was obliged to fall back on the transposition, with or without
adaptation, of news material produced by others (news agencies, press
offices, etc.). In order to analyse the division of labour in newsrooms,
Pereira had recourse to the notions of “seated journalist” and “standing jour -
nalist” (Neveu, 2001), with the former responding best to the requirements
of producing the greatest number of news items at the lowest cost. Barbosa
(2003) reached a similar conclusion in her study of the regional portals UAI
and iBAHIA, which relied on work routines based on recycling.
Finally, in her doctoral thesis, Thaïs de Mendonça Jorge (2007) analysed

the news narrative of the portal Universo online (UOL) and the Argentinean
newspaper Clarin.com. According to this author, the work of searching for,
selecting and checking sources resulted in the routine standardisation of
journalistic writing.
In Spain, the most significant contribution came from David Doming o.
Domingo (2006) analyses the model of digital journalism developed in me -
dia from different traditions: a printed medium, a public audiovisual me -
dium, a local newspaper and a portal of pure digital news. García Avilés
(2006) also contributes to the analysis of polyvalent and convergent
journalism.
2. METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE

PROFESSION AND PRODUCTION ROUTINES IN ONLINE JOUR-
NALISM
During the first years of the irruption of Internet, different works

appeared that studied the changes occurring in the journalistic profession as
a result of technological innovations, especially Internet. These works arose
from reflection, debate and theoretical consideration and were often more
concerned with the description of desires rather than realitie s.
Following this first phase, a significant number of works emerged, from
the year 2000 onwards, that approached the object of study from an empiri -
cal perspective. With some relevant exceptions, these first works chiefly
made use of quantitative methodol ogies. In that period there was a predomi-
nance of works on the professional profiles and working conditions of the
journalists.
At present, on the contrary, the dominant tendency is to combine quan -
titative and qualitative methods, with a clear preference for the use of quali-
tative techniques as a necessary complement for obtaining a valid approach
to the phenomenon of digital convergence in the newsrooms and its effect on
professionals (Cabrera et al., 2007).
2.1. Quantitative Methods
In general, studies of an essentially quantitative type make use of the

survey as their principal technique. This was the methodology employed in a
large number of the works mentioned above in the second and third epi -
graphs of this chapter on the working conditions of journali sts, including
online journalists.
The survey, a technique especially employed in sociological research,
does not apparently present any complications: putting questions to a num -
ber of individuals and subsequently collecting their answers. However, its

application is not free of complexity. Monzón Arribas (1987) defines sur-
veys as a procedure for gathering information from a group of subjects
(sample) who are representative of a wider group of people (universe) within
controlled margins of error (probabil ity). Wimmer and Dominick (1996)
emphasise that surveys make it possible to obtain a large quantity of infor -
mation at a reasonable cost. It is not however free of problems (see the
chapter on methodology for research in media convergence in this volume).
The basic tool in surveys is the questionnaire: the repertory of questions
that are put to the individuals who make up the sample analysed. In the
process of designing and setting out the questionnaire it is essential to pro -
ceed with the greatest rigour, in order to obtain a questionnaire that will
gather all of the information required by the researcher. And, even more
important, it must be interpreted in the same way by all of those subjected to
the survey. For this purpose a pre-test must be carried out, that is, a pilot test
making it possible to verify the correct elaboration of the questionnaire.
To obtain the highest possible response rate it is important to take certain
decisions that affect the design of the questionnaires. In spite of Wimmer
and Dominick’s consideration that the maximum answer time for a survey
should be 60 minutes, the elaboration of briefer questionnaires is
recommendable, answering which should involve periods of time no longer
than 15 or 20 minutes.
The questions in the questi onnaire can be open or closed. Closed ques-
tions are more difficult to formulate but they make greater uniformity in the
answers possible, which facilitates subsequent statistical treatment of the
results. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, provide a greater wealth of
information in their answers, but involve greater difficulties of interpretation
and tabulation. In drawing up the questions, it is recommendable that a sim -
ple language be used that offers no possibility for misunderstanding, that the
questions should be as specific as possible to avoid generalisation, and that
their formulation should not be especially long or complex.
Another important decision to be taken by the researcher concerns the
method of distributing the surveys, given that th e characteristics of the ques-
tionnaire will differ depending on the method selected. Thus, for example, in
a survey carried out by telephone it is not recommendable that the majority
of questions be open-ended ones.
Finally, selection of the sample and en suring it has a representative
character are also of vital importance. A significant question that might be
faced by the researcher concerned with studying the professionals of jour -
nalism is determining the population under study. This problem derives fro m
the difficulty in arriving at the total number of professionals in each country.
In some places, the lack of a census is compensated by the existence of pro -
fessional colleges or associations that, while not exhaustive, are sufficiently

representative of the profession as a whole. This was the resource employed
by the Grup de Periodistes Digitals [Digital Journalists’ Group] and the
Sindicat de Periodistes de Catalunya [Journalists’ Trade Union of Catalonia]
to obtain a sample for their study of the working conditions of digital jour -
nalists (Grup de Periodistes Digitals, 2003).
When this resource cannot be applied, the general tendency is to direct
the surveys to the editors-in-chief of the newsrooms, on the assumption that
their viewpoints will be repres entative of their team as a whole. This has
been done by Bella Palomo in Spain (Palomo, 2002); and at the international
level by Harper (1996), Jackson and Paul (1998), Neu berger et al. (1998),
Peng et al. (1999) or Singer et al. (1999), amongst others. In some cases, the
option chosen was to consider all of the digital journalists as the universe of
the survey (Brill, 2001; Deuze and Dimoudi, 2002; Quandt et al., 2003,
Paulussen, 2004).
On other occasions, the option chosen is to try and achieve the maxi -
mum number of answers possible in a given number of companies, without
attempting to be exhaustive in the difficult task of locating all the existing
digital publications. Schultz, for example, chose to survey only those digital
journalists working for the New York Times, basing his results on 19
responses. Luzón developed the same solution in her study of Internet use in
the newsroom of Televisió de Catalunya [Television of Catalonia], although,
in her case, the surveys were complemented by an intensive et hnographic
field study (Luzón, 2001).
A suitable choice of sampling unit is also essential, which, depending on
the aims pursued, will usually be editors, section editors and/or reporters. An
inappropriate choice of sampling unit can lead to results whose validity is
questionable, or whose generalisation is problematic at the very least. This
can happen in studies, such as those mentioned above, where the
questionnaires are distributed to those in charge of the digital newsrooms.
They are invited to respond to the questionnaires according to their own
perceptions, which, depending on the context, might not coincide with those
of their employees. Besides, a large number of conditioning factors intervene
in the adoption of any innovation, amongst which the par ticularities of the
organisation play an important role, although individual characteristics have
proved to be decisive. These characteristics become blurred if the answers
proceed from the perceptions of third parties.
As mentioned previously, surveys hav e been especially used for study -
ing the journalistic profession: sociological profile, working and professional
conditions, expectations, hopes, etc. Nonetheless, a growing tendency can be
observed in recent research of combining this technique with other s of a
clearly qualitative type, particularly interviews. The reason for this must be
sought in one of the main limitations of surveys: they simply depict the
opinions of the journalists and their own perception of what they do, but not
their real routines, nor the context or the factors that influence their work.
This is the line followed in Galicia by the Novos Medios [New Media]
group, whose principal researcher is Miguel Túñez. The results of their
studies are contained in several books (we will mention two: Xornalismo en
internet. Actitudes profesionais e condicións laboais dos periodistas en liña
[Journalism on Internet. Professional Attitudes and Working Conditions of
Online Journalists] (Consello da Cultura Galega, 2002), and Informe sobre a
situación laboral dos xornalistas galegos [Report on the Working Condi-
tions of Galician Journalists] (Colexio Profesional de Xornalistas de Galicia,
2002). More recently, the Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya has published
the Llibre blanc de la professió periodística a Catalunya [White Book of the
Journalistic Profession in Catalonia], a work that aims to depict the reality of
journalism and the mass media in Catalonia. This white book is the result of
two research projects, one with a quantitative character, based on a sample
of 420 personal surveys, and another qualitative one, based on 30 in -depth
interviews (Soriano, 2004; Soler, 2004). Finally, the double methodology
was also employed in the study developed by García de Madariaga and Tuño
(2007) on the social and working profile of Spanish digital journalists. In this
case, 23 semi -structured interviews were initially held with editors, sub -edi-
tors and section editors of some of the most important digital publications of
the country, and, subsequently, a questionnaire was drawn up and distributed
amongst editors of cybermedia. At the international level, we also find cases
where surveys and interviews are combined in order to triangulate results
(Singer, 1997; Brill, 2001; Quinn and Trench, 2002). In -depth interviews
(Riley et al., 1998; Heinonen, 1999; O'Sullivan, 2005; Chung, 2007; Her -
mida and Thurman, 2007) offer a deeper perspective, one that is often more
critical of the development of digital journalism than is usually reflected in
surveys.
2.2. Qualitative Methodology
A qualitative methodology is used in the majority of studies on

journalistic routines and professional profiles. Ethnographic work is what
enables researchers to directly observe the productive process and the atti-
tudes of journalists in their context. According to Traquina (2003),
ethnography makes it possible to see “the trans -organisational dimension in
the news production process” and “all the informal networking amongst the
journalists”.
In general, a tendency can be observed to use the procedures of triangu-
lation, that is, the simultaneous employment of different data gathering tech -
niques. The case study in particular acquires special relevance as a method

making possible a better approach to the study of journalistic practices. Eth -
nographic study plays a determinant role in any case study, which, in its
turn, must be accompanied by the realisation of interviews in context and the
analysis of documents linked to the unit of observation. Once observation of
the newsrooms for a sufficiently extensive period of time has finished, the
opinions gathered in the interviews can be completed through the distribu -
tion of a closed questionnaire amongst the professionals. We will now
briefly explain each of the recommended methods and steps that make up
our final methodology, which we can consider a mixed methodology.
The case study method refers to “an empirical work that investigates a
contemporary phenomenon in its real life context” (Yin, 2003:13), which is
why it is considered a highly usefu l tool for the analysis of more complex
social phenomena. Although generalisation from its results is difficult, the
case study makes it possible to obtain knowledge of a concrete reality and its
context, based, for example, on a detailed analysis of human conduct, to-
gether with other sources of evidence used in empirical enquiry. Similarly, it
offers the possibility of obtaining unexpected results with a greater fre -
quency than with other techniques. It is therefore an essentially qualitative
method, which is centred on the parameters of a specific case, instead of
establishing generalisations that encompass broader fields. Amongst the
numerous qualitative sources on which the case study method is based, the
following should be stressed: direct observation , interviews, reports, work
documents, archive data and analysis of samples, as evidence to corroborate
results.
The efficacy of this methodology has been amply demonstrated in recent
approaches to the study of digitalisation and its implications for the
journalistic profession. In Spain, García Avilés et al. (2004) and Micó
(2006) have applied it in the study of Spanish television newsrooms; Masip
in the newsrooms of La Vanguardia, Catalunya Ràdio and TV3 (2005),
Domingo (2006) in the newsrooms of four Catalan digital media and
Larrañaga (2007) in his study of the convergence process set underway by
the Basque group Goiena.
Without any doubt, field observation plays a fundamental role in any
approach to understanding production routines. Mauro Wolf (1991) u nder-
lines the importance of participant observation in studies of newsmaking,
given that it makes possible the systematic collection of essential informa -
tion and data on the production routines operational in journalistic compa -
nies. Similarly, informati on gathered through field observation enables com -
parison to be made between different units of observation, allowing identifi -
cation of possible similarities and differences.
The definition of field observation we adopt is that of Becker and Geer

(1957), taken up by Jankowski and Wester (1993), who consider it to be a
technique by which the observer participates, for a limited period of time, in
the everyday life of the people who are the object of study, observing the
things that happen, listening to what is said and asking questions. Field ob -
servation includes observation as such, interviews and the analysis of docu -
ments.
Frequently, gaining access to newsrooms, which permits observation of
the everyday work of journalists, is one of the main problems f aced by the
researcher. Mauro Wolf recalls that “the question of obtaining prolonged
access to the newsrooms is obviously essential in this type of study” (Wolf,
1991:213). Observation of newsrooms should be carried out for a period of
time that is long en ough for changes that might occur to be registered with
sufficient perspective. Domingo (2005) suggests that if what is sought is
comparison of different realities, the same temporal period should be chosen
in each case study, with intervals over the perio d. Similarly, it is helpful if
the observer is already familiar with the work done in the newsroom, either
because he has performed such work professionally or because he has
previously carried out similar studies in newsrooms.
During the period in the new srooms there must be continuous observa-
tion of how the journalists carry out their tasks. A position of distance is
recommended, maintaining the necessary “analytical distance”, without es -
tablishing excessive rapport with the journalists who are the obje ct of study.
They should not be interrupted while carrying out their work, except when it
is necessary to obtain precise clarification on the activity they are realising.
Registration of the information observed by the researcher is crucial in
this type of work. Such registration can be done by means of codification on
a file, for example, or without any type of previous codification. In this case,
it is advisable for the researcher to make systematic annotations on what he
sees that will contribute to describing the situation and its characteristics.
Such annotations can take the form of field notes or an observer’s diary, the
latter written up afterwards in the form of a retrospective register.
Both in the phase prior to observation, and during the period of observa-
tion itself, it is advisable to carry out interviews with the members of the
newsroom. When carried out before field observation, interviews in context
make it possible to obtain information about the aims and identity of the
company, identify t he different categories of employee who might be the
subject of an interview, draw up the open questionnaire and establish the
initial calendar of interviews. For example, in their study on the convergence
process in the Tampa News Centre, Dupagne and Garrison (2006) carried
out such prior work, which was useful for assessing the dimensions of the
subsequent field work.
The interviews enable information to be obtained that it would be

difficult to identify through direct observation. They make it possible t o
capture feelings, opinions, intentions… “Interviews lay bare the everyday
life of professionals, they make it possible to accede to discourses full of
referents, patterns, stereotypes, tacit knowledge” (Soriano, 2004: 12).
The use of semi-structured interviews is recommendable, as they permit
a certain degree of control over the interviewee’s answers, while at the same
time providing both interviewer and interviewee with a high degree of free -
dom to hold a relaxed conversation.
There is no definitive crit erion on the number of interviews that should
be carried out in a practical case of this nature, although, logically, this will
depend on the size of the newsrooms involved, on the geographic scope of
their audiences (local, regional, national or internati onal) and on the specific
characteristics of each medium. The interviewees should be selected
according to their functions and their participation in newsroom conver -
gence.
Finally, to refine the results of the research, it is useful to apply a closed
questionnaire to the professionals involved in the object of study. There are
circumstances which make this advisable, in order to complement the
opinions of the interviewees and to obtain more precise evaluations of cer -
tain phenomena. In a study of changes i n the journalistic practices and the
structure of two Spanish television channels, the researchers applied a
closed questionnaire containing 20 questions (García Avilés and León,
2002). This technique allowed them to determine with greater precision the
journalists’ perceptions of the change in production practices and routines,
as well as of the use of the new digital technology in news production. The
same technique was also used by Virginia Luzón in her study on the impact
of Internet on the journalistic routines of the reporters of TV3 (Luzón,
2001).
It is possible to use other methods to complete the research, such as
content analysis. This can be used to analyse the frequency of updating of
websites or the percentage of material that uses external sources. In the
opinion of Jorge (2007), this type of analysis makes it possible to verify the
results of the journalistic production process. In Spain, it has been applied
by authors like Luzón (2001) and Masip (2005).
According to Ruiz Olabuénaga (1996), the use of a qualitative
methodology is not incompatible with the use of a quantitative one, since
this helps to complement each technique and minimises possible methodo -
logical shortcomings. The researcher interprets the data and the experiences
provided by the interviewees in the light of the quantitative em pirical
results, which without doubt enriches the conclusions and strengthens the
soundness of the research.
8
Media Convergence
1. CONCEPTUAL NOTE ON MEDIA CONVERGENCE
Before it became an idea associated with journalism, the concept of con -

vergence was employed in fields as disparate as mathematics, economics or
biology (Gordon, 2003). Since the late 1980s, the term “convergence” has
been used to refer to a variety of concepts related to the technological trans-
formation of telecommunications; it has had heterogeneous meanings, com -
plementing each other on occasions and elusive on others. This is due to the
variety of approaches and perspectives adopted in studies on media conver -
gence: business (Killebrew, 2005; Lawson -Borders, 2006), juridical
(Clements, 1998), technological (Forgacs, 2001; Idei, 2002), multiplatform
(Theorodopoulou, 2003; Thompson, 1999) and cultural (Jenkins, 2006), all
of which highlights the close relationship amongst technologies, industries,
markets, genres and audiences.
Certainly, there is no single and unanimously accepted definition of the
concept of convergence. In fact, a great part of the research related to this
question underlines the difficulty of reaching such a consensus. And this
conceptual discrepancy affects both the academic and the professional
literature. However, there are differences between the two. The academic
literature usually favours systemic definitions of convergence, covering
different fields of communication, and the definitions thus tend to be broader
and multidimensional. On the other hand, professional definitions are usually
more reductionist and are often limited to logistical aspects of the media,
particularly the workings of newsrooms and production processes.
This conceptual discrepancy does not, however, usually find a linguistic
correlate. Facing the disparity in the definitions, a clear consensus can b e
appreciated when it comes to designating them as “convergence”. Conscious
of this terminological problem, some authors propose alternative terms
(combined promotion, cooperation, coexistence, coordination, fusion… ) as
ways of defining specific forms of convergence (Dailey et al., 2003). Simi-
larly, what is emphasised is that convergence does not involve a brusque
change, but rather a gradual evolution of the coexistence between traditional
communication techniques and processes and other innovative ones ( Ce-
brián, 2001).
Hence the concept of “media convergence” refers to a process of inte-
gration of traditionally separate modes of communication, affecting compa -
nies, technologies, professionals and audiences in all the phases of the pro -
duction, distributi on and consumption of contents of any type. This process
has deep implications for company strategies, technological change, the
elaboration and distribution of contents on different platforms, the
professional profile of journalists and the forms of acces sing contents. In this
respect, Gracie Lawson-Borders (2006: 4) defines convergence as “an en-
semble of concurrent possibilities of cooperation between printed and elec -
tronic media in the distribution of multimedia contents through use of the
computer and Internet”. It follows from her definition that the Internet and
computers are the aggregating sources of contents generated by different
media and distributed through different platforms.
Technological convergence refers to the capacity of infrastructures to
acquire, process, transport and simultaneously present voice, data and video
on a single network and an integrated terminal. The new applications and
services overlap and come together in the computer, telecommunication and
audiovisual sectors. Rich Go rdon (2003) considers the stage of technological
convergence to be a necessary and obligatory one for the evolution of the
convergent processes.
Meanwhile, company convergence makes possible the creation of
alliances, temporary unions, fusions, takeovers o r new companies. The only
restrictions are the guarantee of pluralism and avoidance of the transfer of
dominant positions between some sectors and others.
In the professional field, convergence results in different strategies for
making the maximum use of news material, which then appears in different
media. Such strategies range from forms of cooperation between the news-
rooms of different media to the creation of integrated multimedia news -
rooms, where all the messages are centralised, assignments are mad e and the
flow of information is channelled to bring out the printed, audiovisual and
online versions of the contents. This poses the question of journalists
assuming a greater level of polyvalence in order to produce contents for
several formats.
Finally, convergence also affects the journalistic product, since it per -
mits modification of both the formal characteristics of the contents, and au -
dience habits in using and interacting with those contents. In the environ -
ment of media convergence, communicatio n is characterised by the
immediacy, multimediality, interactivity, participation, depth, non -lineal
structure and personalisation that it offers to users.
Professional convergence – our main object of analysis – is being im -
planted in numerous media, when ever the journalist is asked to cover the
news story for television, for the radio and to prepare a version for Internet.
In the latter field, convergence is conceived as the use of resources on
MEDIA CONVERGENCE 113
different platforms for joint work and information distributi on in a coordi-

nated way.
In order to facilitate conceptual and terminological clarity, we reproduce
the definition of “media convergence” proposed by Salaverría, García Avilés
and Masip (2007), as a basis for this chapter:
Media convergence is a multidim ensional process that, facilitated by

the generalised implantation of digital telecommunications technology,
affects the technological, business, professional and publishing area of the
mass media. It favours an integration of tools, spaces, working method s and
languages that were formerly dispersed, in such a way that journalists pro -
duce contents that are distributed through numerous platforms, using the
specific languages of each of them.
Convergence affects different areas of the organisation of the ma ss me-

dia. To the degree that convergent processes develop, these areas trigger
their own processes of reconfiguration and repositioning in order to adapt to
the new reality.
Shown below are the principal areas and the eventual reconfiguration
processes:
Area Reconfiguration process
Definition of ontologies for:

Product innovation –management and
Strategy and global infrastructure -relation with the client
business model
Financial aspects
Technological plan Publishing systems, databases , interfaces
and equipment
Organisation and Hierarchical reorganisation, physical reform,

management training
Organisational culture Climate, management and personnel; edu -

cational profiles
Operational processes Narrative genres and formats of the cyber-

medium
Non-conventional contents and tools
Market and relation with Social media, microsegments, economy of atten -

the user tion
As we shall see, the increase in research in media convergence in the

national and international spheres reveals a growing interest in this object of
study, together with the need to design increasingly exhaustive and complete
methodologies.
2. INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ON MEDIA CONVERGENCE
At the international level, the first academic reflections on multimedia

convergence appeared in the late 1970s. This was when authors like Nicho -
las Negroponte (1979) began to refer to the nascent phenomenon of digitali -
sation, and its consequences for the diffusion and combination of textual and
audiovisual languages.
Given its novelty , the studies on media convergence included not only
works of an empirical character, but also purely theoretical analyses that
attempted to demarcate, with unequal results, a valid conceptual framework
for defining this relatively new concept. Given that it is methodological as -
pects, above all, that interest us in this book, we will mainly concentrate on
the research models adopted in empirical research. However, it seems justi -
fied to make a brief mention of the theoretical proposals that attempt to de -
fine the concept of convergence.
As we have noted, the theoretical studies are not exactly characterised by
consensus in proposing a definition of that concept. On the contrary, as
many as three different and, to a certain point, consecutive schools can be
detected:
1) Convergence as confluence of technologies. The first definitions of
convergence correspond to this school. These identify it as the combina -
tion of different linguistic codes as a result of digitalisation (Ne groponte,
1979, 1996; De Sola Pool, 1983; Fidler, 1997; Castells, 2001).
2) Convergence as system. The studies that have stressed the systemic
character of convergence can be classed here. They define it as a
complex and multidimensional phenomenon that covers different inter -
connected spheres – technological, business, professional, linguistic…

(Flynn, 2000; Singer, 2004; Killebrew, 2003; Klinenberg, 2005; Gordon,
2003; Jenkins, 2001).
3) Convergence as process. Accepting the systemic character of media
convergence, the authors who adopt this approach draw attention to the
fact that for convergence to be suitably studied, it must be conceived as a
process subject to gradation (Dailey et al., 2003; Lawson-Borders, 2003;
Applegreen, 2004).
Based on the conceptual framework provided by these theoretical
studies, empirical research in media convergence has also adopted different
models, although certain common notes can be detected.
The first similarity concerns the form of convergence studied. The great
majority of studies analyse the convergence phen omena occurring in the
media newsrooms, or phenomena concerning the professional profile of the
journalists who work there. In comparison, other spheres of convergence,
such as technological convergence, for example, have received much less
attention. On consideration, it is not surprising that this should be the case
given that, at the end of the day, research in journalism is included in the
field of the social sciences and not in that of the experimental or technical
sciences. Therefore it is logical tha t research should be centred on the more
specifically journalistic aspects of this phenomenon.
Facing this relative consensus on the form of convergence studied,
greater disparity arises concerning the object of study selected for research.
A large part of the research, especially the early studies, tended to analyse
the phenomena of convergence in isolated media (Cottle, 1999; Duhe et al.,
2004; Huang et al., 2004; Ketterer et al., 2004). However, with the spread of
the systemic view of convergence mention ed above, more recent empirical
studies have tended to concentrate on the communication groups, rather than
taking one of their media as the object of study (Klinenberg, 2005;
Boczkowski and Ferris, 2005; Boczkowski, 2004).
Finally, with respect to the research methodologies for analysing con -
vergence in newsrooms, the authors of these studies have basically had re -
course to two, frequently complementary, forms: interviews and participant
observation.
Interviews, normally semi -structured with some open questions and
others closed, seek to obtain a detailed explanation of the modes, conse -
quences and value -judgements concerning convergence, both from
managers and, above all, from conventional journalists. On the other hand,
participant observation is usually employed by researchers as a mode of
directly witnessing the dynamics of professional relations set underway
when there is a shift in the models of business organisation (Cottle, 1998).
3. NATIONAL STUDIES ON MEDIA CONVERGENCE
The panoramas of studies on convergence in Spain and Brazil are fairly

similar and are marked by a lack of works. In Spain, the approach to the
research of newsrooms as such was virtually unexplored until 2005. When,
at the start of the XXI century, convergence began to be talked about, every-
thing seemed to indicate that the question was of interest to both communi -
cation companies and academics. However, the lack of definition about
exactly what was understood by convergence, and how to put it into practice
and deal with the problems it implied – technological problems, the training
of professionals, the integration of newsrooms that had worked separately for
decades – meant that its attraction faded for some years.
In fact, we still lack consolidated studies in this field in Spain. H owever,
the outlook for the coming years gives cause for hope. On the one hand,
there are researchers interested in the question who have analysed cases of
convergence in newsrooms in other countries (García Avilés, 2002, 2006;
García Avilés et al., 2004).
On the other hand, studies have been made that, while not dealing with
convergence directly or exclusively, have thrown light on the concept and on
the problems involved in its implementation in journalistic routines, as well
as on determinant technologi cal and training factors deriving from this.
There are numerous contributions in this respect as it has been approached
from very different fields (Domingo 2002, 2004, 2005; Salaverría 2003,
2004; Díaz Noci, 2004; López, 2004; Masip, 2002, 2003, 2005; Scol ari et
al., 2006).
It is also worth drawing attention to the existence of research projects
with a regional scope that have dealt with convergence in an indirect way:
this is the case of the project funded by the Basque Studies Society analysing
the impact of Internet on the mass media in the Basque Country and Navarre
(Meso et al., 2005) or the studies developed in Catalonia around the Institut
de la Comunicació [Institute of Communication] (Corominas, Moragas,
Guimerà, 2005; Domingo, 2005). The research group at the University of
Santiago has also worked on the question in the area of Galicia (López, Gago
y Pereira, 2003 and 2004).
Many of these researchers, coming together around the generic subject
of online journalism, developed a line of research, fund ed by the Ministry of
Science and Technology, that analysed “The Impact of Internet on the Mass
Media in Spain” between the years 2002 and 2005. A large part of this work
is collected in the book Cibermedios [Cybermedia], edited by Ramón
Salaverría (2005).
Amongst the contributions made by the work of this network, two in
particular should be mentioned : the identification of convergence as an in -
dependent subject of study, around which many interacting aspects rotate;

and the formation of a stable, numerou s and representative work team, which
includes many of the academics who have worked in recent years on ques -
tions related to the press and technology from very different viewpoints.
Since the year 2006, this team has enjoyed official support thanks to a n ew
project with public funding: “Digital Convergence in the Mass Media in
Spain” (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 2006 -2009). The project covers
six specific areas where convergence is taking place: technologies, contents,
media, professionals, companie s and audiences. This project, which is
getting underway, brings together twenty researchers who aim to cast light
on the concept of convergence, draw up a map of experiences of conver-
gence in Spain and establish common guidelines that will be of use to t he
media, to professionals and in the training of future journalists.
The Brazilian scenario can be defined as equally disheartening. The Bra -
zilian news companies have been conservative and resistant to innovations.
Their character as family businesses an d the power they exercise in the so-
cial fabric strengthen their monolithic posture, tied to the security of a con -
solidated product, technology and market and a monomedia profile.
Along with the publishers, the same atmosphere is found amongst the
professionals, who show a traditionalist profile, with an image of the
profession built on an ideal of journalism that is somewhat remote from the
changes brought by the irruption of the ICTs.
The Brazilian companies have made little advance in the direction of
convergence or, at least, of integrating their newsrooms. In reality, the timid
initiatives undertaken conceive of multimedia as the creation of a new
product making use of contents produced by pre-existing newsrooms, and
not as the integration of the whole process in the same space. The launch of
G1, linked to the newspaper O Globo and the portal Globo.com, falls into
this category, as does the attempt made by the group Rede Brasil Sul.
4. METHODOLOGIES FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIA CONVER-

GENCE
Any approach to a phenomenon as complex as that which concerns us

here, must also be complex, if it is to be capable of studying it in all of its
magnitude and in its different forms.
Convergence should not be understood as a point of arrival, but as a
multiple process wh ose affects are felt from the phase of contents production
to the phase of consumption (Jenkins, 2006). Different authors (Dailey et al.,
2003; Lawson-Borders, 2003; Applegreen, 2004) indicate that the approach
to each of the phases that make up the processes of convergence must be
dealt with separately, in order to avoid confusion, in spite of the fact that
each of those fields cannot be totally dissociated from the others. This sys -
temic character of convergence directly affects the methodologies that mus t
be used to undertake the study of the phenomenon.
In the abundant literature – essentially North American in origin – that
has dealt with the study of media convergence, there is a clear predominance
of the use of methodologies of a qualitative type. Quantitative methods are
mainly used in research that attempts to extrapolate data on a population, and
in research that is centred on analysing the process of contents convergence.
Huang et al., (2004), for example, apply content analysis to determine
whether the process of convergence experienced in The Tampa Tribune has
affected the quality of its news. The same method is used by DuPlessis and
Li (2006) in their study on technological convergence and its impact on the
digital contents of the hundred princip al newspapers of the United States.
We set out with the conviction that an approach to the phenomenon of
media convergence is not possible employing exclusively quantitative crite -
ria, which have limitations in their explanatory ability (Cabrera et al., 2007).
That is why we opt for a double approach to the phenomenon, selecting
quantitative and qualitative methods. Amongst these, ethnographic observa -
tion or field observation is, in our opinion, the technique that best permits an
approach to the study of convergence and its effect on professionals. Al -
though it is difficult to generalise from its results, field observation makes it
possible to obtain valuable information facilitating a detailed analysis of
human behaviour.
In Brazil, Elizabeth Saad has made a preliminary, tentative proposal for
the adoption of the model of global performance evaluation developed by
Hamilton Luís Corrêa in his research group in the FEA/USP (Corrêa, forth -
coming). This is a methodological model that enables account to be taken of
the diversity of variables involved in processes of convergence. The model
sets out from a conception of the linkage of executive phases, structured on
the basis of a broader evaluation of the news company concerning the speci -
ficity of the convergent process adopted in each area of its operational
process. Four phases are distinguished: 1) Organisational evaluation and
strategic positioning; 2) Positioning with respect to convergence; 3) Identifi -
cation of the organisational areas involved and existing sub-processes; and 4)
Grouping of results and definition of common elements. Obviously, the re -
searcher starts out from a stage prior to the executive phases, in which con-
cepts, delimitations and the specificity of the setting, amongst other aspects,
are defined/unified.
Following Jankowski and Wester (1993), field observation makes it
possible to study groups in their natural context, through the researcher’s
participation in the everyday life of the people who are the object of study.
For a limited peri od of time, the researcher observes the things that happen,
listens to what is said and asks questions. Field observation includes in -depth
interviews, analysis of documents and unstructured observations.
Wimmer and Dominick (1996) classify unstructured ob servations
according to two basic criteria: a) the degree to which the researcher partici-
pates in the activity that is the object of observation, and b) the degree to
which his research is made public. Four dimensions are obtained from the
intersection of these two axes: 1) the researcher does not participate in the
object of study and is clearly identified by the individuals under observation;
2) the researcher participates in the phenomenon studied and the individuals
who are the object of analysis know about the work he is doing; 3) the re-
searcher does not participate in the object of study, but the subjects under
observation do not know his true purpose; and 4) the researcher participates
in the object of study and the individuals under observation are unaware that
he is carrying out research. Although in the opinion of some authors only the
final scenario described can be considered participant observation, it is in -
creasingly frequent in the current bibliography to refer in a generic way to
any type of field observation as participant observation.
One of the main advantages of observation is that, since it does not re -
quest information but instead registers behaviour, the latter is spontaneous,
more real, and is not based on answers that might be subje ctivised by the
evaluation of the observed subject himself, concerning what is, or is not,
correct. However, it is important not to overlook the effect that the presence
of the researcher himself might have on the behaviour observed. Amongst
other drawbacks, field observation does not enable information to be ob -
tained on the reasons for actions, and observers can be subjective in regis -
tering data. Another important obstacle is that behaviour might be affected
by momentary circumstances (Báez and Pérez de Tudela, 2007).
The duration of observation, data gathering and the selection of case
studies are fundamental elements in this technique. There is no established
formula for setting the precise time of observation, although a broad period
of analysis is nee ded to obtain a deeper understanding and an overall vision
of the reality observed. In spite of this recommendation, there is a predomi -
nance of short visits, of one week or less, in the research concerning media
convergence carried out to date. This is the case in the research done by Jane
Singer (2004), in which she examined convergence in four North American
media groups, or in that of José Alberto García Avilés (2007) concerning the
group Almería Novotécnica.
Data gathering is another fundamental and cr itical element. Normally,
notes are taken systematically, and as faithfully as possible to the observa -
tions made, in order to capture the entirety of the processes and contexts
observed. Finally, with respect to case studies, authors like Pablo
Boczkowski (2004) underline the relevance of the objects of study being
journalistic companies or multimedia corporations, rather than individual

media. The cases selected must be representative, which is why one should
rule out selection by statistical criteria of representativity, such as
probabilistic sampling. However, these are applicable if the option chosen is
quantitative observation, which enables a large quantity of data to be
gathered on files for subsequent statistical analysis. Unlike field observation
of a qualitative type, which does not permit generalisation, it is possible with
quantitative observation to extrapolate the data obtained to the whole of the
population. This type of approach, however, is very unusual in research in
convergence processes.
Interviews are a technique that is highly enriching and complementary to
field observation. The main advantage of interviews is that they enable in -
formation to be obtained that it would otherwise be difficult to identify on
the basis of direct observation alone, such as feelings, opinions, intentions,
etc. From the practical point of view, they help in adaptation to the rhythm of
the professionals, who would be unlikely to attend a focus group (Fernández
Nogales, 2004).
Interviews usually last for approxim ately one or two hours. For the
successful development of an in -depth interview, Fernández Nogales makes
the following recommendations: 1) respect the order in which subjects
emerge; this order should only be subtly redirected if it strays from the ob -
ject; 2) do not rely on a script during the development of the interview; 3)
avoid giving one’s own opinions and suggest points in a neutral way; 4)
leave more specific questions to the end, and, by way of conclusion, ask the
interviewee to make a synthesis an d prognosis of the evolution of the sub-
ject.
There is no uniform criterion on the number of interviews that should be
held in a case of this nature, although this will logically depend on the size of
the newsrooms involved, the geographic scope of their audiences and the
specific characteristics of each medium. Jane Singer (2004) held 120 inter -
views with different individuals from the newsrooms of four groups studied:
editors, managers, journalists, presenters, photojournalists, etc. In spite of
this example, a tendency can be perceived to hold a smaller number of
meetings. García Avilés (2007) interviewed ten members of Novotécnica,
selected to obtain representatives of all the phases of the productive process.
Dupagne and Garrison (2006), for their part, carried out in-depth interviews
with twelve members of the staff of the Media General group.
As one can intuit from the examples above, it is recommendable that the
interviewees should be selected according to their functions and participation
in the convergence processes studied (Cabrera, et al., 2007). Although it is
not the only method possible, Silock and Keith (2006) used the so -called
snowball method to select the professionals to be interviewed. This method
consists in each informant identifying oth er people who should be inter-

viewed. In their case, fourteen interviews were held with representatives of
the newspapers Tampa Tribune and Arizona Republic, and the televisions
WFLA-TV and KPNX-TV.
Approaching the phenomenon of convergence on the basis of interviews
is a habitual formula in the available literature on the question. Often, inter -
views form part of field observation, as defined by Jankowski and Wester,
but different authors have also used them in an exclusive way, as the only
research techni que. Stephen Quinn (2006) is outstanding in this respect; he
held fifteen interviews with academics and professionals with executive
responsibilities in convergence processes.
In spite of being one of the most widespread methods in communications
research, the use of surveys, and of quantitative methods in general, for the
study of convergence has until now been in a minority. Even so, there are
different examples of research that have opted to use surveys to deal with the
analysis of the phenomenon.
Surveys make it possible to approach a phenomenon in the real context
in which it occurs, and to obtain a wealth of information at a reasonable cost.
Obtaining information is relatively easy, without there being any need for
large infrastructure or for mobilisi ng a large number of people. Obviously,
the use of surveys also presents problems and is not a perfect methodology.
Thus, for example, while surveys make it possible to put two variables into
relation, they are not suitable for establishing causalities. Wi mmer and
Dominick (1996) mention other drawbacks: the people interviewed are fre -
quently unable to remember information related to their activity, there might
be a so-called prestige bias or, obviously, the subjects interviewed might lie
when responding to the questionnaire.
As in participant observation, two key elements in the survey are the
data-gathering questionnaire and the selection of the sample. With respect to
the sample, random sampling methods must be applied, starting out from a
well-defined population and, if possible, with a complete conceptual frame -
work, from which the elements of the sample can be selected (Trespalacios
et al. 2005). This, for example, was the system used by Huang et al. (2006)
to establish the sample for their study on the main concerns of the North
American media industry facing media convergence. For his part, Bressers
(2006) carried out a survey of the 79 predominant media in the 50 largest
metropolitan areas of the United States.
With the spread of the use of Internet, web forms and electronic mail
have now been added to the traditional systems for carrying out surveys –
mail, telephone and in person. Although they present some drawbacks
(availability of access, confusion with spam, etc.), this system has the ad -
vantage of the inclusion of images, automatic information registering and a
greater rapidity than other systems like the personal interview. Since there is
no interviewer, answers are more sincere and there is more time for reflec -
tion, or even for checking up on information. However, it might be necessary
to provide some type of contact system in case doubts should arise. On the
other hand, to encourage participation and the completion of the
questionnaire, the latter should not be overlong and should be accompani ed
by a letter explaining the aims of the study. It might even be necessary to
make prior telephone calls to make the subject more relevant to the inter -
viewees, raise their interest and get them to answer the questionnaire. Unlike
other self-administered surveys, the use of web forms makes it difficult for
the respondent to read the complete questionnaire before answering, hence
the final questions do not condition the rest of the answers (Schonlau,
Fricker and Elliot, 2001). In the abovementioned work of Huang et al.
(2006), they opted to use the Web to distribute a form amongst 921 editors
and journalists selected for their sample. Bressers (2006), on the other hand,
opted for the telephone as the medium for carrying out his survey. In both
cases, electronic mail had previously been used to arouse the interest of the
informants and encourage their participation.
5. A PARTICULAR CASE: ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION

FLOWS IN NEWS AGENCIES
Scenarios of media convergence generally tend towards two main

variants. The first is centred on concern with the transposition of a set of
procedures to a new setting, in this case the digital one. Pre-digital media
forms also manage to survive in the binary field, through strategies of trans -
posing their formats, contents and acce ss mechanisms to the information and
communication technologies (ICTs). This, for example, is the position of
researchers like Fidler (1997), Bolter and Grusin (2000) and Boczkowski
(2004). The second variant takes account of the broader distribution possi -
bilities involved in the digital code, which permit the coexistence of different
formats (text, sound, video, photographs, infographics, etc.) and, hypotheti -
cally at least, make it possible to combine narrative strategies and symbolic
production in more complex and mutually complementary forms (Manovich,
2001; Salaverría, 2005).
Convergence holds a strong connotation of the fusion and interweaving
of formats of information circulation, and the mobile phone is possibly the
most prototypical model of this phenomenon (Lemos, 2007), receiving
traffic in different codes, combining mobility and miniaturisation. In parallel,
the same perspective points towards the fusion of discursive possibilities
amongst visual, textual and sonorous elements, creating possibili ties and
problems of adapting the message in complex contexts of content organisa -

tion and presentation.
Without belittling the importance of the results of the convergence phe -
nomenon in variables of format, devices and modes of discourse engendered
by the ICTs, we believe that the debate can be widened to include a clearer
perception of convergence in other contexts of production of journalistic
content. Put briefly, this is a question of asking how convergence also leads
to actions that restructure the practices, dynamics and organisation of activi -
ties in the establishment of content and information flows in the field of the
mass media.
5.1. Demarcation between Convergence and News Flow
Leaving the exclusively technological sphere and moving the debate

onto the field of journalism, there are difficulties of a conjunctural and
structural order involved in the tasks of demarcating the concept of conver -
gence when applied to the production and circulation of contents (Mielnic -
zuk, 2003). The conjunctural constraints relate, above all, to semantic varia -
tion (the term is a highly polysemic one and varies according to the context
and field of knowledge where it is applied), and to the concept’s capacity for
mutation, to the extent that there is a division in the technological and social
scenario. In this respect, different aspects are being added, adhering to the
concept and making it more complex, so that what is understood by conver -
gence today is necessarily different from what the concept meant some years
ago.
The structural problems mainly reside in the impossibility of historically
situating where and when the phenomenon began and, also, in the difficulty
of adapting the phenomenon as a whole to specific models of content pro -
duction and flow. Put differently , convergence has different origins and for -
mats in, for example, journalism, news agencies, the music industry, the
cinema, etc.
It is recognised that the notion of convergence is not a totally new phe-
nomenon and that it is linked to the historical proce ss. Journalism – and its
dynamic of content flow – cannot be considered as a completely autonomous
nucleus for the generation of content and social dynamic. It is constituted as
a specific sphere that requires specific knowledge but, like all dynamics of
symbolic production in complex societies, it is situated in chains of interde -
pendence, interacting with infrastructural bases and with demands, or
pressures, from the social field, with which it interacts directly (Livingstone
and Lievrouw, 2003).
In the classic conceptions of information theory, the idea of flow refers
to the quantity of information that flows between variables of origin and
destination, in the execution of a process, in such a way as to determine the

necessary capacity of resources and ch annels involved for transmitting the
information (Shannon, 1948: 49). The nuance that must be introduced in this
case is that the flow is fixed within a mathematical perspective, which in -
volves aspects of logarithmic analysis, probability and degree of ch aos in
order to measure the information present in a system.
Within a communicational perspective, the concept of information flow
refers to the proportions of quantity and quality of information established
between agents, which can be organisations, coun tries, media groups, etc.
Such a definition orientated research (especially in the post -war period) that,
through quantitative and qualitative observation, detected that information
flow occurred intensely in a direction established between the developed
and undeveloped countries (UNESCO, 1980: 45-46; Varis, 1994).
In the dynamics of journalism on the Web, parallel flows are created that
are synergic to the processes and practices of journalism (blogs, photologs,
contributions by citizens to traditional ne wspapers). This does not annul the
traditional spaces and channels of collecting, treatment and circulation of
news in a primary sense. What emerges is an additional stratum of informa -
tion, which widens and complements the productive activ ity of newspapers
(Smith, 1980: 79).
The potential advances on the global scale, which are permitting an ex -
pansion of the horizon of circulation and flow of journalistic content, form
part of a historical trajectory that is obviously not restricted to the
appearance of Internet, however much the latter might have permitted a
quantitative and qualitative increase in content flow. On the other hand,
during the 1980s and 1990s, convergence was a phenomenon that achieved a
potential of extreme synergy in integrating the media industry and its
products, as well as the corporations and the processes of content flow.
The effects of those transformations that occurred in the 1980s and
1990s have been nearly always considered in an isolated way:
a) Convergence approached as a process of integration of coordinated
tasks to establish and widen the chains of information and news
flow;
b) Convergence considered as a juxtaposition and combination
amongst mass media, languages and formats, that is, a product, a
symbolic form;
c) Convergence as a fusion and integration amongst companies and
corporations.
Besides this triple perspective of the implications of the concept of con -
vergence, we believe that intersections with other spheres should be indi -
cated, although in a more general way. These inclu de: adjustments in the
profile of access and availability with respect to other symbolic forms of
content (television, printed press, radio, etc.); the interaction with infra -
structural aspects (data networks, telecommunications, etc.); the divisions of
historical aspects (social consolidation of the newspaper form on the social
horizon); and, obviously, the configuration of new symbolic forms of jour -
nalistic activity (blogs, newspapers on the Web, etc.).
The relational horizon existing between content flo ws and the concept of
convergence must necessarily supersede lineal perspectives of understanding
the communication process, such as the now outmoded proposals contained
in the work of theoreticians like Lasswell (1978), Shannon (1949), and more
unilateral perspectives like that of the hypodermic needle theory. This is a
question of superseding theoretical options that attribute excessive impor -
tance to the emitter, or, specifically in the case of journalism, to the
journalistic organisations in establishin g news flows.
The current complex configuration of journalism, based on digital tech -
nological systems, has its own need of articulation with the Web as a whole
and the logics of news circulation. On the horizon of the change between
those systems, there are conciliatory dynamics acting between the circulation
flows of journalistic content and technological, economic and cultural reality
itself, the latter understood as a set of subsystems present in the problem of
those flows.
In the methodological sphere, the task is to propose a model, articulated
in a multiple and interdependent way, in which the processes of symbolic
production related to digital journalism can be understood on the basis of
combining diversified factors.
5.2. Analytical Proposal
In a way that is analogous to what is happening in journalism, the phe -

nomenon of convergence is also creating a division in other sectors of con -
temporary symbolic production. The editorial logics of newspapers can es -
tablish a news flow that possesses similaritie s with the logics operating in
other fields, such as the music industry and the cinema, which are also being
reconfigured by the phenomenon of convergence.
Restricting the discussion more specifically to the case of journalism,
some central contemporary characteristics of the problem of the convergence
scenario must be emphasised. In spite of digital technologies freeing the pole
of content emission (Lemos, 2002) and permitting relatively easy access to
journalistic content generation in a post -massive form , from the viewpoint of
the professional market there are still restrictions of legitimation through the
formats established around normal journalistic practice.
In this respect, the complexity of the picture is provided by the institu -
tional weight of the newspaper, or journalistic organ, in consolidating the
public image of news production (Rodrigo Alsina, 1996), as something that

demands the recognition of a set of values required by events if they are to
become news. To this is joined the existence of a specific professional, the
journalist, who possesses a set of technical and cognitive skills and is capa -
ble of providing suitable treatment to that ensemble of information and of
synchronising his work logic according to the requirements not only of the
institutional role he occupies, but also of the peculiarities of the current tech -
nological factors, events and contents with which he is dealing.
In a certain way, the collection of innovative evidence of content flow,
processes of production management and format innovation, points towards
a scenario located in an age of microcomputers and digital networks.
However, the validity of some principles present in digital convergence has
well-consolidated historical features, which, in a perspective of dialecti cal
synthesis between journalistic practices and communication technologies,
points towards certain tendencies of continuity and potentials (Palacios,
2002, 2003).
The first of these features, multiplatform content, or the linkage of con -
tent to several formats, is assimilated in the models of convergence as a ca -
pacity given by the existence of digital devices capable of dealing with every
type of code. The history of news agencies shows that that possibility has
been established for a long time (Boyd -Barret, 1998; Read, 1992), by an
adaptation of the agencies’ model of work to the diversity of the market of
customers and newspapers demanding their services. The possibility of a
single message being distributed for different devices and symbolic forms is
not an exclusive predicate of the digital age and, much less, an exclusive
attribute of convergence.
Another recurrent point in conceptions of convergence refers to the
possibility of multiple access, production and circulation in a decentralised
way. Once again, in the case of news agencies, we find that decentralisation
of the process of content production is one of their basic characteristics. In
this case, there is a separation, or physical discontinuity, of the procedures of
symbolic construction, which are reorganised and coordinated through
connections by communication networks.
Another two elements also present in analyses of media convergence,
instantaneity and personalisation, as characteristics inherited from other me -
dia, are also found in the his torical trajectory of the news agencies, through
practices relating to operational velocity and the formatting of services for
numerous clients and the production of “information” packets directed at
specific segments of the clientele they serve.
Omitting these more specific aspects, now that we have considered the
functioning of the agencies’ internal work models, it is easy to detect the
close interrelation between these organisations and the technological infra -
structures. Observing the interaction between the dynamic of the agencies

and the historical development of online technological alternatives, we can
perceive an interrelation between the two spheres (Silva Jr., 2006):
a) From the start of their history, the agencies emerged as developers
of network communication models (Silva Jr., 2006);
b) They created sufficiently stable and voluminous flows, permitting
the maintenance of the network systems;
c) They rapidly adapted to developments, creating alternatives that
boosted their activities according to the avai lable infrastructural
characteristics;
d) They were pioneers in perceiving possibilities for implementing
differ entiated services integrated in the essence of network opera-
tion: velocity, omnipresence and interactivity.
The network of data circulation is the backbone for the existence of the
operations of the news agencies. Without such data the business model and
the stability of the system would annul the possibilities of operation. An
agency only makes sense as a network; the agency is a network. It is based
on the combination of data circulation with the specific dynamics of the
agency’s nature. That shows that from both the historical and the organisa -
tional points of view the agencies anticipate aspects that will be present in
the scenario of convergence and, consequently, they will influence the es -
tablishment and management of news flows.
Hence, to speak of content flows in news circulation is to speak of the
configuration of structures that make such traffic viable, whether in agencies
or in newspapers. All of the functions that journalists, companies and de -
vices perform are conditioned by that greater setting, permeated by digitali -
sation. It is no longer possible to speak of a continuous line of production,
since the sequence of treatment and circu lation of the journalist’s informa -
tion is no longer a continuous one. In place of the classic model of a se -
quence of consecutive stages (guideline, checking, documentation, consoli -
dation, editing, production, distribution and consumption of contents), w e
have a process in which these categories remain, but they can be considered
as a permanent circumstantial game, in which the categories mutually
influence and condition each other.
This is a situation in which the velocity of development of the devices,
allied to the pressure of the capital involved, imprints differentiated logics on
the very understanding of news flow: decentralisation, fragmentation of the
work process, constitution of each micro-unit as a micro -universe of content
production, treatment and circulation.
A possible methodological perspective for the case of newspaper con -
tents is thus to establish analytical parameters based on a scenario where the
processes engendered are seen in the light of the existence of a chain of
flows where the digital networks operate effectively, acting on the organisa -
tional basis of the journalistic companies and on the way new relations of
content production, treatment and consumption are articulated. The process
of news flow cannot be analysed in a lineal wa y, but instead as something
that always connects, recovers, continues and feeds back into the chain of
characteristics involved in the system as a whole.
Taking as a starting point an analysis of the relations present in the mu -
sic industry (Prestes Filho, 2002), we can construct a similar model about the
interrelations of the dynamics present in the processes and systems of jour -
nalistic content flow. Obviously, we are aware that there are differences and
its application is based on the understanding that each sphere of cultural
production possesses its own particularities. However, we understand that
both are deeply conditioned by the dynamics of convergence.
Thus, in a preliminary and hypothetical way, we can make a graphic
representation of the processes of convergence of news flows.
Figure 1
The links amongst the most general dynamics of the field of journalism
(the collection, treatment, circulation and consumption of content) are highly
sensitive to undergoing arrangements and readjustments that n ot only affect
the general dynamic of journalism, but also the extensive symbolic forms
with which it has to deal. Besides, we can perceive that factors comprising
the field can adopt numerous positions. This is the case of Internet, which is
not restricted to an isolated dynamic, but can be present in and traversed by
different dynamics of the general system of convergence.
The system of analysis proposed reveals the complexity of the picture of
convergence applied to journalism and also proposes changeabl e roles, in-
cluding that of the news consumer, who becomes much more active in this
process. He is no longer merely a receiver of news, but directs the

channelling of new dynamics and arrangements of content circulation and
production. In this respect, it becomes clear that in a complex process of
convergence news flows are not unilateral, nor are they exhausted in reading.
There are counter-flows that, in a certain way, have a feedback effect on the
public agenda, making the news offer horizon more complex (McCombs,
2003). The flow is cyclical.
News consumption ceases to be represented as a static stage, situated at
the end of the process. Equally, collection, treatment and circulation cease to
occupy fixed positions. They are complex and variable links in the model of
flow, present throughout the whole news process. There is a tendency for the
roles of producer and reader to draw closer together, for there to be a sharing
out, or systemic cooperation between their functions. This obviously in -
volves a restructuring of the profession and the qualifications involved, as
well as a reformulation of the reader for more participatory practices.
9
Teaching Online Journalism and Its Evaluation
1. THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
The emergence of digital journalism as a specialised professional prac -

tice is giving rise to a diversity of changes in university journalism courses:
creation and introduction of new disciplines, restructuring of syllabuses and,
more recently, a movement towards the adoption of distinguished teaching
and research models (Machado, 2006; Tejedor, 2007; Kelley, 2007).
The majority of authors coincide in indicating that the online media are
today still in a stage of transition and experimentation. Hence the continuing
need to redefine the study and teaching plans of journalism so that our uni -
versities can satisfy the needs of this new form of conceiving and practicing
journalism.
Since 1994-1995, the teaching of the journalism associated with the cy -
bermedia has passed through three very different practices:
1) Appearance of new demands;
2) Incorporation of the technologies in the curricula;
3) Transformations in the teaching practic es.
In Spain, when the first step was taken in 1994 in establishing a new
training program in online journalism, with the foundation of the Multimedia
Communication Laboratory at the University of Navarre and the establish -
ment of the first subject on Internet journalism, the question of training jour -
nalists in and for Internet began to acquire significance.
Meanwhile, in general terms, progress has been slow and uneven, and it
is difficult to identify the reasons why the Spanish university has rejected th e
new media, although José Manuel Pérez Tornero (Pérez Tornero, 2007: 17)
does not hesitate to link them with the attitude adopted by the teaching staff.
In this respect, this lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona
affirms that “[the lecturer] systematically turns against a phenomenon he
considers transient and that, in the final analysis, might put into question his
routines and traditions”.
Teachers in a consolidated academic situation should have promoted the
incorporation of online journalis m into the study plans. From their privileged
position they were in a situation to have done so. However, they redirected
attention towards the demands of the discipline, its lack of recognition, etc.
The need for permanent recycling and the lack of a men tality open to inno-
vation seem to be antagonistic arguments, hardly compatible with the privi -
leged situation that some enjoyed. The result is obvious: online journalism
has entered the Communication Faculties through the back door, through
more or less camouflaged optional subjects, and thanks to the efforts of
young, enterprising and enthusiastic lecturers, in the majority of cases with
little experience and an uncertain job situation.
Facing this panorama, it has frequently been the smaller universities that
have promoted teaching in online journalism. Hence, for example, universi -
ties with a long tradition, such as the Autonomous University of Barcelona
or the Complutense University of Madrid, do not have specific subjects
dealing with online journalis m in their respective study plans. While other
smaller centres have fully incorporated it. This is the case, for example, of
the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Rovira i Virgili University of
Tarragona, or the University of Vic, which became the first Spanish univer -
sity to offer an official master’s degree specialising in Digital Communica -
tion, adapted to the new demands of the new European Higher Education
Space.
More recently, it is worth mentioning an initiative of the University of
Málaga, which for the first time, in the 2006 -2007 course, offered a virtual
subject in the Communication Sciences Faculty, under the formula of a pro -
ject of educational innovation for convergence in the European Higher Edu -
cation Space awarded by that university. This was an optional subject in the
second cycle entitled “Interactive Journalism and Creation of Digital Me -
dia”, conceived for adapting the basic tasks of the journalistic profession to
the online medium and acquiring skills in the use of technologies i nvolved in
the construction of web pages.
In the Brazilian case, changes are being introduced in a gradual way and
without centralised directives. There is a considerable imbalance amongst
the different higher education institutions concerning the degree a nd form of
incorporating reforms that adapt the syllabuses to the new market demands
and to the challenges of experimentation in laboratories for journalistic pro -
duction supported by digital technologies and the emergent platforms for its
diffusion.
The teaching of online journalism was introduced for the first time, as
far as we know, in the Federal University of Bahía (UFBA) in 1995, with the
creation of the discipline of Digital Journalism, which had an optional
character, on the syllabus of the course for a Communication Diploma with
qualification in Journalism. The discipline was built around the production
of an online laboratory newspaper, consisting of four hours a week (60
hours/semester). In the reform to the syllabus of the year 2000, the discipl ine
of Digital Journalism came to have a compulsory character, with the format
of a theoretical/practical workshop, consisting of eight hours a week (120
hours/semester), complemented by another compulsory discipline, involving
TEACHING ONLINE JOURNALISM AND ITS EVALUATION 133
Communication and Technology , and several optional subjects covering

aspects of digital culture and providing basic computer and multimedia pro -
duction skills.
The process followed in the UFBA is fairly paradigmatic of what is oc -
curring in Brazilian university courses on journalism in general, with the
gradual introduction of optional disciplines, later made compulsory on the
syllabus and complemented by others that add general knowledge about
digital technology, digital literacy, multimedia, etc.
2. STUDY OF CHANGES IN TEACHING
In the mid-1990s, at almost the same time that digital journalism was
being constituted as a practice with its own characteristics on the market,
academic works were published aimed at evaluating the challenges faced in
teaching the journalistic profession, and the repercussions of the unavoidable
alterations in course programs, in teaching methodologies and in the produc -
tion processes of journalistic companies (Machado and Palacios, 1996;
Friedland and Webb, 1996; López, 1999).
On the basis of an exploration u ndertaken in some of the main specialist
journals (Pauta Geral, Journalism Studies, Journalism-Theory and Practice,
Newspaper Research Journal, Journalism and Mass Communication Edu-
cator, Journalism and Mass Communication, Latina, Zer, Ámbitos y Estu-
dios de Mensaje Periodístico), it is possible to conclude that over the last
twelve years there have been four phases in the research in the teaching of
digital journalism.
In the first works published in the United States between the years 1996
and 1999, the researchers were interested in verifying the degree of incorpo -
ration of online publication in the curricula of journalism courses (Friedland
and Webb, 1996), the attitudes of teachers and students towards the new
technologies (Singer et al., 1996), and how the Web was being used as an
instrument for teaching and learning (Sutherland et al., 1999; Hester, 1999).
In these first five years a description was made of the extent to which
courses were responding to the demands of the labour market and the ways
that teachers and students were incorporating, and reacting to, digital tech -
nologies in the teaching and learning process. These studies basically had an
exploratory character, trying to locate changes underway and identify the
degree of penetration of the digital technologies in journalism courses.
In the second phase (2000-2001) a series of works published in Jour-
nalism & Mass Communication Educator orientated the focus of the
discussions. On the one hand, studies can be identified that concentrated on
more specific aspects, such as verifying the degree to which courses were in
a condition to make digital production accessible to all students (Guthrie,
2000), testing the possibilities of remote teaching (Reis et al., 2000) and
investigating how the Web was being used for teaching journalistic news -
writing (Blake, 2000). On the other hand, works appeared that dealt in
greater depth with questions such as the degree to which syllabuses were
being, or should be, reinvented through the incorporation of digital tech-
nologies and the use of online platforms for teaching and learning (Huesca,
2000; Deuze, 2000).
In the third phase (2002-2003), with the consolidation of digital
journalism as a professional practice with differentiated characteristics, the
central question became one of ascertaining the real impact of technological
transformations on the teaching of journalism. In 2003, the Journalism &
Mass Communication Educator promoted the symposium Learning recon-
sidered: Education in the digital age and publishe d a new series of articles
identifying the changes introduced up until then in teaching practices
(Voakes et al., 2003), the implications of the use of online platforms for
teaching and for pedagogical methods (Hoag et al., 2003), the diffusion of
courses involving use of the Web in the United States (Sutherland, 2003)
and, finally, revision of the reference bibliography concerning the use of
computers in journalism teaching (Hoag et al., 2003).
The bibliographical review of Hoag and others traced a panora ma of the
production on the use of computers and teaching methods employed in jour -
nalism teaching in eight scientific communication journals – only one of
which was specifically on journalism, Journalism Educator, which later
became Journalism Educator & Mass Communication – and in 41 further
journals of other disciplines, ranging from medicine to geography, and in -
cluding education, computing, social sciences and mathematics. In the pe -
riod between 1986 and 2002, Hoag and his team found a total of 76 works
related to the question. Of these, 30 were published in one of the eight com -
munication journals analysed. Fourteen works were found in the only publi -
cation specialising in journalism ( Journalism Educator & Mass Communi-
cation).
In the Brazilian case th e first research texts related to the incorporation
of digital technologies in journalism teaching date from 2002 and 2003,
seven years after the start of the first experiences in digital journalism and
the creation of specific disciplines in the country’s journalism courses
(López, 2002; Schwingle, 2003). With the exception of the work of Débora
López, presented as a communication at the III Congress of Digital
Journalism held at Huesca, in Spain, Schwingle’s article represented the first
effort of reflection by the Grupo de Jornalismo On-line (Online Journalism
Group - GJOL) of the UFBA, on the adoption of technological platforms for
teaching in the area of journalism.
In the Spanish case, different researchers carried out detailed studies

coinciding with the turn of the century; this is the case of the following au -
thors, amongst others: Javier Díaz Noci (talk at the IV Congress of Digital
Journalism of Huesca), Koldo Meso (Chasqui, 2003) and Xosé López (1999
and 2003). In 1999, Xosé López proposed a change in the study plans in
order to guarantee that students trained in the Galician university would
know how to handle Internet. And in the year 2003, following the introduc -
tion of the relevant changes by the University of Santiago de Compostela, he
analyse d the chosen course and compared it with other existing proposals in
the Spanish area.
Finally, in the fourth phase, from 2004 onwards, we find works such as
those of Machado and Palacios (2004), which recounts the experience of
teaching digital journalism in the FACOM-UFBA (1995-2005) at the V
Latin American Congress of Digital Journalism, and of Deuze et al. (2004),
which presents the results of a comparative survey on the particularities of
teaching online journalism in Germany, Belgium and Holland. Sinc e 2005,
various texts have been published by researchers from Brazil and other
countries, such as those of Schwingle (2005), Royal (2005), Lowrey (2005),
Castaneda et al. (2005), Canella et al. (2005), Díaz Noci (2005), Machado et
al. (2005) and Machado and Palacios (2007).
In Spain, the most ambitious initiative aimed at determining and ex -
plain ing the panorama of studies in online j ournalism is a doctoral thesis.
This was defended in 2005 by Santiago Tejedor Calvo, a lecturer at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona, and was directed by Professor José
Manuel Pérez Tornero. The thesis made a diagnosis of the state of teaching
in online j ournalism at the start of the XXI century, defined the profile of the
online journalist (skills and abilities), and made concrete proposals for
training online journalists in the syllabus plans. The author noted strong and
weak points in such training, and at the same time suggested ways of under -
taking a change of direction in the training programs leading to qualifica -
tions in journalism.
The corpus of the research carried out by Santiago Tejedor in his doc-
toral thesis is formed by the programs of 109 subjects (corresponding to the
year 2004-2005) of 26 Spanish universities that currently offer a degree in
Journalism. Tej edor consulted 42 teachers and researchers from different
Spanish universities, all linked to the field of online journalism. They con -
tributed their reflections on the general aims of training in this field, the fo -
cus of such studies, the content of the specific programs on online
journalism, the type of didactic approach, the number and characteristics of
the subjects, etc. He also carried out a series of in-depth interviews with
professionals engaged in online journalism with different digital media, in
order to determine the principal shortcomings in the training of professional
journalists, as well as the new areas of ability and skills required for online
journalism.
In the conclusions of his quantitative and qualitative analysis of the
subjects deali ng totally, partially or tangentially with online journalism, this
lecturer from the Autonomous University of Barcelona indicates that 7% of
the total subject matter offered in the Journalism study plans are dedicated to
Digital Journalism. That is to say, that there is less than one subject dedi -
cated exclusively to online journalism in each Communication Faculty.
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES
In the first twelve years of studies on the teaching of online journalism,

the reference bibliography shows that a dive rsity of methodologies has been
adopted in this research: case study, survey, bibliographical review essay,
experiment, quasi -experiment, content analysis, historical narrative and
applied research, with a predominance of the survey and the case study in
the United States.
In the first and second phases (1995 -1999 and 2000-2001 respectively)
of the studies on journalism teaching associated with the cybermedia – in
which the bibliography reviewed is directly associated with North American
researchers – the works published are experiments, surveys, case studies or
show a hybrid methodology, with the simultaneous application of content
analysis and survey. In keeping with the tradition of empirical research that
predominates amongst North Americans (Igartua, 2006), the studies are of a
predominantly quantitative character.
In the third phase (2002-2003) the majority of works use a quasi-ex-
perimental survey methodology. Outstanding amongst them is a work of
applied research carried out in Brazil (Schwingel, 2003 ).
In the fourth and final phase (2004 -2007) there is a greater abundance of
works by Spanish and Brazilian researchers. In this stage there is a balance
in the adoption of the different types of research method, although a slight
predominance of applied r esearch can be noted, followed by surveys, case
studies and bibliographical review essays. Outstanding in this respect is the
study by Santiago Tejedor (2005), which makes use of a combination of
qualitative and quantitative research techniques, as noted above. These is an
increase of applied research, largely due to the contributions and leading role
of researchers from the GJOL of the UFBA, with the production of texts and
two prototypes of platforms for online publication, resulting from a research
network involving researchers from several Brazilian universities, the Uni -
versity of Córdoba (Argentina) and the Technological Institute of Monterrey
(Mexico) (Machado y Palacios, 2007).
The balance in the use of different methods, to the extent that research in
digital journalism teaching becomes consolidated as an object of study, re -
veals that the researchers are becoming more mature and that there is a
healthy complementariness amongst the different epistemological traditions
in the journalism field. While there was a supremacy of quantitative works in
the early years, proceeding from the United States, with time qualitative or
applied studies have been gaining ground as researchers from Brazil and
other countries have come onto the scene (Meditsch and Segala, 2005).
Facing the future, we believe that what is needed is a broadening of ac -
tivities in the methodological field and in the application of research tech -
niques. In this respect, we offer some proposals – some of them exploratory
and others that will be applied in the near future – that might be of interest.
3.1 Survey
Surveys are one of the most deeply rooted and widely employed re-
search techniques in the field of Communication Studies. In principle, the
approach is fairly simple: putting a series of questions to a population, with
the answers later collected and analysed. In this way it is possible to capture
the opinion of a society or a concrete social group. Professor García Fe-
rrando defines the survey as “research carried out on a sample of subje cts
representative of a wider group, carried out in the context of everyday life,
using standardised procedures of questioning, in order to obtain quantitative
measurements of a large quantity of objective and subjective characteristics
of the population” (García Ferrando, 1987: 164).
The drawing up of survey, as is well known, requires that a series of
phases be fulfilled:
Delineation of the universe, that is, selection of the population that will
form our object of study.
Design of the sample, a process that is subdivided into two phases:
Determining the sample size.
Specifying a sampling method for selecting sample elements (random
or probability sampling; non -random or non-probability sampling ).
Drawing up the questionnaire.
Choosing the type of interview that is to be the method of contact with
those surveyed (Telephone interview; Personal or face-to-face interview;
Interview by post; Interview over the Internet).
When it comes to dealing with online journalism teaching as a subject of
study, intervie ws are a very attractive option for capturing the opinion held
on this question by a group within society (this can be refined later,
depending on the interests governing our research, whether we only want to
determine the degree of satisfaction or dissati sfaction of university
graduates, or whether we also want to apply this to those in charge of digital

newsrooms, training experts, etc.).
3.2. Content Analysis
It is not our wish to establish some type of ranking in the use of different
research techniqu es in journalism. Nonetheless, the high degree of develop -
ment achieved by content analysis in the communication sciences is
undeniable. This is a quantitative research technique that aims to extract
inferences through the systematic and objective identifi cation of the charac-
teristics of content possessed by the data analysed.
Content analysis is a research technique that it is apparently simple to
carry out – the degree of specificity or complexity sought in each specific
research study is a different que stion. Following a process of categorisation
and subsequent codification of the data, including statistical treatment, con -
tent analysis makes it possible to draw conclusions supported by measure -
ment of the frequency with which certain elements of interes t to the re-
searcher appear.
On the other hand, the data indicate that qualitative techniques are a path
that has been little explored in recent years in research in the training of
online journalists. This is a highly relevant option for research in study
plans, the fulfilment of the objectives of these plans, and for analysis of pro -
posals differing from the dominant model. In this respect, we consider the
following techniques to be relevant:
3.3. Discussion Groups and Focus Groups
The discussion group is a technique for collecting qualitative informa -

tion that enjoys high prestige in the field of the social sciences. It emerged at
the start of the Second World War when psychologists and specialists in
mass communication and propaganda of the United Stat es army began to use
group interviews to test the effectiveness of propaganda pieces broadcast on
the radio in that period. Roberto de Miguel defines it as “that technique or
focus based on the meeting of a human group, whose number does not
usually exceed a dozen individuals, aimed at inducing the production of
spontaneous discourse from its participants facing a set of concepts specified
by the researcher or the person in charge of carrying out the study” (De Mi-
guel, 2005: 265).
Generally, the discussio n group is employed as a device prior to putting
into practice a quantitative measurement technique. That is, the discussion
group is used as a strategy for the collection and selection, or hierarchisation,
of information; frequently, after holding a discu ssion group, new hypotheses

emerge or the initial hypotheses are refined.
In the scientific literature it is possible to observe a wide range of ty -
pologies of discussion groups, each with its peculiarities and specific
characteristics:
Phillip 66. In this technique a group of individuals is divided into sub -
groups with a proportional character, in order to extract points of consensus
from amongst their opinions or general questions of common interest.
Delphi Group. Successive interviews are put to a group of experts
previously selected by the researchers. The prediction of the consequences of
a specific process or event is the underlying aim of the Delphi Group, which
is regularly employed in studies with a prospective character.
Brainstorming. A group of individuals – generally a small one – pool
their ideas and thoughts on an issue, process or event, in order to find a solu -
tion to the given problem.
Krueger (1991: 12) individualises the discussion group with respect to
other group techniques for obtaining information, since, in his opinion, dis -
cussion groups in a strict sense “[… ] are a technique for collecting data of a
qualitative nature that bring together a limited number of participants
(generally between seven and ten), who do not know each other and who
have homogeneous characteristics with regard to the subject researched, in
order to maintain a guided discussion in a permissive, non -directed climate”.
The role of the moderator in this research technique is an essential one,
especially in the so -called focus group. While in a discussion group – a form
productively established in European research – the moderator adopts a po-
sition of distance, restricting his role to that of introducing the subject under
discussion and avoiding intervention, in the Anglophone variant – the focus
group – the moderator also plays the role of interviewer, which forces him to
interact frequently.
With respect to obtaining and subsequently analysing data, Roberto de
Miguel clearly explains the substantial differences betw een the Anglophone
and European variants:
[… ] The Anglophone perspective more frequently has recourse to codifica -

tion and categorisation of the statements made during the session, which permits
a count to be made of subject concurrences (content analysis ) or other types of
qualitative and quantitative analytical procedure (discourse analysis, actor
analysis, causal analysis, etc.). In discussion groups, on the other hand, the
normal analytical recourse is of an inductive nature, since the principal task o f
the researcher is to confirm the validity of the general ecosystem that he has
tried to represent in the formation of each group (De Miguel, 2005: 273-274).
The final report of a discussion group is a written analysis, in a descrip -

tive-narrative style, which contains the main conclusions resulting from the
research. Krueger (1991) dedicates a whole chapter of his manual to an ex -
planation and a taxonomy of the different types of report obtained from the
application of a discussion group. Following Vallé s (1997: 328), we can see
that in his manual Krueger establishes three models of written report:
The “direct data” model. This consists of “introducing the subject or ba -
sic idea and then presenting all the commentaries of the participants” classi -
fied by themes or sub-themes. For Krueger, this type of report should only
be “a prelude to a descriptive or interpretative report” (Krueger, 1991: 132).
The descriptive model. This is a “summarised description followed by
illustrative quotations”. It is a more elaborate report than the previous one, as
it requires the selection of commentaries concerning the subject or subjects
dealt with.
The interpretative model. Here the researcher “offers illustrative quota-
tions followed by the corresponding interpretations”. Obviously, this model
requires a greater effort of analysing and interpreting the results.
3.4. In-depth Interview
Under the expression techniques of conversation, a great variety of

qualitative interview techniques are found: in-depth, biographical and group
techniques.
Patton (1990: 288) speaks of “variations in the qualitative interview” and
considers four principal forms:
The informal conversational interview, characterised by the questions
arising and being answered in the context and natural course of the interac-
tion.
The script based interview, defined by the preparation of a script of
subjects to be dealt with.
The standard open interview, characterised by the use of a list of ques -
tions, whose order and formulation is the same for all the interv iewees, but
with free or open answers.
The standard closed interview, distinguished by the use of a list of ques -
tions, whose order and formulation is the same for all the interviewees, but
with a closed answer.
Another classification is offered by Millar, Crute and Hargie (1992) in
their work Professional Interviewing, where they distinguish between five
types of professional interviews, of which we will mention the four that are
of greatest use for researchers in the social sciences:
The counselling interview, which can consist of juridical, financial, la -
bour, psychiatric or medical counselling, etc.
The selection interview, widely employed in evaluating candidates for a

job.
The research interview, understood as a technique for obtaining infor -
mation that is relevant to the object of study.
The appraisal interview. This form of interview is characterised by its
application in contexts of planning, training and managing human resources.
The expression in-depth interview (Gorden, 1956; Banaka, 1971) has
emerged victorious in the battle that has taken place between different terms
in the scientific literature.
Finally, we must mention the advantages and drawbacks involved in
applying this technique of research and data collection. With respect to the
pros, the most outstanding advantage is that in the initial phase of any study
it generates viewpoints, approaches, hypotheses and other useful orientations
for taking a project from paper to the real circumstances of the research, or
adapting this to the demands of the client. This technique serves especially
for the tasks of immersion or reconnaissance, from which the other qualita -
tive and quantitative techniques benefit. It performs a strategic role in
envisaging errors that might otherwise be costly: in terms of time, means and
the quality of the information obtained.
On the other side of the balance, there is the fact that, as with other tech-
niques based on communicative interaction, the potential problems of reac-
tivity (Webb et al 1966), reliability and validity (Denzin, 1970; Gorden,
1975; Millar et al, 1992) can arise in this type of encounter (Cf. Vallés,
1997: 177-232). That is, the information produced in the interviewer -inter-
viewee relationship depends both on the circumstances of the interview and
on the characteristics and actions of interviewer and interviewee. All of
which can consequently affect the real validity of the data of the interviewee.
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Author’s List
Adghirni, Zélia Leal ( University of Brasília, Brazil)

Alonso, Jaime (University of Murcia, Spain).
Barbosa, Jan Alyne (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Barbosa, Suzana (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Cabrera, María Ángeles ( University of Málaga, Spain)
Da Silva Junior, José Afonso (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Díaz Noci, Javier (University of the Basque Country , Spain)
Domingo, David (University of Iowa, EE.UU. / University Rovira i Virgili,
Tarragona, Spain)
Edo, Concepción (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Gago, Manuel (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
García Avilés, José Alberto (Universi ty Miguel Hernández of Elche, Spain)
Holanda, André (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Jorge, Thaïs de Mendonça (University of Brasilia, Brazil)
Kerber, Diego (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Larrañaga, José (University of the Basque C ountry, Spain)
Larrondo, Ainara (University of the Basque C ountry, Spain)
Lima, Moisés (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
López, Guillermo (University of Valencia, Spain)
López García, Xosé (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Machado, Elias (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Manini, Elaine ( Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Masip, Pere (Universit y Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain)
Meso, Koldobika (University of the Basque Country , Spain)
Mielniczuk, Luciana (Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil)
Natansohn, Graciela (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Otero, María Luisa (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Palacios, Marcos (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Palomo, Bella (University of Málaga, Spain)
Pereira, Fábio Henrique (University of Brasília, Brazil)
Pereira, Xosé (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Portilla, Idoia (University of Navarre, Spain)
Quadros, Cláudia (Universi ty Tuiuti of Paraná, Brazil)
Ribas, Beatriz (Federal University of Bahia)
Saad Corrêa, Elizabeth (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Sádaba, Charo (University of Navarre, Spain)
Salaverría, Ramón ( University of Navarre, Spain)
Schwingel, Carla (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Seixas, Lia (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Teixeira, Tattiana (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Toural, Carlos (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

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Online journalism:

Journalism on digital networks, and specifically on Internet 1, is a rela-

countries 2. This agreement includes a total of fifty researchers, coordinated

greater or lesser extent in the international scientific community. They are

Javier Díaz Noci

There is already consensus, both academic and professional, that Internet

As a referential parameter, the system of research employed the work

2. RELEVANCE OF THE TYPOLOGIES

of forms and levels of communication might pose a substantial problem

3. PROPOSALS FOR A CYBERMEDIA TYPOLOGY

As can easily be intuited, cybermedia typologies vary according to the

3.1. Typologies Centred on the Actions or Development of the Cyber-

By a typology that classifies the cybermedia according to the actions or

The concept of dynamism, inherent to the very definition of a cyberme-

Finally, the authors explain the relationship between the degree of

The expression “degree of adaptation” refers to the degree to which the

3.2. Typologies Centred on Communication Models

The proposals for classifying cybermedia situated in the study of the

Offering a clear and systematic compendium of the very diverse forms of

Starting from the hypotheses advanced several decades ago by Marshall

3.3. Typologies Centred on the Elements that Make Up the Cybermedia

A characteristic example of the typology centred on the elements that

3.4. Typologies Centred on the Aim of the Cybermedia

A typology centred on the aim, or finality, involves classifying cyber-

1. CRITERIA FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF JOURNALISTIC

Genres of online journalism(Díaz Noci and Salaverría, 2003)

2. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF

The need to rigorously consider methodologies and to propose new pro-

cern of the theories of genres, whether in linguistics, semiotics or discourse

Classification wa s replaced by interactive relations. The concept of genre

The pri ncipal research methods are the pragmatics of communication,

Memory, combined with instantaneity, hypertextuality and interactivity, are

3.1. Rhetorical Criteria

The rhetorical criteria take up proposals of journalism and editing in

Criteria of rhetorical classification

The criteria of predominance of certain topoi in each text (narrative, in -

The study of hypertextuality is one of the priorities of research in the

Both the researchers and the professionals of communication unani -

codes – text, image, sound – in one informative discourse, is indeed a key

The first contributions concentrated on theoretically defining the concept

Another methodological approach to the study of multimediality in the

3.4. Interactivity and Participation

Analysis of this variable is focused on the study of its different dimen -

Interactivity and participation

The characteristics of the new medium have brought a substantial

Temporality and tempestivity

A particular case requiring research is digital infographics. While au -

Graphics journalism combines words and images to present ideas and in -

Independent infographic journalism is more unusual. It appears as a to -

1. SEARCH METHODOLOGIES FOR INFORMATION

1.1. Theoretical Context and State of the Question

Systems of information management are the great technical advance that

Analysis of the work of the managers will enable researchers to recog -

formation is found in a “pure state”, obtained from the user’s demands on

1.2. Structure in the Cybermedia

In the organisation of the elements of an editorial system of an online

1.3. Analysis of the Hierarchy of Elements

Traditionally, decision -making concerning hierarchy has been in the

1.4. Applied Model for a Case Study