Characteristics of online journalism

The four identities types of online journalism to some extent utilize the key characteristics which include hypertextualiy, multimediality, interactivity, and immediacy. Each of these four characteristics make-up online journalism in their own way, I will try to exemplify by looking at the online news situation.

Hypertextuality

The problem with hypertext is as one of the founding fathers of hypertext Ted Nelson writes, that it creates “a delivery system for separate closed units – a system which allows only embedded links pointing outwards”. What one has to realize is that texts, interconnected through links - hyperlinks – can refer internally to the other texts within text’s domain or externally to texts located elsewhere on the internet. Effective use of internal and external hyperlinks is a basic element of a good online media production. It enables journalists to refer their readers to all kinds of background or related information, ranging over documents, illustrations, sources, multiple perspectives on a particular topic and so on. If we examine how today’s news sites apply these concepts the conclusion we will come up with is pessimistic. Only a few sites actually embed hyperlinks and if they do it does not integrate their information with the web.

Multimediality

Multimediality means the extent to which text, graphics, sound, voice and images (still and moving) are translated and integrated into a common digital form. The internet provides opportunity to journalists to present non-linear types of storytelling by using hypertextuality and multimediality in an innovative way.

One of the important implications of multimedia is that the online journalist will learn how to work with these different formats. For this writing, the journalist will also need the skills to decide for each story that which part of parts of the story will consist of text and which one will carry audio and visual elements.

Web designer Tim Guay has written as early as 1995 about the inherent pitfalls of applying multimedia content to web sites: “if multimedia is used with no thought to the reasons why it is being used, or it had poor lay-out or content it can result in a pointless aesthetic fiasco that needlessly hogs bandwidth”.

Interactivity

Interactivity is the process of two people or things working together and influencing each other that is the ability of a computer to respond to a user’s input. In online journalism interactivity is subdivided into three types: navigational interactivity, functional interactivity, and adaptive interactivity.

Observing interactive options in news sites it is noted that there is a sheer absence or rather the fact that most sites do not develop interactivity beyond functional and navigational levels. The most sophisticated level of interactivity is adaptive meaning that it allows the web site to adapt to itself, and the behaviour of the visiting surfer. Its revealed that the more interactive opportunities websites give to users, the more involved the users will feel about the website.

Mainstream news sites usually operate on internal hypertextuality with mainly navigate interactivity.

These sites don’t usually apply multimedia, unless they specifically intend to index images. This could be seen as serving as some kind of accountability one could argue: allowing the surfer to submit a feedback or comment to the people responsible for the metasite.

Immediacy

Immediacy is the quality of bringing into direct and instant involvement with something, giving rise to a sense of urgency or excitement.

The basic concept of immediacy is that it means there is theory, virtually no lag between when information is received or created at a news producer and when the information is passed on to the news consumers. This is possible because of two related features.

First, the information is digital and can be easily moulded continuously and secondly that the information is not distributed as far as web is concerned.

Rather than being pushed out to the audience all the time, the audience should seek up a database that presents the information to the audience. That means the information will not leave the producer entirely unless someone downloads the website and the information can therefore be worked on continuously.