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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Narratology of (online) news
Javier Díaz Noci
Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Abstract
We aim to explain how news in the digital environment are constructed and presented,
applying some related methods to the study of discourse and the message. We will
take into account the different trends of narratology. The methodology consists on
analyzing online newspapers trying to determine which kind of narratology and
thematic recurrence strategies are being used in nowadays news.
If news are nothing but a narration, then items such as voice, narration situation, mood,
time and characters can be analyzed just as it would be done in any other narrative
text. Following Jahn, Bal and other scholars, we will underline the use of descriptive
and narrative forms, levels of narrations and enbedded narrative texts (especially, the
way hypertext extend this capacity), sequence, rhythm (a couple of aspects
hypertextual narrations can modify as well) and frequency. Events, actors, time
(duration, chronology, etc.) and location will be also studied. Most especially, we will try
to deeply distinguish features inherent to online journalism as a media, apart from
these other traditional invariants and features.
We also try to explain which are the structures of the hypertextual news. As professor
Teun van Dijk did in his book News as discourse, we will try to explain if the structures
(macro and microstructures) of news remain the same after all these years and if
hypertextual construction has introduced some kind of changes in this structures. And,
after all, whether all these changes are creating a particular rhetoric of online news.
Finally, we will try to find out whether we can propose a typology of online news (online
cybertexts, using Espen Aarseth’s words) and whether a catalogue of criteria to define
online information genres can be offered as well. International online media are
analyzed: Nytimes.com, Lemonde.fr, Larepubblica.it, Guardian Unlimited Clarín.com
and Asahi Shimbun.jp (English version).
Introduction
The research whose method we are now presenting forms part of a wider project 19 that,
in a coordinated way, enquires into how news on Internet (breaking news, at least) is
19 This communication is part of the work carried out in the R+D+I group, Evolución de los cibermedios españoles en
el marco de la convergencia. Análisis del mensaje, CSO2009-13713-C05-04, funded by the Ministry of Science and
Innovation(MICINN).
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