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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
The Growing Impact of Video in Online News Genres
Samuel Negredo
University of Navarra, Spain
Abstract
The late development of video in the context of online news operations adds to existing
typologies of online news genres, mainly derived from the study of print journalism. The
very existence of video sections in news websites, and the diversity in their architecture
and in the volume of content, determine the procedures to establish a census of
published items, as well as other methods of analysis. Video expands the multimedia
aspects of online news, developing the codes of many established genres and being a
driving force for heterogeneity among them.
Keywords: online journalism, online video, news genres, multimedia, research methods
Introduction
The development of multimedia features in online journalism is better understood in a
context of evolution. Video fits in established typologies of online news genres; the
question is how to combine already existing methods to systematize the mix of written
and audiovisual forms of journalistic expression. This paper addresses specifically the
processes of building a census by retrieving all videos within a given timeframe, and
deciding on what categories to use for further analysis of the presence of diverse news
genres in online video. It is part of an ongoing PhD thesis project that explores the
editorial impact of the development and growth of video production in online news
operations in Spain.
Such effort is relevant both to updating the news genres framework for online
journalists, and to reinforcing the audiovisual mindset in online journalism training, fitted
to the technical possibilities and expressive features enabled by digital production and
current presentation technologies on the internet.
The addition of video unleashes several simultaneous movements in the system of
online news genres: it stimulates diversity, enabling the generation of new branches,
and it brings some aspects closer to broadcast journalism, while making them diverge
further from their counterparts in print. This ongoing transformation is both part of and
shaped by media convergence, and must be taken into account so that the
classification used for any analysis will be suited to the current reality of the offer in
online news video, a media form which was scarce in Spanish online newspapers as
late as in the mid 2000s, because of the cost and constraints associated with
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