Technical frames, flexibility, and online pressures in TV newsrooms

ABSTRACT

Teams of online professionals working for TV news organizations are reacting to a new, powerful wave of technological innovations brought by online video platform and live streaming features. This research uses social construction of technology as a theoretical framework to understand these changes and explain how online professionals working for Colombian TV stations are implementing digital technologies into their newsrooms to reinforce their online presence. This analysis aims to unpack practices and logics behind the implementation of digital technology in TV newsrooms. The study employs participant observation over the course of two months at two TV news organizations – Caracol TV and Citytv – and in-depth interviews with 45 online professionals to understand their practices and organizational arrangements when implementing digital technologies in an effort to adapt the traditional medium to the digital media ecosystem. Results show how socio-economic forces and journalistic practices shape technology but, at the same time, reveal how certain platforms impose their logic on news production and make producers partially lose control over technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• online news
• social media
• social construction of technology

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank advisor Dr. Stephen Reese, and committee members Iris Chyi, Sharon Strover, Rosental Alves and Gina Chen, professors of the Journalism School and the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, for their advice and guidance through the process of refining this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Jesse H. Jones Fellowship 2016–2017 from the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.

Notes on contributors

Víctor García-Perdomo

Víctor García-Perdomo, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Universidad de La Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia, where he works as the director of the Master Program in Digital Communication and Journalism. He received his Ph.D. in Journalism and his M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, in the USA. A Fulbright Fellow, García-Perdomo’s research addresses the impact of digital technology on media. His work has been published in the Journal of Communication, Journalism, Journalism Studies and the International Journal of Communication, and Mass Communication & Society. He is part of the Digital Media Research Program (DMRP) at UT, and the Colombian Research Group in Journalism (GIP). Until 2013, he was the director of the Journalism Department. He worked for 14 years as a professional journalist for different media: El Espectador newspaper, Univision Online, Univision Radio, and Terra TV. You can find him on Twitter via @victorgap.