Is Digital News Really that Digital? An Analysis of How Online News Sites in the UK use Digital Affordances to Enhance Their Reporting

ABSTRACT

Legacy media have responded to the introduction of digital-born news sites by instigating their own online platforms, reflecting the extent to which journalism operates within a hybrid media environment. This article aims to test if and how digital journalism makes its hybridity manifest by using various online affordances. We used content analysis to compare the extent to which BBC News, Mail Online, The Guardian, Buzzfeed and Huffington Post exploit video, hyperlinks, and Twitter posts to better inform citizens about politics during the 2017 UK election. We found that online news sites did not use video extensively. Hyperlinks were frequently used. Digital-born news sites linked more widely than their public service and commercial legacy counterparts who, in contrast, used more internal links. Digital-born sites used more embedded tweets than legacy sites. We also found that online news preferred to link to journalistic content and tweets than, say, official government or other expert sources. These findings show the hybridity of online news in the UK because both public service and commercial legacy media adopt some online practices but reject others, just as digital-born sites blend traditional journalism with digital tools to produce new ways of supporting their journalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid media
• journalism
• digital affordances
• video
• hyperlinks
• Twitter

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.