Does News Platform Matter? Comparing Online Journalistic Role Performance to Newspaper, Radio, and Television

Mellado, Claudia and Blanchett, Nicole and Stepinska, Agnieszka and Mothes, Cornelia and Lecheler, Sophie and Blanco-Herrero, David and Chen, Yi-Ning Katherine and Cohen, Akiba A. and Davydov, Sergey and De Maio, Mariana and Dingerkus, Filip and Elhamy, Hassam and Garcés-Prettel, Miguel and Gousset, Cyriac and Hallin, Daniel C. and Humanes, María Luisa and Himma-Kadakas, Marju and Kozman, Claudia and Lee, Misook and I-Hsuan Lin, Christi and Márquez-Ramírez, Mireya and Maza-Córdova, Jorge and McGuinness, Kieran and McIntyre, Karen and Mick, Jacques Mick and Milojevic, Ana and Navarro, Cristina and Olivera, Dasniel and Pizarro, Macerla and Sarasqueta, Gonzalo and Silke, Henry and Skjerdal, Terje and Stanziano, Anna and Szabó, Gabriella and VanLeuven, Sarah and Zhao, Xin (2023) Does News Platform Matter? Comparing Online Journalistic Role Performance to Newspaper, Radio, and Television. Digital Journalism. pp. 1-24. ISSN 2167-0811 (print), 2167-082X (online) (In Press)

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Abstract

The shifting role of journalism in a digital age has affected long-standing journalistic norms across media platforms. This has reinvigorated discussion on how work in online newsrooms com-pares to other platforms that differ in media affordances and forms. Still, more studies are needed on whether those differences trans-late into distinct practices, especially when examining cross-national studies. Based on a content analysis of 148,474 stories produced by 365 media organizations from 37 countries, this article compares the performance of journalistic roles in online newsrooms to three other types of media—TV, radio, and print. The paper analyzes if journalistic roles present themselves differently across platforms, and if these differences are constant or they vary across countries. Results show that there are measurable differences in role perfor-mance in online journalism compared to other platforms. Platform had a significant impact, particularly in terms of service and info-tainment orientation, while the implementation of roles oriented toward public service was more similar. Additionally, country dif-ferences in the relationship between role performance and plat-forms mainly emerged for roles that enable political influence on news coverage, with differences in the relationship between online vs. traditional platforms appearing to be distinct features of the specific political system.

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