Engineering Technologies for Journalism in the Digital Age

What is it about?

The study focuses on the process of designing new digital technologies for use in journalism by conducting a case study of the collaboration of the Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenian Press Agency, New York Times, and Bloomberg Media on the publicly funded XLike project (Seventh framework programme). We find that journalists and editors did not play an important part in defining the project goals and developing the technology. Rather, the project focused on journalism as business by pursuing a better understanding of audience behaviour, tracking online traffic and customised advertising.

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Why is it important?

The study is important because it focuses on three areas of research into new technology and journalism that are currently under-researched: - it illuminates the process of designing technologies, as opposed to the dominant tendency to focus on the implementation of new technology; - it expands the focus beyond the newsroom to focus on other important actors in designing and implementing new technology; - it adopts a broader sociological perspective to move beyond the narrow focus of scholarship on technological innovation in journalism, which overwhelmingly tends “to consider the problems of journalism scholarship from the point of view of the journalism profession” (Anderson 2012, 1007).