Digital Natives – redefining journalism

Internet is redefining the news media. In this article, Ronald A. Yaros, assistant professor of journalism at UMD and director of the Lab for Communicating Complexity with Multimedia, writes about the complexity facing the journalists in this digital world in Nieman Reports, published by Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. 

The evolution of internet has changed the way young people receive and process news. He writes that, ”The technologies (that deliver news) and the news audience of 2019, will be very different than what they are today”. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand “how digital natives now use media for entertainment, information, education and social networking.”

According to him, there are three phases of how technology is adopted:

1. Awareness and exploration of the new technological tools
2. Learning how to use the new tools
3. Applying these new tools to daily life.

Digital Natives (the young people) who blog and social network are in third phase of adoption, whereas the news organizations are in the second phase. This gap, presents a challenge to the traditional media journalists and the news organizations, about how to communicate with an audience, who is tech-savvy and ”values shorter, fact-driven multimedia.”

He proposes a PICK model for future journalism, which when combined with traditional journalistic values may be effective in engaging audience. 

PICK stands for:

1. Personalization

2. Involvement

3. Contiguity (or coherence)

4. Minimal distractions (cognitive kick-outs)

PICK defines multimedia as an environment (i.e. a full page or entire Web site) where multiple elements—hypertext, video, slideshows, blogs, forums, graphics and animation—are presented with text and personalized to the user.

1. Personalizing the News:

Personalization in news means, “the extent to which a user can choose content congruent with his or her interests.” “NewsSEEN” is a prototype in research phase, which not only provides news, but also priortizes news by level of interest. The basic purpose of NewsSEEN is to see ”how professionally produced, personalized content (or PPP) can be combined with, yet differentiated from, citizen-produced content.” Although interactivity is very important in digital news, too much of it can kill the reader’s interest, therefore, it is important to have right amount of interactivity.

2. Involvement:

It is “the degree to which users input choices and/or content.” The level of involvement may vary, “for example, Clicking a “play” button for a one-minute video represents much less involvement than reading a few sentences, choosing steps in a related animation, selecting a 10-second video, and then posting comments about the story. “

3. Contiguity:

“Contiguity in multimedia is how the elements of hypertext, photos, animation, slides, links, blogs, video and audio, all combine to communicate one coherent message.” It only takes 50 milliseconds for a reader to form an opinion, and if there is no coherency in the content, the readers terminate their engagement which he calls “kick - outs.”

4.  Kick – outs: It is basically the termination of engagement with the content. There are many reasons why an audience may lose interest in the content, and some of these can be controllable. For example,

“The most obvious kick-out is a broken link, but others include too much text, lengthy video, pop-up windows, unfamiliar terms, confusing graphics, or interactive animation that’s too complex.”

So the challenge is to enhance how news is presented and recogninze how to prevent kick-outs.

Adopting the PICK news model, does not mean abandoning traditional journalism values, but the challenge he says, is to combine effectively

“techniques of personalization, involvement, contiguity and minimal kick-outs with clear, accurate, ethical journalism.”

PICK model in my opinion, outlines some of the key points to consider when delivering news via digital media. For some time now, since I started this blog, I have been using twitter, both for social networking and to receive news and the concepts of PICK model apply to the form in which news is delivered on Twitter. However, I also think that it would be important to understand the “expectations” with which digital audience come to the digital platform to receive news.