Conceptualizing digital journalism (Book review of What is digital journalism studies? by O. Westlund and S. Steensen)

© Diana Yu. Kulchitskaya

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor at the Chair of New Media and Theory of Communication, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia), diana.kulchitskaya@gmail.com  

Abstract

Digital technologies have transformed journalism in a very dramatic manner. The sphere of new media has changed tremendously not only the journalistic working processes but the news products as well.  How digital journalism studies are different from traditional journalism scholarly research? What can be considered news today? What kind of new methods we may use when studying digital journalism? Oscar Westlund and Steen Steensen tried to answer these questions in their new book called What is digital journalism studies? The publication is based on a meta-analysis of articles published between 2013 and 2019 in the Digital Journalism academic journal. The authors conclude that digital journalism is an emerging field, which lies at the intersection of many scholarly branches and should be studied applying both traditional media studies approaches and some new research tools as well. The authors give a comprehensive overview of the research area and provide some forecasts about its future development.

Key words: digital journalism, media studies, automated journalism, new methodological approaches in journalism studies, new media.