Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Since digitalization became a world tendency, all countries introduced digital technologies in their economic, social, and cultural organizations. The use of internet has an impact on the way cultural practices exist in terms of producing, distributing, and consuming cultural goods and experiences, and in the manner institutions systematized their work. In this paper we discuss the impact that digital techniques are having in journalism. How, since 1995, the process of translation to the cyberspace began to take place in most of the national newspapers, those with a larger number of readers, followed by those small ones. Afterwards, as the process deepened, we saw emerging digital native diaries. Employing qualitative techniques and Political Economy approaches, we analyze the transition process from paper to digital journalism, and some cases of Mexican newspaper industry to point out the main tendencies. Driven not only by economic urgencies, but also because of the crisis of readers, traditional newspapers began to suffer, as journalism took a turn to digital. From the first digital papers to the actual ones, there is a large scale of differences: in design, social media applications, multimedia, and interactive devices. Also the search for a new financial model and profit making schema had been developed. The subject presents different issues: how to work journalistic genres thinking in new digital formats; how to implement traditional research techniques in the present context; the uses of bigger information resources; and how to involve the new audiences who might be more technical and less human.