Journalism Between Serving the Public and the Acclamation of Audience Taste

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Journalism Between Serving the Public and the Acclamation of Audience Taste

Journal Title: In Medias Res - Year 2014, Vol 3, Issue 5

Abstract

Rapid and comprehensive development of the internet, the number, quality and diversity of information available and the rate at which messages are distributed, provoking dramatic and conflicting changes in society: sprouting of new forms of technology and communication, on one hand, and the evident crisis in traditional media especially printed, on the other side. Political / social / cultural relevance as a criterion for selection information until recently, has been replaced by a new criterion, which role is to increase sales and profits, entertainment, sensation, and often banal. Such complex changes have been two important, even revolutionary consequences for journalism: first, collapsed business model in which there is a media industry as we know it and in which is funded by the advertising industry the media and journalism. Second, the media content is more often a result of the impact of commercial pressures and technological capabilities favored. Third, the profession of journalism is no longer the only, nor the privileged producer of public information. Related professions PR (public relations) and citizen journalism important to determine contemporary journalism. PR industry is gradually taking a critical and controversial role in the collection and distribution of news, with the task to cover events, processes and initiatives of public interest. The rise of the PR industry, raises serious questions about the future of accurate, independent and fact-based journalism. Information age, the speed of change in the relations between the media and the public raises a number of questions: who in such circumstances raises issues for debate in the interest of the public, whether professional journalism survive, what is the effect and influence of media on segmented audiences, especially in the sensitive her part, children and young people? Answers to these questions were easier to get in during the „rule“ of traditional media, especially newspapers and television. Application of new technologies central values of traditional journalism: originality, responsibility and autonomy pushed to the margins medijasphere, emphasizing the importance of the economics of media-productivity, efficiency and profits as a priority in journalistic production. The authors of this paper argues that, despite the change in the fundamental role of journalism influenced by the rapid changes brought by the information age, citizen journalism can not replace professional journalists in multimedia newsrooms. Their social function in the public sphere has been changed but not erased by new information - communication technologies. Dispersion and heterogeneity of new media and new audiences require careful and meaningful building communications infrastructure and culture of the new practice, because it is not just a new lifestyle, based on digital devices, but primarily on a transformed form of journalism that presents a challenge until recently, the prevailing monopoly of the media, the one, and open space for different types of manipulation, partiality and incompleteness directed new media, on the other hand.

Authors and Affiliations

Slađana Stamenković, Vesna Milenković

Keywords

EP ID EP465726
DOI -
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