Self-organising digital news

This chapter examines the business challenges faced by journalists and traditional news reporting organisations in light of the increasing presence and rising popularity of multiple, personal and ‘amateur’ digital news channels. Our discussion focuses on the differences in value creation that are found in the contrasting ‘traditional’, ‘digital’ and self-organising models of news reporting. The aim of this discussion is to identify the ways in which news reporting organisations have previously and can continue to create value in light of the challenges brought by social media technologies. We argue that it is the popularising of digital channels including the increasing realisation and legitimation of crowdsourcing, co-creation and user generated content that directly threatens the traditional practices of news reporting organisations, and therefore the business models of these organisations. The threats posed by digital media technologies to traditional news reporting is further reinforced by popular acceptance of specific social media actions including ‘tagging’, ‘re-posting’ and ‘liking’. In light of these activities we consider the shifting role that audience-contributed and non-traditional content - what we describe as ‘non-news’ and ‘anti-news’ - plays in relation to news reporting. We argue that two pivotal aspects of value creation for news reporting organisations has been, and continues to be, their ability to efficiently synthesise diverse sources of complex information and their ability to construct legitimacy and authority around the brand of the news reporting organisation itself