Journalism in the Internet: Intermediation Actors, Structures and Services in the Contemporary Internet Public

Basic data for this project

Description

The project investigated how journalistic services are generated for the contemporary internet public and which structures are hereby emerging. The term "intermediation service" denotes in this context specific services that are, in the traditional mass media, produced by professional editors in editorial offices and that are directed towards a dispersed mass audience. Irrespective of the potentially simplified access to the public, the intermediating instances between communicator and recipient remain necessary also in the internet to conduct tasks of selection and inspection. Besides professional journalistic offerings functional equivalents, namely participative and technical offerings, are present in the network public. However, the findings show that the new types of offerings are more of a complementary nature and therefore pose no real challenge on the traditional journalism in the internet. These offerings were examined regarding their contribution to the creation of contemporary publicity. Another focal point was the question how traditional mass media expand their activities in the internet and which cross-media strategies were pursued.