‘Speaking of meta' Questioning the internet as homogeneous and global news medium M. Opgenhaffen Lessius University College Symposium Myth of Global Internet - Free University of Brussels, 2007

Convergence Convergence in modern journalism:  "has erased the boundaries between print, television, radio and online technologies“ (Boczkowski & Ferris, 2005)  "Unification of functions" (Yoffie, 1999)  "a growing similarity in news presentation through various media" (Seib, 2001)  "the internet will be all“ (Owen, 1999)

General belief On the internet –Everything is ‘the internet’ –Everything is accessible The internet is considered and studied as one, big, homogeneous and global news medium ? ? ? Myth or reality ? ? ?

1. Everything is the internet? No distinct media online? –Digital news papers, blogs, , discussion fora, web tv, web radio, podcasts, rss-feeds, … –Each medium has its own ‘media logic’, own ‘medium specificity’ Better: –‘medium of media’ (Levinson, 1999) –‘Multimedium’ (Jankowski & Hanssen, 1996) –‘metamedium’ (Adams & Clarck, 2001)

Content analysis Online coverage of elections in (Belgium) measuring distinct sub-media and characteristics Internet as meta-medium Convergent medium Convergent medium Convergent medium (e.g. digital news paper) (e.g. portal site) (e.g. news site) Sub-medium Sub-medium Sub-medium (e.g. news blog, paper in pdf, discussion forum, web tv, web radio, rss-feed, mail-alert)

2. Everything is accessible? Global infrastructure Everybody is a journalist (cfr. citizen journalism)  (Non-)official news from all around the world is accessible through the internet -Do news consumers access this information? -Do they know how to access and process?

Access or use? 4 types of access (Van Dijk, 1999; 2003) Mental access (e.g. lack of motivation) Material access (e.g. lack of internet) Skills access (e.g. lack of information retrieval skills) Usage access (e.g. news vs. entertainment)

Digital divide in use Shift from –digital divide in access –digital divide in use of online (news) media Access to global news ≠ use of global news

Online survey 789 college students (18-24) (64% response rate) June – September % access to internet 0% never / 0.3% 5 jaar Based on content analysis: use of online news media (+ online applications)

Use of (foreign) news media ≥ 1 time/day Never / unknown Mean (0-5) Std.dev. Digital newspaper [foreign newspaper] TV/Radio-site [foreign tv/radio-site] News blog [foreign news blog] Rss-feeds [foreign rss-feeds] News forum [foreign fora] Usenet [foreign usenet] News mail [foreign news mails] 18% 11.5% 1.3% 3.7% 0.9% 0.3% 3.6% 22.5% 21.6% 84.6% 96% 87.6% 95,3% 54,3% [12,93%] 1.37 [2.91%] 0.86 [2.53%] 0.93 [2.28%] 0.71 [1.14%] 0.41 [0.25%] 1.26 [5.44%]

Conclusions Internet ≠ homogeneous medium  meta-medium with (convergent and distinct) sub-media Access to global news ≠ use of global news  Variance in online media use  Very low usage of foreign news media