Newsroom dissonance: how new digital technologies are changing professional roles in contemporary newsrooms

Dodds Rojas, T. (2022)

Doctoral Thesis

Journalism, both as a profession and as a practice, is changing rapidly. Technologies inside the newsroom are mutating, and journalistic practices, norms, and values are being reshaped with them. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Chile, including participant observation, I argue that the introduction of certain digital technologies has transformed journalists’ ability to negotiate editorial values. Media professionals are increasingly feeling trapped into routines established by third-party platforms. The conclusions suggest that the way newsrooms approach new digital technologies have created a lack of harmony in the way journalists are expected to work, the topics they are expected to cover, and the journalistic values they hold true.

• Journalism
• Professional dissonance
• New media
• Digital media
• Digital technologies
• Newsroom ethnography
• Media practices
• Media Anthropology

• All authors: Dodds Rojas, T.
• Supervisor: Maeckelbergh, M.; Westmoreland, M.
• Committee: Wouters, P.; Barendregt, B.; Jong, J. de; Grasseni, C.; Awad, I.; Peirano, M.P.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University
• Date: 2022-02-09
• Sponsorship: This thesis was supported by Becas Chile (72170033/2016). National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) of Chile