COM308e - Analysis of Issues and Trends in Communication Industry

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COM308e - Analysis of Issues and
Trends in the Communication Industry

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Question 1
The advent of the Internet has disrupted the old business model for newspapers.
Digitalisation, convergence and audience fragmentation, fuelled by the World Wide Web,
have changed the media ecosystem and challenged established journalistic practices. As a
result, traditional newspapers are experimenting with ways to keep journalism alive despite
the digital evolution.
Conduct research* on ONE (1) English-language online newspaper from Singapore or
overseas to determine how successfully it has reinvented itself to meet the challenge posed by
the digital revolution. In your research project, you must:
a) Analyse the changing trends in the news industry, and evaluate the opportunities for and
challenges faced by the news industry. (20 marks)
b) Propose a research question and select an appropriate research method to determine how
successfully the online newspaper had reinvented itself to meet the challenge posed by the
digital evolution. Appraise the suitability of the research method used and examine the
research findings. (40 marks)
c) Use the market model or the public sphere model, or both, to evaluate the way the online
newspaper in (b) serves its audience. Prepare an action plan to recommend changes the online
newspaper should make in order to reach its audience more effectively in the digital age. (40
marks)

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a) Communication Industry is a booming industry. People these days, with the advent of
internet and smartphones, mostly go through online news reporting. Journalism has evolved
and printing machines have become better and bigger. With the evolving technology, digital
news also continues to evolve. Some of the technologies being virtual reality, automated
reporting to social media experiments etc. which have only helped widen the coverage of
news. About 4/10 US citizens refer to online news only (Cho, Keum & Shah, 2015). An
interesting and important trend in the world of online newspapers.
Smart phones are becoming the preferred device instead of television sets. From 54% in 2013
the mobile news readers’ base had gone up to 72% in 2017. When talking about content, long
form contents which are 1000 words or more attract more engaged time than short form news
items. The number of readers is about the same though. Social media platforms with their
uniqueness have also become a channel to read news about happenings around the globe.
Pews Research has shown that that about 2/3rds of Facebook users read their news on
Facebook which is about 44% in the US alone (Anderson, 2013). Online journalism has also
evolved in the sense that people read their news while doing other activities online but do not
leave the chance to dig deep and seek the news out. While some users may be divided on
accepting the news on social media as genuine, it still is accountable for 4% of web users
who trust the news a lot and about 34% say they trust it to some extent (Paulussen & Harder,
2014).
Earlier on, media houses ‘produced’ the news and controlled its distribution channels.
Nowadays platform organizations, Governments are exactly in between the readers and the
reporters (Fico et al., 2013). Editors can’t control their own work which circulates on various
platforms. Journalists have pressure to be at the right spot at right time-be where the people
are and yet what is happening to their readers is unknown to them.

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News reporting has evolved a lot over years. In the beginning, when people felt the need to
share relevant information, they used to rely on pigeons, owls, messengers, royal drum
beaters etc. With the inception of newspapers, news reporting took the form of story telling
combined with critical views and inputs substantiated with proof of data. The tabloid form of
news reporting followed the inverted pyramid style with priority top position provided to
important news and not so important ones towards the bottom. This usually got chopped off
in editing stage on basis of availability of space. Then, there is hourglass style. It enjoys the
benefits of both narrative and inverted pyramid style of reporting (Craig, 2013). There is
intense competition among different media conglomerates these days, the race to present the
news first to an audience often even compels them to present news in a lucid manner but
without manufactured views. Another reporting style – David Murphy's Level-1, Level-2,
and Level-3 is well practiced these days.
The research shall analyze content from 2 well-known media houses—CNN International and
Al-Jazeera website. The content considered for analysis is from both the websites covering
Middle-East conflicts. The news article covered was recapturing Raqqa from ISIS. Below is
the analysis:
Al-Jazeera CNN
Linguistic aspect:
Headline
Lead
Body
Words accompanying visuals (if
any)
Headline looked to the point and
was self-explanatory. The
headline gave an impression that
Al Jazeera was concentrating on
current turmoil.
The news articles were as per
quote by a rights group –
Amnesty International. There was
no mention of leads for the story
The Headline was easy to
understand. It gave out a feeling
that CNN was focusing on
ordeals of survivors in Raqqa
since the time offensive had
begun.
The news article was as per quote
by Amnesty International. There
was mention of their two