The focus of this chapter is to propose a reflection on the strategic potential of corporate digital newsrooms, usually a section incorporated into corporate websites with content having in mind the journalist's interest. The central question lies in knowing whether it will be possible to identify an evolution in corporate digital newsrooms, with companies redefining their media relations strategies beyond a 2.0 model, to meet the so-called 3.0 newsrooms, typical of a cyber journalism scenario, which operates in the virtual environment. This idea was taken from an article by Neto et al. that explored newsrooms at 'O Globo' in Brazil, 'La Nación' in Costa Rica, and 'BBC' in the UK, searching for differences between newsroom models 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Thus, two areas in the field of communication (journalism and corporate communication) come together to assess the role that corporate digital newsrooms play in the interactions between both sides.
TopIntroduction
It is already a widely accepted idea that we live in a very digital and dynamic world, based on network and mobile technologies, which provide us with information and knowledge 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but also connect us to others in a way we have never experienced before. We are fascinated by interconnectivity, mobility, globalization, virtual sociability, all resulting from the unprecedented development of the World Wide Web, and powered by optical fiber, satellite communications, telecommunications and geolocation systems, which leads Wilson Dizard (2000) to say we are experiencing a third great transformation in the communicative sphere, that goes beyond the production, storage and distribution of information.
Technologies are so impactful in such a way that there are those who point to «the emergence of a new civility» where information and knowledge processing and storage techniques make cultural evolutions possible (Levy, 1990). Castells (1998) speaks of a rupture caused by communication and information technologies, rooted in transformation of the social forms of time and space which give rise to a new culture. Our interface with machines and technologies goes beyond a simple technical complementarity in our daily lives, being rooted in habits and routines that according to David Holmes (2005, p.2) not only help us but also imprison us, configuring a new market (technological, digital, electronic), new policies (sharing, generalized and facilitated access to all, but also control) and new behaviours (of interactivity, of integration, but also of segregation and alienation). With an interdisciplinary view that looks at contemporary communications and media through a lens that brings together sociology of communication with media studies and the perspective of cultural studies, Holmes (2005) identifies the need for a new framing to analyse the actual media architecture in a post-broadcast and interactive society, where the ‘first media age’ of broadcast and the ‘second media age’ of interactivity are no longer useful to explore the relationship between media, technology and society.
The same need to study the impact of cyberculture on the media and society is considered in the book 'Journalism, Representation and Public Sphere' by Kramp et al. (2015), that reports on how journalism is going through “tectonic shifts, turbulences and reinventions” (p. 24), in a deeply mediated world in which people have access to various forms of information without being exclusively through traditional journalistic dissemination. All this naturally changed the status of news service, the profession, the mechanisms and dynamics of research, collection and construction of news content. Adopting the concept of mediatization proposed by Friedrich Krotz (2007) and by Sonia Livingstone & Peter Lunt (2014), Kramp et al. refers to ‘mediatization of everything’ (2015, p. 25) as it characterizes changes in cultures and institutions in media-saturated societies, spreading across all areas of our lives. Andreas Hepp (2013) also works with this concept of media coverage to capture the interrelationship between the changes that have taken place in the media and communication ecosystem, in articulation with cultural and social transformations. “Mediatization refers to the increasing temporal, spatial and social spread of media communication. That means that over time we have become more and more used to communicating via media in various contexts. With regard to qualitative aspects, mediatization refers to the role of the specificity of certain media in the process of sociocultural change” (Hepp & Hasebrink, 2013, p.4).