Abstract. In this paper I describe a genre analysis for on-line newspapers, revealing
how their mediating form affect news related activities. A repertoire of elements was
developed during the analysis of three on-line newspapers, to describe them. It is a
repertoire of content, information structure and interaction elements together with with
a repertoire of mediationg roles. The analysis in terms of the repertoire of elements
revealed that the papers support activities unsupported by the printed papers,
constituting a genre development. The analysis suggest that the genre is still a variant
of the newspaper. It revealed a cosiderable space for development of the genre,
supporting novel news related activities. However, it also revealed some problems
which must be overcome by the mediators, if the papers are developed along the
suggested lines. Furthermore it revealed some problems when using these popular
formats for other purposes at other sites, and some problems with their current
treatment of the digital material.
1 Introduction
In this paper I describe a genre analysis revealing how the mediating form affects
activities involving on-line newspapers. The form of an on-line newspaper is by
necessity different from the printed edition since the medium is different. However, the
content may still be the same, as printed text and images can be displayed on most
media terminals. During the birth of the on-line newspapers, around 1994, newspaper
content was indeed a selection of news from the printed editions. In 1999, the on-line
edition was going towards a "live" scheme of publishing, presenting news continually
(Eriksen & Ihlstrm, 2000). Some on-line newspapers now have huge audiences. This
means that their combination of content and structure is good, in some sense. I describe
the combination of structure and content of three on-line newspapers, thereby revealing
the consequences of altering the combination, or of using it for other purposes at other
sites.
2 Genre
Genre can refer to at least two things. First, it can refer to the common sense notion,
shared by producer and audience, used to find or produce more generic products. This
common sense notion of generic products is thus " . . . the meeting point between the
process of producing media materials and the process of using them" (Agre, 1998, p
81). Second, genre can refer to the more elaborate genre descriptions used, historically,
to a great extent in media studies. Lacey (2000) describes genre products as having a
common repertoire of elements. In movies, the elements are setting, characters,
iconography and style. Eriksen and Ihlstrm (2000) presents conceptual and
presentation elements for web newspapers. Using the repertoire of elements of a genre
will guarantee that the experienced audience gets what they expect. This causes
predictability, which helps understanding the media product, because in a sense, the
audience has already seen the movie, read the book, heard the song, etc. As this
understanding is based on experience, some product must come first and in some sense
be a non-genre product. However, generic products can be designed by combining the
elements of different genres, preserving some of the advantages of generic media
products, while creating something new.
Sometimes, copying an element from another genre is not a good idea. Manning
(1998) describes a case where the lead paragraph of technical information is presented
using the journalistic narrative style, answering questions about who does what, when,
where and how, rather than the technical style questions of how a product works or
how it is put together and why. Manning argues that this happened because of the
popularity of news sites, and the tendency of authors to copy sucessful formats
Altering the information structure of a media product might change its genre. As an
example, Crowston and Williams (1999) argues that taking the content from a
reference manual and imposing a strictly sequential structure of chapters would change
its genre, since it would not support the activity of looking up random pieces of
information. As a less drastic example, they argue that the freqently-asked-questions
genre is reproduced when linking is restricted to tie the document together. The genre
is altered when links supports activities such as navigating the document or reaching
other information sources.
These two examples emphasise two important defining elements of genres, while at
the same time illustrate that a genre analysis may focus on different things. First, he
same content can be placed in different information structures, sometimes resulting in
different genres. Second, to change the content structure, the content must be
reformulated. In both examples the question is wheter the structure supports the
purpose of the product. Using purpose and structure to define genres is common (i.e.
Lacey, 2000; Yates, Orlikowski & Rennecker, 1997; Bergquist & Ljugberg, 1999).
1 For a discussion of on-line advertisment genres, see for example Fortanet, Palmer & Posteguillo (1998).
space. For news, more important informaiton will be given more space, and be more
visible to the reader. Sometimes, the most recent information will be given more space.
The validator, finally, checks the information to see that it is correct, something which
is very important for newspapers, to maintain their credibility.
Social roles can be that of an interest group, where the individual speaks not as a
citizen, but as a member of a particular group. Normally on-line newspapers allows
people to tell stories as citizens or to be sources as interest groups. The exception
would be special debate areas where interest groups may speak, and which are
presented in the on-line edition as well as in the printed edition. The individual can also
be part of a media house, which many journalists are. As gate owners, the media house
can set the policies of what social roles should be given what mediating roles, a very
powerful position. They can also decide what slants stories should have and what news
value they shall be given. With the introduction of computers there is also artificial
intelligence, which ranges from simple batch programs to advanced reasoning
machines. They have a very special social status as they are software, but still can have
mediating roles such as gate-keeping, selecting specified content from a stream, or
editors, putting that content somewhere for the users.
4 Genre analysis
While developing the repertoire of elements for on-line newspapers, a genre analysis of
three Swedish newspapers was conducted. The newspapers analysed were
www.Corren.se, www.DN.se and www.Epressen.se. These three cases were selected
due to their sizeable audiences, which means the content and structure is good, in some
sense. Corren (stgta Correspondenten) represents a local newspaper, DN (Dagens
Nyheter) represents a national newspaper, and Expressen represents an evening
newspaper. The selection was random, in a sense, because there were other newspapers
available, but for the present analysis, three papers were sufficient.
The focus on news means that other sections of the papers, such as marketplaces,
were not included in the analysis. The selection of news materials in the papers was the
first page, including all pages reached from the first page. This represents an audience
skimming the paper, reading the main news, or reaching for a different part of the
paper.
To avoid influences from fluctations in the paper, random or season based,
recommentdations given by Hansen, Cottle, Negrine and Newbold (1998) were
followed. This means that, first, seven days in one week was analysed, then another
seven days from seven different weeks, distributed over all days in the week. To select
several days, instead of just one, is neccesary to differentiate static structures from
Newspaper
Use of images
Internal links
External links
Corren
1.8 %
0%
0%
DN
21 %
31 %
4%
Expressen
63 %
68 %
45 %
Table 1
The usage of flow elements is prominent in the papers. On the first page, several
flows are present. The content of these flows misrepresent the parts of the paper, as
news from some sections are almost never in the first page flows. For example, in
Corren 22% of the introductions leads to articles in the Linkping part of the paper. In
DN 35% of the introductions in the first flow (Figure 3, B1) and 30% of the headlines
in the second flow (Figure3, B2) leads to the national news section, whereas in the third
flow (Figure 3, B3), 38% of the introductions leads to the culture section. In Expressen,
48% of the introductions in the first position (Figure 1, B1), leads to articles in the
national news position. The implication of this is that more pages with mixed flows
could be present, to avoid forcing the reader to look at each of these other sections to
see if something new has happened. The papers do not support personalised news
flows, but forces the reader either to use the present flow, or to browse all other parts
manually. Another implication is that the flows are parts of the framework, connected
to the parts of the paper.
Framework A 1
Flow B 1
Flow C
Table of contents
Short introductions
Advertisements
Menu
Hypertext
-------------Flow B 2 (fast)
Headings & Headlines
Hypertext
Figure 1. Expressen.se, first page
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Framework A 1
Flow B 1
Flow C1
Table of contents
Short introductions
Advertisements
Menu
Hypertext
Hypermedia
-------
-----------
Flow A 2
Framework C2
Opinion poll
Advertisement
Radio buttons
Menu
Figure 2. Corren.se, first page
Framework A1
Flow B 1
Flow C 1
Heding
Short introductions
Opinion poll
Menu item
Hypertext
Radio buttons
--------------
--------
Flow A1
Flow B 2 (fast)
Flow C2
Headings
Advertisements
Hypertext
as Hypertext
Hypermedia
---------------Framework + Flows
Flow B 3
A2-A5
Same as A1
as Hypertext
Figure 3. DN.se, first page
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article, thus corresponding better with a reader who reads the whole article, and then
would like to re-read the list of contents to find the next article. In Expressen, the part
is only represented as a menu item in the table contents. This forces a reading style of
going back and forth between either article and first page or article and main page for
the newspaper part. That main page is present in Expressen and Corren, looking much
like the first page of the paper. DN only presents the part as the mentioned left hand
column.
Going between parts is supported well in Expressen and Corren with the menu
(figure 1 & 2, framework A 1), present on all pages. In Expressen, the current part
could have been highlighted better, as that would support selecting the current part. In
DN, a menu at the top of the page is used as a framework to reach the four main news
sections. In one of the sections, the menu isn't present. This is clearly a design mistake,
treating the menu either as a page layout element, or a hypertext associated with a
section. Furthermore DN uses different interaction elements and layouts for some parts,
which in principle only affects learning of how to interact with the structure. These are
examples of problems with the use of the digital material.
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roles. From the audience, these flows demands monitoring, to stay updated with current
events. As the flows have different speeds, there is something for the audience wanting
to know the most important current events (Flow B1, figure 1 - 3), and something for
the audience wanting to know recent events, including less important news (Flow A1 A5, figure 3; Flow B2 Figure 1).
The framework, represented by menus and parts, demands very little maintenance
from the media house, and for the audience it shows what topics are covered by the
paper.
6 Future Research
Research introducing a different distribution of roles between audience and media
house, in particular allowing the audience to act as publishing communities rather than
individuals, is currently being planned. Furthermore, it would probably pay off to
experiment with multimodal content, and a wider variety of interaction elements, such
as direct manipulation.
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7 Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Mattias Arvola and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on
earlier drafts of this paper.
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