International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Online journalism involves the creation and delivery of news content through a networked, digital medium. Although citizen journalists also have emerged as important providers of some news and information (→ Citizen Journalism ), this entry focuses on the work of practitioners of a more traditionally defined occupation. The → Internet and world wide web are primary vehicles for online journalism, but other options include mobile devices, personal digital assistants, and other emerging platforms. Online journalism dates to the development of prototypes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period when the Internet was a cumbersome, text-based system used mostly by scientists and researchers. Proprietary online services intended for general public use evolved separately, in tandem with a growing consumer market in personal computers. Early forms included teletext, which transmitted information through a portion of the television broadcast signal, and videotex, which sent information to an individual terminal via telephone lines. Videotex services, many of them government-supported, attracted media participants throughout western Europe, notably in Britain, France, and Germany, as well as in Japan, Canada, Brazil, and Australia ( Branscomb 1988 ). Early journalistic information providers for these online services included the BBC and the Financial Times in Britain. In the United ... log in or subscribe to read full text