surviving the transition to “digital first”: news apps in asian mobile internets
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This article was downloaded by: [1.136.96.6]On: 22 May 2015, At: 05:17Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Surviving the transition to “digitalfirst”: news apps in Asian mobileinternetsTim Dwyera
a Department of Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts andSocial Sciences, The University of Sydney, Rm No. 231, WoolleyBuilding A20, Sydney NSW, 2006, AustraliaPublished online: 22 May 2015.
To cite this article: Tim Dwyer (2015) Surviving the transition to “digital first”: newsapps in Asian mobile internets, Journal of Media Business Studies, 12:1, 29-48, DOI:10.1080/16522354.2015.1027112
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2015.1027112
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Surviving the transition to “digital first”: news apps in Asian mobileinternets
Tim Dwyer*
Department of Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University ofSydney, Rm No. 231, Woolley Building A20, Sydney NSW, 2006, Australia
(Received 20 June 2014; accepted 25 October 2014)
As part of a broader Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project into themobile internet we assume the enduring importance of news media diversity, as apolicy priority in a convergent media era. The purpose of this news diversity researchcomponent of the ARC project is to investigate the implications of mobile newscontent provision, including for the development of media diversity policies. TheseAsian news case studies (in Hong Kong, South Korea, the People’s Republic of China[PRC] and Japan) explore the dynamic relations between old and new media industriesand the transformations underway: the governance/content management of digitalnews apps and how this relates to other masthead content; their availability and howthey are accessed; the usage patterns of particular news brand apps; and, their afford-ability together with platform access and handset histories, including branded/proprie-tary content arrangements associated with specific portals and telecommunicationsnetworks. The research draws on industry interviews with key personnel (in senioreditorial, information technology [IT] and management roles) in selected news mediaorganisations conducted in 2013 and 2014 in Hong Kong, Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo.In broad terms the research takes a political economy approach to media industrychange and draws on the rubrics of “media convergence” and multi-platform evolution.
Keywords: convergent media; mobile internets; mobile news apps; media pluralism;multi-platform; news diversity
Introduction
This article reports on research investigating the multi-platform implications of mobilenews content provision and access, including for the future development of mediadiversity policies against a backdrop of several decades of deregulationist policies(Mattelart, 2003). Smartphone usage is on the ascendancy around the world, and inAsian nations for example, it is often the first or only way to access the internet formedia audiences. This material usage of mobile phones escalates the place of news in thewider offerings of internet accessible resources, and inflects the question of voice diversityin nuanced ways. Indeed access itself is shaped by many factors: mobile computing andsoftware raise complex industrial and socio-cultural questions regarding access to smart-phone news apps. By investigating the availability of mobile internet platforms/newsapps, we can better understand how these mobile media ecologies are being used bymedia producers and consumer/citizens in emerging informational flows.
Within the scholarly traditions of media, journalism and cultural studies, news mediaformats have long been theorised as a core element of citizenship. The expanding range of
*Email: [email protected]
Journal of Media Business Studies, 2015Vol. 12, No. 1, 29–48, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2015.1027112
© 2015 Media Management and Transformation Centre
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internet accessible, digital mobile media devices in smartphones, tablets and the like, callsfor more detailed and comprehensive responses by governments and their agencies. Policyframeworks which promote social inclusion and digital knowledge and skills, are urgentlyneeded to inform citizens of the resources they are required to have at their disposal forfull participation in society.
This article is concerned with how news production and distribution practices operatein a context of proliferating media devices, escalating social media usage, media conver-gence and mobility. As people increasingly access news by way of mobile internet-connected devices, the mobile internet media, like the web itself, cannot be based uponnaïve assumptions of service or content plurality, despite the expansion of online/mobilepublishing outlets and delivery systems.
Emerging mobile internets are a key area of digital media transformation in thetwenty-first century, generating intense, complex changes in our mediascapes and manychallenges for media managers and workers, policy-makers and media and communica-tion scholars. This media industries research explores issues of access to news through thelens of Asian news organisation case studies in Hong Kong, South Korea, the People’sRepublic of China (PRC), and Japan. These Asian case studies investigate the dynamicrelations between old and new media industries including as part of these transformations:the governance/content management of digital news apps and how this relates to othermasthead content; their availability and how they are accessed; the usage patterns ofparticular news brand apps; and, their affordability together with platform access andhandset (cultural) histories, including branded/proprietary content arrangements associatedwith specific portals and telecommunications networks. At their core these issues arequestions of multi-platform strategy, and closely relate to the experiments media organisa-tions are making to respond to industry change and related business pressures. Thesedevelopments are consistent with global trends in new product and channel developmentand production workflow innovation identified by the World Association of Newspapersand News Publishers (WAN-IFRA, 2011).
Writing about these trends for news regulation a colleague and I made the observationthat:
In Western newspaper markets, the two biggest operational shifts are the integration of multi-platform, rolling deadline news processes into hardcopy production, together with the realign-ment of product development around more medium and long-term interactive projects. As leadtimes for consumer electronics product development have shortened (from 12–18 months in2009 to 6–12 months currently) and international markets for smartphones, wireless computing,real-time, geo-locational services and news personalisation applications have grown, newscompanies are having to respond more quickly and strategically to digital media shifts. Newsproduct development has so far prioritised paid subscription content apps for mobile devices . . .even though back end and front end media development skills are often in short supply,investment risks are high and subscriber numbers initially low. (Martin & Dwyer, 2012)
Mobile internets have moved well beyond their early form on mobile handsets toencompass a complex, inter-related and convergent set of technologies, infrastructuresand emergent user practices and cultures (Feijóo, Pascu, Misuraca, & Lusoli, 2009;Feijóo, Maghiros, Abadie, & Gomez-Barroso, 2009; Goggin, 2011; Ibrus, 2013). Whileresearch on mobile internets is developing this has yet to be integrated into a compre-hensive understanding of policy frameworks, regulatory institutions, and processes of theinternet – let alone media and management practices (Goggin, Dwyer, & Martin, 2014).
Many countries still lack consolidated, convergent media and communications poli-cies and regulation. From the mid-to-late 1990s onwards, national parliaments, policy-
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makers and regulators have sought to grapple with internet, mobile media, and nationalbroadband through subsidiary regulation, policy measures, and new legislation. Morerecently, convergent media regulation has been the subject of many international andnational policy inquiries and initiatives, while in media research convergent media and itspolicy implications is a central problematic (Dwyer, 2010). While my colleagues and Ihave undertaken research on media diversity and influence in relation to online news thereis no work we are aware of that considers news diversity issues in relation to mobileplatforms (Dwyer & Martin, 2010; Dwyer, Martin, & Goggin, 2011).
Given the headlong rush of news and media providers into mobile media (especiallyapps) and new subscription and pay models, this type of research is critical to under-pinning effective policy for equitable access and participation in digital media systems(ACMA, 2009, 2010, 2011). As yet we know little about the kind of media content –news, entertainment, other forms – that appear on apps or the role that smartphone,tablets, and apps play in wider cross-platform, convergent media ecologies. Nor are weaware of specific regulatory consideration of these mobile internet forms and the policyissues they pose.
That this is a problem for public interest policy-making is further emphasised whenwe consider how users are positioned in usually quite specific cultures of news and accessdiversities. Therefore, in the next section of the article I want to sketch out, in apreliminary way, some quite specific and localised cultures of mobile and online newsaccess. While other researchers have studied broader digital news media transitions (e.g.Reuters, 2014; Schlesinger & Doyle, 2014; Thurman, 2013; Villi, 2014), mobile newsmedia transitions (Chung and Bruns, 2009; Wei et al, 2014; Westlund, 2011a, 2011b,2013); or for example, specific gendered identities arising from the production andconsumption of mobile media technologies in Asia (e.g. Hjorth, 2009), this researchfocuses on the industrial cultures of mobile news media production, distribution andaccess in Asia.
In this article the notion of “digital first” is used more as a rhetorical departure point inthe debates around the transition to digital platforms, than as a consensually embracedstrategy. Indeed, it is evident from these case studies, and in other related studies, thatwhile at times online and mobile news is a priority for some traditional media companiesdeveloping strategies to deal with change, there are variations in their responses, includingin some contexts seeing it more as an exercise in supplementary branding (Villi, 2014).
Accessing news in Asian mobile internets
To explore some of these issues I will give a brief overview of several local case studies inthe contemporary Asian news media sector: The Apple Daily in Hong Kong; The KoreaHerald, Daum and Naver in Seoul, the China Daily in Beijing, and the Asahi Shimbun inTokyo. The intention is not to give a comprehensive or highly detailed account of thesecultures of news and access diversities, but rather to put forward a selection of practices ofnews production and consumption and their institutional expression in these locations(Ibrus, 2013, p. 277). The idea is to provide case study exemplars that illustrate thedynamic evolution of socio-cultural–industrial elements in these digital news mediaproduction locations.
The approach taken is cross-cultural media industry research which makes theassumption that it offers particular insights into mobile apps and news in these Asiancountries/cities. As Kelty argues, this kind of cross-cultural research would be familiar toresearchers of “distributed phenomena”; its study does not necessarily imply detailed
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study of each instance of a phenomenon: “the decisions about where to go, whom to studyand how to think . . . are arbitrary in the precise sense that because the phenomena are sowidely distributed, it is possible to make any given node into a source of rich and detailedknowledge into the distributed phenomena itself, not only about the local site” (Kelty,2008, p. 20, in Kanngieser, Neilson, & Rossiter, 2014, p. 310). In terms of the questionsof “voice” diversity underlying the research, it is worth remembering that while theaudience impacts of media consolidation occur locally, these problems are distributedand global.
Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit responses to key business issues. Theinterviewees are experts and participants in their fields, and therefore well-positioned tooffer detailed and informed analyses of their industry and business situations (Schlesinger& Doyle, 2014). The questions can be categorised as relating to:
● Local Market/Competition Context of their News Apps● Audience Usage/Access Cultures● Platform Access-operating Systems● Industry–Business Models● Entertainment and Information Content● Political/Economic Agents
The research, then, sought to explore the hypothesis that mobile news is developingthrough a complex and dynamic set of predominantly local inter-relationships betweennews provision and audience usage cultures, access devices, operating systems, platformsand sharing.
Apple Daily
Some corporate history of Next Media Interactive, the owner of the Apple Daily, providesan insight into their unique socio-cultural–industrial news production features.
Next Media Limited (the owner of the Apple Daily) was incorporated and listed on theHong Kong Stock Exchange in 1981 (Next Media Ltd, 2013). From that time, throughuntil the late 1990s, the company provided commercial printing and reprographic servicesfor books and magazines, and was a magazine publisher. In 1999 it acquired Next MediaInteractive Limited from Next Media Magazine Holdings, and the controlling shareholderbecame Mr Jimmy Lai (although he founded the Apple Daily in 1995 by investing$100 million).
In July 2000, Next Media Limited acquired Apple Daily Online Limited, whichincluded the online version of the Apple Daily. There is some contention around whetheror not the Apple Daily is the second or first most popular daily newspaper in Hong Kong,and how online readership is factored into these figures (Lo, 2013). In Taipei, the AppleDaily is the leading daily newspaper. In Hong Kong, the main competitors include theOriental Daily and The Sun (with both groups being controlled by the Oriental PressGroup). The latter group is claimed to take a pro-PRC line, and is therefore always in apolarised position in relation to the Apple Daily’s “pro-democracy” stance. Together withOriental Daily and The Sun, they dominated around 70% to 80% of the print market sharein 2011 (The Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulations Limited, 2012). A series oftakeovers in 2001 enabled Next Media Limited to become the largest publicly listedChinese language print media organisation in terms of market share and sales. Successful
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operation of the company allowed it to expand to Taiwan in the early 2000s, launching theTaiwan Apple Daily in 2003.
The Taiwan version of the Apple Daily is now the most widely read daily newspaper. Thegroup launched the Sharp Daily in 2006, as the group’s first free daily newspaper. There havebeen other ongoing online and print acquisitions to boost the company. Lai was criticised forlaunching the free Sharp Daily because, the argument went, it would cannibalise the paid forcontent of the Apple Daily. Despite this, Lai argues that the rise of smartphone and quickresponse codes (QR codes) has created advertising opportunities to counter potential paid-forcirculation loses. He argues that people want to watch video and be entertained in theburgeoning virtual world that is accessed by branded smartphone and other mobile devices(Jacob, 2011). Indeed, Next Media Interactive offer their news to audiences as “native” apps(via apps stores), as mobile web apps, and for mobile net browser search by way of variousdevices/operating system (iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry). In total, Next Interactiveoffers around 20 apps across the main operating systems. In recent times, the Androidoperating system has overtaken the Apple’s iOS (Yung, 2013).
The Apple Daily’s popularity can be attributed to a number of presentational factorsincluding its extensive use of Cantonese language. Lee argues that its success can also beattributed to a focus on reporting crime, celebrity news, eroticism, gambling, and drug use(Lee, 1997, p. 131). It is unabashedly a “tabloid” formula news product in both traditionaland online/mobile guises. Characteristically, the Apple Daily has adopted a position of beingcritical of the central Chinese Government (PRC), and so generally anti-Beijing, as well asbeing critical of pro-China governments in Hong Kong and editorially pro-“democracy”.Lee and Lin (2006) have argued the Apple Daily’s often-contrarian position to the HongKong government is a “marketing strategy” in the context of post-colonial British rule.
In terms of news programming, the Apple Daily is well known internationally for it’s so-called “Action News” format and related YouTube video channel. Next Media Interactiveare not alone among news media organisations in using animation in news production.Cable News Network (CNN) are another media organisation that has done so, and it hasbeen referred to as becoming a “mainstream” practice (Cheng & Lo, 2012, p. 132). AsCheng and Lo point out, “animation is typically adopted as a way to visualize an event forwhich there is no video footage, or when the issue reported is abstract and needs visualillustration”. However, Next Media Interactive have developed this form of animation-enhanced, or augmented reality news video to the point where their brand survival stands orfalls on its continued supply. Low quality animated computer-generated imagery (CGI)segments are prepared by Next Media’s “Next Animation” studios based in Taiwan for thebreaking news story. Next Media Animation in Taiwan employs around 500 animators,which makes it a similar size to the Australian animation studio Animal Logic when it wasoperating at its peak making movies such as Happy Feet, and juggling outsourcedHollywood CGI contracts. This approach is considered to be an inherent element in therise to popularity of the Apple Daily, and the popularity and credibility of their online newsproduct with audiences is dependent on the form. Although there are many categories oftraditional and new media news product in Hong Kong, this popularity of Action News isan important constitutive element in the Hong Kong news mediascape.
The editorial and information technology (IT) managers of Next Media Interactionhave ongoing challenges to maintain the necessary level of computer infrastructure, todevelop a satisfactorily skilled number of staff to make the news animations, and to turnbreaking news items around in as little as 2–3 hours (they are produced in Taiwan andthen returned to Hong Kong). Next Media Animation’s website divides the developmentprocess of Action News animation into six stages: (1) understanding the news story; (2)
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script development; (3) the three-dimensional (3D) model consultation and development;(4) storyboarding; (5) actors performing scenes from the script; (6) final edits on anima-tion (Next Media Animation, 2012).
The New York Times has described the Action News form as about “the new world ofMaybe Journalism, offering a glimpse at the future of the tabloid division” (Cohen, 2009).Cheng and Lo describe it as “melodramatic emotion-laden and movie-like animation”(2013, p. 146). In this augmented reality of the animation, tabloid-styled content aims toboth attract the younger generation who no longer read paper-printed news, and to engageolder audiences who are culturally attuned to traditions of cartoon-like formats. Perhapsthe best-known example internationally of the form relates to the adultery scandal ofcelebrity golfer Tiger Woods in 2009. Next Media Interactive’s animators depicted theevents using CGI, dramatically showing Tiger Wood’s now ex-wife chasing Wood’s carwith a golf club. Next Media Interactive achieved their main traffic objective: it quicklywent viral on the net. Or, to take another more recent example in 2013, a CGI-enactedmurder-suicide scenario in Hong Kong, involving a mother who murders her young sonand then takes her own life using the gas oven in the apartment’s kitchen, was among thehighest viewed news videos at the Apple Daily. Viral videos can trigger very high trafficfigures, however total video views on the Next Media Interactive mobile channels/appscan typically reach the five million per day mark. An important production element of thevideo news segments is that they need to be the right length to be consumed betweensubway stations in Hong Kong. Commuters need to be able to view the video news storiesbefore they get off at their station on the way to work (Yung, 2013).
The launch of Action News animated news video approach to news of the Apple Dailysite has proven to be a very successful move. The Apple Daily ranks first in both the AppleStore and Google Play for Android Phones compared with other newspaper apps in HongKong. The popularity of this kind of news has arisen due to a cluster of socio-cultural andindustrial factors, which occur in Hong Kong, Taiwan and other Asian contexts. But it isimplausible to suggest that it is confined solely to Asian societies: even CNN uses newsanimation in their news, if not at the same level of popularity or daily frequency.
It has been reported that Next Media have been attempting to sell their traditionalnewspaper and television assets in Taiwan to focus on their online and mobile mediaplatforms. That this is happening while the Taiwanese government is attempting toimprove relations with Beijing has not escaped some industry commentators (Mishkin,2013). But it is also evident that the Next Media group has strategically positioned itselfas a multi-product (apps and mobile websites), multi-device/operating system (iOS,Android, Windows, Blackberry) and multi-platform digital media organisation.Currently, Android-based devices are dominating the handset market, but they haveonly recently overtaken Apple’s iOS (iPhones) in Hong Kong.
Facing significant IT infrastructure content distribution and cross-platform challenges,the Next Media group views its future as one dominated by social, mobile and locativemedia (or “SoMoLo”), user generated content, and increasingly, greater personalisation ofnews (Yung, 2013).
The Korea Herald
As one of a handful of English language newspapers in South Korea, The Korea Heraldbegan in the 1950s after having commenced publishing as the Korean Republic. As withother Asian English language newspapers (for example the China Daily), The KoreaHerald have always had an educational, English as a second language set of objectives, in
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addition to media organisation goals. They operate English language “Hagwons” (Koreannot-for-profits) learning centres, and manage the “English village”, an English languageimmersion centre. The Korea Herald controls over 50% of the English language news-paper market, its main competitor is the Korea Joongang Daily, a more liberal paperassociated with the International Herald Tribune.
They were on the net in 1995 and launched their smartphone app in July 2010. Ownedby Herald Media Inc. the paper is perceived as a serious masthead, conservative, witheditorial and advertising positions that are generally subservient to Korea’s infamousChaebol structure [or the favoured, Korean family-controlled politically influential con-glomerates such as Samsung, Hyundai or LG which generate about 50% of Korea’s grossdomestic product (GDP)].
Nash and Bacon in a review of the English language press in South East Asia havemade some useful observations that are relevant for this research on news diversity,despite having quite divergent foci. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory the authors argue:
The English language media is read by most foreign diplomatic and business workforces, bymany non-government organization (NGO) workers, and by some foreign tourists andtravelers. It thus constitutes a major venue or field where the decisions, attitudes and activitiesof all who participate and contest the use of power in national decision-making are repre-sented to the international stakeholders in foreign governments, transnational corporationsand international NGOs . . . . (Nash and Bacon (2006, p. 107)
From the perspective of journalism and the public sphere, this is a useful point to makeabout English language media in Asia. However, to this overview of significant audi-ences/readerships we need to add the English learning elites and their media consumptionpractices, in the societies where these Asian newspapers are located. These elite readersparticipate in various economic, political and social networks and therefore are involvedin a range of contemporary issues. English language media are therefore central togovernment strategies for the promotion and take-up of English, for reasons of businessand cultural exchange. Another more fundamental point to be made regarding selectingthe English language press in Asia for the purpose of analysing digital media transforma-tions concerns their transparency and availability for Western media researchers.
Westlund has undertaken longitudinal research into the transformation of theGotesborg-Posten: a Swedish language paper which has the second highest reachamong quality subscribed print newspapers in Sweden (Westlund, 2011a). He has trackedthe transformation of the traditional newspaper from its earliest digital moves into digitalmobile media operations.
1995 marked their entrance into online news publishing, by 1998 news was distributed bySMS and in 2001 they made news available by WAP. In 2008 they hired a dedicated mobileeditor and launched a one-year project group dedicated to mobile developments. From 2008 aproject dedicated to mobile developments (MktMobil) was formed by the Stampen Group andits four newspaper group partners in the digital developments network of MktMedia. In thisnetwork, representing 47 newspaper companies, GP [Gotesborg-Posten] constitutes thelargest organization and has been expected to drive innovation . . . . In 2009 the mobileproject was terminated and GP started to form a more permanent organizing group forcollaborative digital developments . . . in 2010 orchestrated through the launch of theDigital Development Group. (Westlund, 2011a)
He argues that the transformations of the Gotesborg-Posten may be explained in terms ofthe “joint efforts” of three management groups: editorial, business and IT departments. He
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concludes that the tensions between these groups will tend to shape how traditional mediagroups create new media, such as mobile apps. His view is that given the transition to onlineand mobile media use in society it is “not surprising that contemporary news media areforming omnipresent strategies to become accessible any time, any place and through anydevice” (Westlund, 2011a). Their motives (and survival) are, of course, linked to thisprovision of ubiquitous cross-media news access and exploring new revenue sources.
This explanatory framework resonates with the digital media developments at TheKorea Herald (and also with the other case studies). The transition to digital media newsproduction contains some shared components: traditional media organisations have re-tooled their operations from products and services to organisational structures and cul-tures. The actual development process in these newspapers is usually a narrative of stop–start and interactive testing processes between the management groups. Ongoing innova-tion, for example around offering news apps has also become an increasingly common-place step by these media outlets. The actual institutional “sensemaking” (Westlund’sterm) processes will vary: for example, some news organisations may choose to gostraight to offering a native news app via an online store (Windows Store, Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, or the Android market) as either a free or pay-for download, alter-natively, breaking news content may first become available as a web app (content that isspecifically packaged for mobile phone devices and accessed via a browser). Most newsorganisations at this stage in the digital transformation of news appear to make bothavailable, even if the rollout makes one kind of access available before the other. Yetunique questions of revenue, user experience and closely linked to these, technologicalpossibilities (local market preference around payment options/take-up of branded hand-sets/infrastructure costs) will also play into this innovation decision-making process bymedia corporations.
The unfolding chain of events in the decision-making process at The Korea Heraldleading to the introduction of their news apps is a global industry narrative, albeit one withspecific localised socio-cultural and industrial inflections, that is linked to decliningcirculation and the changing consumption practices of audiences. The Korea Heraldpaid app, available from app stores, provides text and audio, so audiences can read andlisten to a selection of daily news items. Audiences of The Korea Herald publications areseeking both domestic and international news items, and “to advance their Englishproficiency” (Yang, 2013). The organisation also distributes e-papers and these provideEnglish language study sections with translation exercises. The Korea Herald optimisedfor reading on the iPhone is also available on Apple’s “Newsstand”, which has undergonea series of updates and improvements.
The Korea Herald importantly also provides Korean language, packaged news for thetwo biggest Korean portals, Naver.com and Daum.net (the Korean equivalents of theaggregators such as Google News and Yahoo News, and I discuss this further in the nextsection). These sites are the most popular destinations for audiences seeking news inKorea and they include pages optimised for mobiles. The placement of news content atthe top of the pages in those portals is an indicator of the significance of news withinKorean media culture. The influence of these aggregators should not be underestimated inthe Korean news access mediascapes, with web traffic to The Korea Herald largely drivenby the users and redirected visits from the portals (Yang, 2013). Clearly, then, as the criticsof Google and Yahoo News often argue, these portal news aggregators are the principalbeneficiaries of the advertising that relies on these large traffic flows. Monthly contentfees paid to The Korea Herald are a miniscule fraction of the revenue generated by thenews aggregators, Naver and Daum. Many other print, broadcast and online media
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organisations are placed in a similar position when they supply content to the aggregators.In the face of this dominance by portals in news access (over 50%) in Korea, newsorganisations have attempted to claw back some of this audience share by upgrading theirwebsites, offering apps and mobile optimised news content. But the app market from theperspective of The Korea Herald has failed – at least in terms of the original purpose itwas developed to address: the haemorrhaging of revenue from the masthead due to thedecline in print media circulation. Their idea was to introduce a new subscriber-basedmedia platform for accessing news. Premium content that people would pay for would, itwas hoped, provide new revenue streams. However this has never eventuated for TheKorea Herald.
It is a story that is being repeated throughout the world. The exceptions tend tobe business-oriented newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the FinancialTimes. The provision of paid-for general news by traditional newspaper organisationsis a difficult proposition. Understandably therefore, The Korea Herald provides theirapps news content for free. A “digital first” policy involves particular workflowchoices, but ultimately competitive survival is the main game: their fully digitalbusiness model traffic-based advertisers underpin the revenue stream. While TheKorea Herald attracts approximately one million visitors per day to their website,this generates insufficient revenue to compensate for the circulation losses (Yang,2013). But as their competition are the major search portals who provide a muchmore diversely sourced range of news and entertainment also at no charge, and whoattract the lion’s share of advertising in a zero-sum advert market, this is a difficultpath. In such a mediascape, the role of news brands has become increasinglycompetitive: many news consumers are searching by brand; but swathes of peopleare turning to the portals who offer a “one stop” shop. The most popular Koreanlanguage dailies also have their paid online news content that are available with theprint subscription, but these are dwarfed by the popularity of the portals, which Idiscuss further in the next section.
For news organisations, perhaps a slight glimmer of hope to this general trend todeclining print media circulation is the emerging and dynamic role that social media arenow playing. Social media are not the salvation (at this stage anyway), but mediaorganisations like The Korea Herald (the Apple Daily, the China Daily and the AsahiShimbun) are very actively using a range of strategies to boost their online traffic throughsocial media. The Korea Herald provides links or share buttons to Facebook and Twitter,has an official Facebook page and Twitter account with approximately 12,000 followers(which looks minnow-like in comparison with the China Daily’s 300,000 Sina Weibofollowers). At The Korea Herald there is a sense that links to social media, includingpopular Korean platforms, is simply a necessary part of the news/traffic mix – just anotherway of promoting the brand.
In Korea about a third of smartphone users have an iPhone, and the remaining two-thirds are Samsung or LG users. In terms of operating systems, Android-based devices aredominating the handset market. The news content provided by The Korea Herald is thesame irrespective of the access device used, although the apps are customised for the mainmobile platforms. Gossipy, celebrity (and not just “Gangnam-style”!), or more quirkycontent is highlighted on the online (and therefore) mobile apps/sites, in contrast to thetypically more serious news content in the print version. As with online content aroundthe world, for example in the UK’s Daily Mail or the US’s Huffington Post, traffic-based“headlines with a hook” are the main fare.
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Naver and Daum
The influence of the high popular portals Naver and Daum on the style of news inother news media organisations needs to be recognised in this context. Search engineoptimisation (SEO) and traffic analytics play an important editorial role in shapingnews content. Stories are required to be written in this lighter more chatty, celebrity-focused format because that is the popular style and the prevailing mode of access:audiences are generally not concerned about the original source or news brand. Thedepartment store metaphor gets invoked by the portals to account for their broadappeal: people will find a range of different products that interest them from newsand celebrity gossip, sport and shopping through to blogs, video and social network-ing. From a news diversity perspective this is a very significant news trope in atransforming digital media culture, and a key trend for policy-makers to take intoaccount.
Korea’s major online portals with between them around 90% of the search marketundoubtedly presage one possible model for the future of news and mobile media. In onesense it is nothing new, as we have seen it before with the free aggregation servicesoffered by Google and Yahoo. However, the changing pattern of news consumption byaccessing the Daum and Naver sites on mobiles is a massively popular trend, and istherefore worth looking at more closely. In terms of market share for portal access onlaptops and desk computers, a recent study indicates that Naver easily dominates themarket with 75.2%, followed by Daum with 15.7%, Nate with 7.1%, Yahoo at 2.4%, andGoogle with 1.2%. This may be contrasted with the share of mobile search where Naverholds 54.5%, Google 18.1%, Daum 15.7%, Nate 7.9%, Yahoo 2.1%, and Paran, 1.2%(Matrix, 2010). It can be seen that while Naver remains dominant for both, in mobilesearch Google has a larger share than Daum because the dominant handset manufacturerin the Republic of Korea is Samsung which uses the Android operating system, availablepre-loaded with Google browsers. This situation led Naver and Daum to file antitrustcomplaints with South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission in 2011 for preventing local phonecarriers and manufacturers from embedding their search applications in devices using theAndroid operating system (Yang, 2011).
The dominance of these two search engine portals can be established with an easy test:Daum is the most searched keyword in Naver and Naver is the same in Daum. It is tellingthat for both Naver and Daum, the general consumption of news and popular keywordtopics and people is by navigating from the portal frontpage (from the homepage as eithera bookmarked URL or using the mobile app), rather than directly using a portal searchengine. This means that people are attracted to the user experiences offered by the portals.Their content may be summarised as covering: daily current events and news; usergenerated content in terms of opinion blogs, videos, recipes; entertainment contentincluding premium stories and webtoons; database content such as most searched, mostpopular story or news and demographic group preferences (Lim, 2014).
Currently these portals perceive their place in the Korean mediascape as news “dis-tributors”, rather than originators of news content. This is in part due to the actual practiceof being aggregators of edited news content, and this arises from the ongoing regulatorypolitics of news in Korea. Partly to appease their critics, so as to not be deemed a “newsprovider” under Korean law, they consider that they are in a kind of “partnership” withtraditional news sources and are therefore not direct competitors. Although given theasymmetry in advertising generated, it has to be said that this relationship is quite one-sided. Naver explain the regulatory tension in these terms:
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The debate whether to see portal sites as internet news service websites or just a meredistribution channel is still an ongoing topic. Currently portal sites are regarded as a transitionperiod between the traditional media and the new media. However, the debate is constantlybeing raised as an important issue and the tension between the government/media regulatorsand portal websites are intense. (Kim, 2014)
Earlier experiments by Daum in making their own original news content were shortlived.In 2005 Daum had a team of 10 journalists preparing original content for the portal.Government pressure brought the venture to an end, when the Korean law requiring thatnews media companies be either producers or distributors was enforced.
Daum’s audience skews to males in the 30–40 years demographic, while the children’saudience from 10 to 20 years is being cultivated using webtoons, video and other age-specific entertainments (Lim, 2014). Daum see their competitive edge over Naver andGoogle arising from their massive user generated content, and technical savvy aimed atyounger users. In early 2014 Daum was growing at a rate of about 100,000 new users permonth. Daum boasts their ability to provide live news coverage along with premiumtelevision content and content partnerships with Samsung Galaxy Note. As with Naver,Daum has no original news content, but rather uses an editorial team to package and selectcontent according to the best viewer or user experience (or “UX”) and past preference.Their content is claimed to be refreshed every 10 minutes during daytime hours. There areindividual content agreements with newspapers and magazines.
In terms of mobile platforms, 90% of users are coming from the Android platform butDaum encourages it’s users to share news and other content via other platforms. AsSeonyoung Lim comments in relation to their news sharers: “We’re making use of them asanother distribution channel. In the social channel, content consumption is more friend-conscious. People tend to share something decent expecting likes and peer’s respect”(Lim, 2014). This dominance of the Android platform for access is true for the Navernews portal too, and explains why more people access Naver though the web than onmobiles where Google is the default browser on Android handsets (Kim, 2014). Up tosix million unique visitors use the platform every day. Naver’s editorial team also package(edit) and aggregate news sourced from other news providers, and their audience demo-graphic is fairly evenly spread across age and gender. People access news content bynavigating from the Naver front page (including through the mobile apps), and a muchsmaller minority are viewing content after searching by brand or keyword. Naver hasseparate Mobile news and personal computer (PC) news editing teams, because thecontent is different across these platforms, although they are in the same business division(Kim, 2014).
In addition to the other main search portals of Daum, Google and Nate, Navermanagers now see the chat service KakaoTalk (and related app Kakao Story) as a risingcompetitor where people can share news content within their social networks (Kim, 2014).Naver own the chat app “Line” but they have not been able to make a dent in the seriouslypopular KakaoTalk app. Interestingly, in May 2014 Kakao Corp merged with the smallerlisted Daum Communications to form Daum Kakao in order to better compete with Naverin the portal and chat markets (Song, 2014). Naver use small icons under every newsarticle to encourage people to click and share the articles to their own/friends’ socialnetworking services or through their own email. Naver are working on ways to boostadditional sharing, as a way to generally increase traffic on the site, when advertisingrevenue is their raison d’etre (Kim, 2014).
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It is interesting that unlike Daum, the news content in the Naver mobile app and thewebsite carry different content. This is because the companies that Naver has supplycontracts with are different for each platform. These companies source news from thethree major news agencies in Korea (Chosun, Joongang, and Dong-Ah) and because ofthis “they refuse to make contract with us for our Naver mobile app whom they considerto be a competitor” (Kim, 2014).
The China Daily
As the leading English language media organisation in China, the China Daily hasextensive traditional print media and new digital media operations. Founded in 1981 itis an example of a media organisation that has developed many different ways of growingexisting content across digital media platforms and access devices. Together with itsEuropean, United States, Asian, Hong Kong editions it has a total hardcopy circulationper issue of around 800,000. The China Daily Group includes their twenty-first centurypublishing division, which produces a range of English language education newspapersand digital media platforms and applications for a primarily English as a second languageorientation (Shen, 2013).
The Chinadaily.com.cn website, launched in 1995, has seven main news websites andapproximately 30 subsidiary websites. Mobile news apps are made available on Android,iOS, Blackberry, Amazon Kindle, Symbian platforms, and the Sony digital book readerand their respective app stores. A so-called iPaper is available for iPhone and iPad inconjunction with Apple’s Newsstand. The China Daily Mobile News offers a bilingualmultimedia messaging service (MMS) to China Mobile and China Telecom subscribers.Mobile App downloads for iPhone alone exceed 600,000 (China Daily.com.cn, 2013).
Editorially, the content produced by the China Daily Group is generally regarded asadopting officially sanctioned policy positions, if not to be a conduit for the leadership inBeijing. As with most English language media organisations in Asia the readership ispredominantly constituted by stakeholders outside China, although there is the dualpurpose of providing English language education to various internal elites. The maincompetition to the China Daily is offered by the Global Times, which commencedoperations in 2009, so it is only a fraction of the size of the China Daily.
While China’s telecommunications market is characterised by rapid growth, with thenumber of mobile phone users spiking up to 1.1 billion by the end of 2012, up from976 million at the start of 2012, these figures need to be placed in other usage contexts.The number of people who access the internet by mobile devices at the end of 2012 was420 million, 64 million more than in 2011 (NMI, 2013, p. 1). However, mobile broadbandis constrained in China by relatively slow broadband connection speeds. Currently theaverage access speed is on 3.14 Mbps, according to recent survey results. Speeds inShanghai were the fastest at 4.7 Mbs (China Daily, 2013). This means that larger videonews files for example do not always run that well on mobile devices (Napoli & Obar,2013).
The narrative of the rise of news accessed using mobile phones in China is one closelylinked to the evolution of the telecommunications system through deregulatory policies,and to the introduction of specific formats of news delivered over mobile phone handsets.News in a text messaging form became widely available from 2002 (Zhang, 2013). Thus,2G handsets were all that were required, and even so-called “Little Smart” (Xiaolingtong)the low-end wireless handsets available in most cities from 2004 could receive SMS news(Qiu, 2007, p. 906). The China Daily was one of several content providers for Little Smart
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(Zhang, 2013). Commencing in 2002 with the then sole mobile carrier, China Mobile, theChina Daily’s SMS service was bilingual costing 30 RMB per month, and it built up off avery low base of subscribers, although it was generally considered too expensive. Theseprices came down in 2007 to 5 RMB per month, and other premium news content added.By 2008 China Daily had around 300,000 paid mobile news subscribers, boosted by akeen interest in English language at the time of the Beijing Olympics. The number ofsubscribers grew to 500,000 in 2009. The main mobile carrier China Mobile has con-tinued to push the SMS news product, and to the present time it remains very popular onChina Mobile and China Unicom networks. From these modest beginnings, it has built upto a paid news app that had reached a million subscribers by 2010. Around 70% ofsubscribers accessing the paid news app are located outside of China (Zhang, 2013).
It was only from 2008, when the Chinese state reorganised the telecommunicationsmarket and created three specific mobile carriers: China Mobile, China Unicom, andChina Telecom, that the deregulated conditions shaped the market for industrial expan-sion, initially licensing 3G and more recently 4G services. There has been considerablescholarly attention focused on China’s “unique socio-historical circumstances” and thedynamic institutional arrangements between state regulators, telecom operators, handsetmanufacturers and other stakeholders in China’s 3G-enabled mobile internet development(Hong, Bar, & An, 2012). The China Daily Group provide news content to all three of themajor mobile carriers: news can be accessed on a range of branded handsets, with themost popular being Samsung and iPhone, but also HTC, Huawei, Sony (formerly Sony-Ericsson), ZTE, Nokia (in decline for several years) and others.
However, pay-for news is generally not popular though because of a view (heldinternationally of course) that everyday news (as opposed to special English or bilingualvalued added news) should be freely available. Advertising supports popular mobile newsand entertainment content, for example, as provided by China Unicom. In China there isno successful Chinese language mass market or business market paid news product of TheTimes, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times ilk. There are many competing sources of freenews in Mainland Chinese mediascape, particularly via the popular online content portalssuch as Tencent, Sohu, Sina and NetEase.
NetEase (164.com) currently have the largest number of news app users in China(Zhang, 2013). There are interesting news innovations from these portal apps: the Sinaapp for example suggests trending keywords (or “hot words”) to search on. Of course,Chinese search engines are themselves a major player in the news market and also providenews search engines: popular providers being Baidu, SoSo, and QQ. Search is the mostpopular way of consuming everyday news, so it is not surprising that search engines/portals play a major role in shaping access to news. In combination with social media talkabout news events, search engines and suggestive news apps (e.g. Sina’s) work todistribute everyday news stories. The writing may be on the wall: the main mobileprovider, China Mobile anticipates that their Chinese language news apps will not survivein the medium to longer term. However, China Daily see a steady increase in their niche,English language-based apps as they, for example, target Android platform users withtheir partner provider, China Mobile (Zhang, 2013).
News content distribution in China is a dynamic mix of traditional and new mediastakeholders. Mobile internet distribution is a key element of this distribution/accessprocess. New alliances have been formed between these actors. It has seen state broad-casters CCTV and the Shanghai TV Group and China Mobile cooperate to provide newspackages distributed online by the carriers’ over mobile television, by streaming and withapps (Hong et al., 2012). Traditional news providers, then, are increasingly offering their
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content online and over mobile platforms, but this provision is in a state of flux,depending on the wider competitive environment for news, handsets and their affor-dances, and the role of telecommunications groups.
Asahi Shimbun
There is a news print culture in Japan that is several centuries old. As one of five maincompanies, The Asahi Shimbun, founded in 1879 describes itself as “Japan’s LeadingNewspaper”. The digital version of the paper in English is known as the Asahi ShimbunAJW (Asia and Japan Watch). Their AJW Facebook page notes that the Asahi Shimbun isthe nation’s most respected daily Japanese-language newspaper with a circulation ofnearly eight million – making it the second largest circulation national newspaper afterthe Yomiuri Shimbun with around 10 million, reputed to be the highest printed circulationnewspaper globally. The Asahi Shimbun makes the claim that it “prides itself on itsinvestigative reporting and analyses of business and political coverage, as well as insight-ful stories on Japan’s fascinating subculture . . . it offers . . . unparalleled coverage of theFukushima nuclear plant accident . . . . We believe the Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of theFukushima nuclear accident is second to none” (AJW Facebook.com).
The plummeting circulation figures seen throughout Anglophone print news mediacultures are not being replicated in Japan. A unique news print media market in so manyways, the Japanese system of home delivery (“senbaiten”) is undoubtedly the single mostsignificant factor that bolsters circulation. In early 2014 the hardcopy edition of the paperhad approximately 7.5 million subscribers in the morning and three million in the evening.It could be seen gradually shrinking in comparison with other markets. Indeed, it has notshrunk that much from a figure of 8.3 million in 1987 (Fujitani, 2014). Like the rest of theworld though, the Japanese market is transitioning away from print copies to digitaleditions, albeit at a much slower pace. Less an either-or proposition, for older readershipsat least, it would appear that the older demographic is slowly changing its reading habitsto hardcopy and digital versions on computers and mobile devices.
Perhaps surprisingly, for what is after all a very tech savvy nation, smartphone accesshas lagged behind the United States and Europe, and Japan is transitioning at a slower ratethan many comparable countries from text-based access to smartphone usage. This can bepartly accounted for by the fact that Japan’s feature phones have had quite dynamic webcapabilities for at least a decade. However, with smartphones becoming rapidly moresophisticated, and in particular in relation to the use of social networking and other apps,many users across the age spectrum are now taking up popular smartphone handsets. Theindustry analysts e-Marketer have shown that the adoption of smartphones has climbedfrom 46.1% in 2013 to 60.2% in 2014 (eMarketer, 2013). A further explanation is thattelco data packages were rather inflexible until unlimited services began to be offeredaround 2010–2011, and when more expensive data restrictions began to lift, this led toexpanded smartphone usage (Fujitani, 2014). Yet there remains an age divide betweenyounger and older users: 75% of internet users aged 15–19 years owned a smartphone,70% of those between 20 and 29 years old. Yet, among internet users between 60 and69 years old, smartphone ownership was closer to 20%. Apple’s iPhone had corralledmore than 50% of the smartphone market by 2013 (eMarketer, 2013). Curiously, though,it was reported that by the end of 2013 Japan had surpassed the United States as the topgrossing revenue market for apps. Japanese consumers have traditionally enjoyed makingpurchases on their phones, and this trend continues. It has been reported that Mixi Inc, the
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game and social network operation had surged 661% in one month in late 2013 (Amano& Huang, 2013). News apps, though, are clearly a different story.
Digital editions began in 2010–2011, which is fairly late in comparison to many othernewspapers around the world. Consistent with news developments around the world, andthe trends seen in the other case studies, the role of free news aggregators is increasinglyinfluential. Yahoo is the strongest aggregation site in Japan and most users of the AJWapp (English and Japanese versions) are being re-directed from the Yahoo site. YahooNews is free whereas the Japanese AJW is a paid app (US $11.96 per month) that requiresregistration, and is available for smartphones, tablets and computers editions (iPhone,iPad, Kindle) on iOS and Android platforms.
The content on the AJW English app “is the same” as on the website version (Jo, 2014).Editors make selection decisions regarding which stories should be on top of iPhone andiPad versions, choosing 15 original stories each day. Lack of subscriber take-up led to theEnglish language app being closed in March 2014 with only the website and kindle editionsnow being offered. The Managing Editor of the International Division, Toshio Jo describesthe closure of the phone offerings as not really “that significant since content is nowoptimised for access by mobiles on the website . . . . We just want to use our manpowermore effectively . . . a separate CMS [content management system] was needed”. Theadmission was made that “Branding is very important (and that has been the main focus). . . there was little revenue to speak of” made by the English language phone app. Joexplained that: “In the evening the app content was put together . . . (however) the number ofsubscribers doesn’t justify the manpower” (Jo, 2014). However, the Japanese language appis much more successful and will continue (Fujitani, 2014).
The papers’ editors have made sure that the Asahi Shimbun has a strategy to ensurethat Yahoo News picks up their content – which is of course very important, for boostingtraffic. The Asahi Shimbun have a contract with Yahoo Japan, and they send them theirstories quickly and use SEO headlines techniques. Pointing to the reality of popularpractices in the consumption of news in Japan, they note that “they have credibility as anews brand, but viewers don’t care” (Fujitani, 2014).
Average age for paper edition is 50 or over, while even the digital editions averageage is 40+. For the editors, understandably this requires urgent strategies to penetrate the20–30 cohort, “who don’t buy newspapers . . . so we have to encourage this readershipthrough social media . . . line, twitter etc.” (Fujitani, 2014). Unlike other Englishlanguage newspapers in Asia the AJW does not have a language education focus. Forthis they have the Asahi Weekly print edition, with a specific language component.
Consistently with newspaper strategies around the globe, and responses to decliningreaderships, the social media side is being built up and encouraged. This is following theglobal trend in news practices in most markets, and the audience practices of sharingnews: “and it’s really booming . . . Flipboard, Zite, Pulse (Japanese versions) . . . and theJapanese aggregation sites such as SmartNews” (Fujitani, 2014). The Asahi ShimbunAJW/digital editions are actively looking for collaboration (and revenue sharing) withthese aggregation sites. It appears that some news aggregators are currently using theAsahi Shimbun headlines without permission, which their Social Media Editor explains,“we tolerate them doing that (because they bring traffic)” (Fujitani, 2014).
The AJW Facebook has a relatively small number of “likes” – around 190,000 people.Stories are read throughout South East Asia, in Indonesia, Thailand in particular. The pagecarries a headline, first par/image and link AJW (online) full story. Video clips are usedfrom the English and Japanese editions – the latter are posted to a YouTube channel forthe English version. There are plans afoot for a new “young peoples” edition that will
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select Asahi news content that will appeal to young people, for example, sport content.The company is also planning to enter into supply agreements with social media organi-sations to reach out to the younger demographic.
This case study, then, supports identified key trends in the Japanese newspaperindustry transition to digital news, including recent research showing mobile news appsbeing perceived as brand extensions that protect the main print mastheads (Villi, 2014).
Conclusion
A key observation to made, drawing on these Asian mobile news case studies, is thatrethinking media diversity or media pluralism is an important policy priority and linked totheories of media structure and communicative power (Karppinen, 2013). Contemporarynews industry analysis needs to consider the diversity or pluralism impacts of, forexample, content-sharing and repurposing strategies across digital media platforms withinand between mainstream news providers. These corporations’ multi-platform strategiesare being formulated as their news content integration and pay wall business modelsdevelop. The case studies indicate that these media businesses can be seen to be in aprocess which is reconfiguring their organisational structures, work and content flows,and therefore the stakes for consumers and citizen audiences are high. This researchconfirms that our notions of news diversity need to be rethought as intimately intertwinedwith issues of access. There are important consequences of the way news is packaged andthen accessed by audiences (Reuters Institute, 2014).
Mobile computing and software raise complex industrial and socio-cultural questionsregarding access to smartphone news apps. By investigating the openness (and restricted-ness/exclusivity) of mobile internet platforms, the popularity of different operating sys-tems and news apps on mobile devices, this article has sought to develop ourunderstanding about how mobile media are being used by media producers and consu-mer/citizens. Another important observation to be made is that the rising popularity of themajor aggregator distributors and their power and influence in digital news ecologies is acritical development for news diversity and pluralism policy.
The distribution of news content is morphing as a result of complex and dynamic setof mostly localised inter-relationships between news and audience usage cultures, accessdevices, apps, operating systems, platforms and sharing. An important public policyimplication is that branded content siphoned to online and mobile apps/sites often con-trasts with the typically more serious news content in the print editions of news brands.SEO and traffic analytics play an important editorial role in shaping this news content. Ingeneral, the news will be in a lighter, more chatty, celebrity-focused format because that isthe popular “clickbait” style used to generate traffic. The important question to ask thoughis: How will our diversity and pluralism laws and policies conceive of aggregated newssuppliers when the content is sourced from existing channels, and yet they are not thoughtof as news suppliers/sources?
Mobile internets offer a complex layering of media communications elements at alocal level – an ensemble of local media industry dynamics. So this necessarily means thatwe need to consider convergence across multiple platforms: mobile phones, internet,newspapers, broadcasting and an array of new technologies and social practices whichare sometimes framed as “cross-media” innovation studies (cf. Ibrus & Scolari, 2012).Mobile internets, then, have become key contexts in the digital matrix for the world ofnews audiences, and constitute the new conditions of news production, distribution andconsumption as a cultural and technological form in Raymond Williams’ sense.
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In responding to these entwined socio-technical transformations of mobile internet thechallenge for legislators, policy-makers, and regulators around the world is to find newframeworks and concepts to deal with emerging problems. Traditional media policyobjectives should not be lightly discarded in this process because policies such as newsmedia diversity, still have an important place once they are rethought for the presentcircumstances (ACMA, 2011; EU, 2013). Indeed the ongoing work by the EuropeanCommission into developing indicators for monitoring media pluralism adopts such anapproach. The Commission’s Media Pluralism Monitor explicitly acknowledges the needto take into account the emerging and future risks to information diversity and pluralismassociated with new online mobile media content distribution (EC, 2009, 2012). Similarly,the UK’s House of Lords inquiry into Media Plurality (House of Lords Select Committeeon Communications, 2014) recommends a multi-platform strategy for policy reform (Rec.264) and recognises that plurality policy should take into account both the supply andconsumption of news and current affairs content (Rec. 265). Yet it is also clear thatimportant issues have emerged for which new concepts – relating to access and newsdiversity – which will require further development, critical consideration, and integrationwith older approaches (Van Hoboken, 2012). These case studies of mobile internet newsindicate that new media evolution occurs at the intersection of industrial and socio-culturalchange in specific locales.
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
FundingThis work was supported by the Australian Research Council. It is an output of the AustralianResearch Council Discovery Grant, Moving Media: Mobile Internet and New Policy Modes[DP120101971].
Notes on contributorAssociate Professor Tim Dwyer teaches Legal and Ethical Issues in Media Practice to Mastersstudents and is Degree Director of the Master of Media Practice. His research focuses on the criticalevaluation of media and communications industries, regulation, media ethics and policy. Hisresearch also explores how news practices are evolving in multi-platform media organisations,and analyses the implications of these transformations for media diversity and pluralism. He isthe author of Legal and Ethical Issues in the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), MediaConvergence (Open University, 2010) and the co-editor (with Virginia Nightingale) of New MediaWorlds: Challenges for Convergence (Oxford, 2007). Before moving to academia in 2002 he hasworked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1981–89), and the federal government agen-cies responsible for privacy rights (1990–1994), and electronic media regulation in Australia (1994–2002).
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