Vol. 11, Nº 2 | 2º semester | Published: 07/01/2013

Guest editor: Sergio Álvarez García (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)

The expansion of the Internet has revolutionized communication in its entirety: issuers, formats, audiences, media, uses… Journalism as a complex information vehicle and its relationship with society and power has suffered from and enjoyed the benefits of the digital revolution facing specific challenges and discovering its own opportunities along the way. The development and dissemination of the digital Press exists together with the doubts surrounding the future of print information. Emerging technologies allow access to sources, an understanding of reality and a more rapid transmission of information, more wide reaching and with fewer hassles.

The blurring boundaries between media increase the chances for communication thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices and the expressiveness of messaging with more newly developed resources. The web 2.0 tools are adapted to different media and facilitate audience participation in spaces and moments of mass communication that until now was inaccessible and ultimately confirm the existence of an information environment with its own evolved characteristics.

This monograph seeks to explore these transformations and draw an accurate picture of journalism today, updated by the tools, processes and relationships within the Digital Society: the new newspaper business enterprise, the conceptual discussion between journalism, electronic or digital, along with addressing journalism as a discipline of study, the latest tools and their advantages and/or disadvantages for the exercise of the profession of journalism, the evolution toward journalistic precision called Data Driven Journalism and computer graphics elements such as complex and interactive display formats; the complementarity aspects of spreading the message through different channels, formats and media (crossmedia, transmedia) or the increasing role of citizens in the demand for specific information from a media source and the creation, production and distribution of content for building a citizen-journalist environment, open journalism (Open Journalism).