Mobile News: Journalism?s Shift from Fixed to Fluid

The rise of the smartphone has shifted news from fixed publication to a flow of updateable information. The chapters in this book investigate the implications for audiences, industry and society as news becomes mobile.

Wherever we go, news from anywhere can reach us on our smartphones. And wherever we are, we can search up information specific to that place. News is produced by mobile journalists (MoJos) as well as by citizens armed with smartphones, reporting breaking news from crisis zones where information is uncertain, or hyperlocal news from neighbourhoods where little happens. Mobile technology allows citizens to engage deeply with a cause or to skim headlines so they know a little about a lot of things. News is distributed on mobile networks and consumed by mobile audiences as they make their daily way through time and space coloured by their mobile devices. It is consumed in the niches of life. It intersects with place in new ways as geolocated news. It pursues us wherever we are through push notifications. And news has moved from fixed to fluid, a flow of updateable information rather than a regularly issued product. In this book, the contributors take varied viewpoints on mobility and news, its impact on what news is, how journalists produce it and how it fits into everybody’s everyday life.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

Andrew Duffy, Rich Ling, Nuri Kim and Edson Tandoc, Jr. came together on a three-year research project into news as it is created, distributed and consumed on smartphones. They are colleagues at the Wee Kim Wee School at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, specialising variously in news journalism, mobile communications technology and political communication, and their impact in society.

Oscar Westlund is professor at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, with a specialisation in journalism, media management and news media consumption for proprietary news media platforms. As a visiting scholar he was involved in the project that led to this book, and he was also editor of Digital Journalism, where these chapters originally appeared.