The newspaper industry has undergone a paradigmatic shift in the last few decades with the advent of the Internet, the shift from broadsheet to tabloid format, the development of social media and citizen journalism as well as a generally increased competition in the media market. The photojournalistic image has simultaneously become strengthened and weakened in this process. It is more prominent in new ways since the space for visual elements in print newspapers has increased. Yet, the number of staff photographers in newsrooms has decreased while amateur-generated images increasingly appear and many news organizations shift to multijournalism where both writing journalists and photographers are assigned to deliver content in various media. These partly contradictory processes are our points of departure as we consider the status of photojournalism.
Specifically, the purpose of this study is to trace the characteristics of the photojournalistic image and its position on the newspaper page. We pose two empirical research questions:
RQ1: How have the visual genres in newspapers developed over time?
RQ2: How has the relationship between professional photographers versus amateur photographers developed over time?
Our study contribute to journalism research since there is scant research on the changes in visual journalism over time as a result of these paradigmatic shifts, while several studies have examined changes in news.
A quantitative content analysis was conducted of Sweden’s leading national morning paper, Dagens Nyheter (DN) during a synthetic week per year: 1995, when the internet became widely implemented, and 2013, after the shift from broadsheet to tabloid. In order to capture changes in genres, we define photojournalism more broadly than “news photograph” and, as a result, include the full newspaper in our analysis. Since the study is currently underway, it is not possible to include partial results in this abstract.
Theoretically, we draw from two perspectives: One that considers the media business towards marketization and tabloidization where increased visualization is regarded as adverse, and another that foregrounds photojournalism and the image as objects of analysis and considers the photojournalistic image a journalistic statement communicated visually.
The purpose is to build a foundation for subsequent steps in a three-year study whose extended aim is to assess the use of images and chart the development and changes in the news photograph over time. Specifically, the content analysis will be expanded to additional newspaper titles as well as newspaper web editions, and qualitative analyses of images in print will be conducted. The second phase focuses on the professional role and newsroom decision-making processes regarding photographs, while the third and final stage addresses audience responses and interpretations of photographs.
2014.