A phenomenology of news: Understanding news in digital culture

Abstract

Digital media transform news. First, we see this in changing use patterns. Young people today show a decline in interest in traditional news formats and practices, such as watching the evening news on TV or reading a daily newspaper. But digital media also transform production and distribution of news, leading to new ways to conceptualise and understand news. In the light of these profound transformations in audience behaviour many have started to question the concept of news in news research. In the light of such altered production and distribution contexts which are likely to fundamentally impact on audiences’ definitions and perceptions, this article sets out to explore alternative ways to understand and conceptualise news, beyond traditional news research. What is news today, and how can we study it from the perspective of news audiences, without resorting to preconceived notions? We propose a theoretical approach based in classic phenomenology which, we argue, will open up for further reconsideration of the concept as well as providing a potentially fruitful basis for research on digital news consumption. Phenomenology takes human existence as its vantage point and explores how human subjects exist and create meaning in their everyday lives in relation to basic categories such as time, space and (sociocultural) relevance. We argue phenomenology to be particularly relevant for exploring new meanings of news as the basic dimensions of phenomenology not only coincide with the basic dimensions of news consumption, but also of those of news values; time, space, and (sociocultural) relevance.