Abstract

As the recent unprecedented penetration of online news into societies has shown no sign of stopping, there is still insufficient knowledge about the socio-technical dynamics of its diffusion to help forecast its future. What drives/impedes the take-up of online technologies in the newsroom? In what way do the much-touted features of online news contribute to the way people adopt, use and integrate it into daily life? How is this process affected by users' existing socio-psychological conditions (e.g. social status, news orientation, atttudes to new technologies, Internet experience)? Will online news gradually displace and then replace older news forms? Does the rise of blogs, forums and other "Web 2.0" platforms spell a slow death of journalism? What does all this mean for the future of news? This book explores the 160-year evolution of online news to answer these and related questions. Employing historical and survey data with an interdisciplinary and international perspective, it is directed to both newspeople and scholars in journalism studies, Internet studies, audience research, media sociology, media history, media economics, media psychology, innovation diffusion and so on.