Chasing Sustainability on the Net : International research on 69 journalistic pure players and their business models

This report outlines how online-based journalistic startups have created their economical locker in the evolving media ecology. The research introduces the ways that startups have found sustainability in the markets of ten countries. The work is based on 69 case studies from Europe, USA and Japan. The case analysis shows that business models can be divided into two groups. The storytelling-oriented business models are still prevalent in our findings. These are the online journalistic outlets that produce original content – news and stories for audiences. But the other group, service-oriented business models, seems to be growing. This group consists of sites that don’t try to monetize the journalistic content as such but rather focus on carving out new functionality. The project was able to identify several revenue sources: advertising, paying for content, affiliate marketing, donations, selling data or services, organizing events, freelancing and training or selling merchandise. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. The report also offers practical advice for those who are planning to start their own journalistic site

Back to Fukushima: Perceptions and effects of an immersive journalism story

News media organizations have been experimenting with immersive journalism formats in recent years. The search for new ways to tell stories is driven by technology and has given rise to new –and not so new– forms of expression. The initial enthusiasm has dissipated over the years, so the uncertainty of the future of immersive journalism justifies the study of the most potential ways of using this technology in journalism. This research was carried out in Finland and Spain, and it is based on a textual narrative analysis and a reception study comparing the online article and 360º video versions of the report Fukushima: Contaminated Lives from El país. The results identify the affordances of both formats and confirm that immersive journalism has the capacity to generate a greater emotional effect based on a greater perception of presence, realism and involvement, also having a positive impact on increasing interest and changing opinions on related topics. The narration of online article seems to work better only if there is large amount of information that has to be understood and contextualized. However, authors claim that, instead of an essential break, there are similarities between both formats, which are situated on the same continuum of emotionality and rationality. These findings also indicate that immersive storytelling can be an important part of the emotional or affective turn in contemporary journalism. The sensation of presence and empathy towards distant and complex realities emerge as the main distinguishing values of the kind of immersive journalism that Fukushima: Contaminated lives represents

Report on the results of the privacy survey

Summary of key results: The majority of respondents (68%) were concerned about the fact that more and more information about internet users is collected for different purposes, for instance for targeted advertising. The majority of the respondents (76%) wanted to know in more detail what information is collected and what it is used for. Even more respondents (87%) would like to decide themselves how their personal data should be used. In the view of the respondents, the organisations that best safeguard personal data in digital services and databases are banks and insurance companies (72%); hospitals,health centres and medical clinics (69%); the government (59%); municipal and city authorities (55%); and educational institutions (54%). They were considerably less confident about Finnish internet providers and online shops (32%). Confidence in user personal data protection was particularly low in connection with Google (18%) and Facebook (13%). People still take the trouble to preserve their privacy. The most common practices included using different passwords for online services, deleting search histories and not accepting cookies, taking precautions to protect the privacy of people in photographs, and opting out of services that did not employ sufficient privacy safeguards. Respondents skimmed or did not read user agreements for services (EULAs), but simply accepted them so that they could start using the service. A total of 63% of Facebook users, 40% of Google users, 38% of Instagram users and 36% of WhatsApp users said that they had read the terms and conditions for use of the service. Respondents were not without reservations in terms of online surveillance conducted by the authorities. Just over half of the respondents (53%) said they would not grant the Finnish authorities the right to covertly monitor citizens’ internet use. Slightly more than one-third (36%) of respondents would, however, approve of such monitoring. Younger internet users were more concerned about protecting their privacy than older respondents

Yksityisyys ja notkea valvonta : Yksityisyys ja anonymiteetti verkkoviestinnässä -projektin loppuraportti

Yksityisyyden rajoja piirretään paraikaa uudelleen niin lainsäädännössä, liiketoiminnassa kuin käyttäjien arjessakin. Joidenkin tutkijoiden mukaan elämme notkean valvonnan aikaa. Olemme vaihtaneet yksityisyytemme digitaalisiin sovelluksiin, jotka valvovat meitä, rekisteröivät tekomme ja ajatuksemme ja joiden toimintaan emme voi juurikaan vaikuttaa. Tässä raportissa tarkastellaan sitä, mitä yksityisyydelle on tapahtumassa verkkoaikana ja erityisesti, millaisia käsityksiä yksityisyydestä on löydettävissä sekä asiantuntijapuheesta että kansalaisille suunnatusta mielipidetutkimuksesta.Tutkimuksemme keskeinen löydös on, että Suomessa asiantuntijoiden parissa on perustavanlaatuisia erimielisyyksiä yksityisyyden merkityksestä. Argumentit näyttävät palautuvan kolmeen perusteemaan. Osa asiantuntijapuheesta korostaa yksityisyyden merkitystä perusoikeutena, osa viranomaisten valvontaoikeuksien lisäämistä kansallisen turvallisuuden takaamiseksi ja osa korkean yksityisyydensuojan tuomaa etua liiketoiminnalle. Onko yksityisyys sitten käynyt tarpeettomaksi niin kuin Facebookin perustaja Mark Zuckerberg väitti vuosia sitten? Kysyimme, mitä mieltä suomalaiset ovat yksityisyyden merkityksestä verkossa.Tulokset osoittivat ihmisten olevan huolissaan siitä, mitä heistä kerätylle tiedoille tapahtuu. He haluaisivat myös kontrolloida tarkemmin sitä, mihin heidän henkilötietojaan käytetään.Samaan aikaan moni koki, että digitaalisten palvelujen käyttäjän on pakko suostua tiedon keruuseen. Ja vaikka nuoret näyttävät sopeutuneen paremmin verkossa tapahtuvaan tiedon keräämiseen, myös he pohtivat entistä tarkemmin yksityisyytensä rajoja ja sitä, mitä he julkaisevat. Yksityisyydellä näyttäisi siis olevan yhä merkitystä suomalaisille verkon käyttäjille. Kansalaisten yksityisyyden suojalla on edelleen myös suurta yhteiskunnallista merkitystä, sillä se on keskeinen edellytys muun muassa sanan- ja mielipiteenvapaudelle. Siksi yksityisyyden suojaan ja sen toteutumiseen on syytä edelleen kiinnittää huomiota. Raportin lopussa ehdotetaan toimia yksityisyydensuojan ylläpitämiseksi verkkoympäristössä. Tarvitaan lisää mediakasvatusta ja valistusta, helpommin ymmärrettäviä käyttöehtoja, yksityisyyden suojaa kunnioittavia verkkopalveluita sekä selkeämpää lainsäädäntöä. Tutkimus toteutettiin Tampereen yliopistossa, Viestinnän, median ja teatterin yksikön COMET-tutkimuskeskuksessa.Tutkimuksen rahoitti Helsingin Sanomain Säätiö

Outsourced justice: The case of the Facebook Oversight Board

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Assessing Media Platformization in Small Nations: A Rights Based Approach

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Assessing Media Platformization in Small Nations: A Rights-Based Approach

The rise of the internet and the subsequent global reach of digital platforms has provided entirely new participatory opportunities for citizens and created new types of content and services in both national and global media landscapes. At the same time, we have witnessed serious new challenges to individuals, organizations, and society, including political polarization, rampant and viral mis- and disinformation, diminishing trust in knowledge institutions, and the like. In this article, we introduce a citizen-centric model of four communication rights as a normative-evaluative framework for assessing the impact of this so-called platformization as it pertains to small nations, with the case of Finland as an empirical illustration

LOCALITY IN THE GLOBAL NET The Internet as a space of citizen communication and local publicness

The main outstanding features of Locality in the Global Net project were its local and grassroots orientation. The aim of the project was to explore the social meaning of new communications technology and information networks (and the Internet in particular) from the vantage-point of everyday practices, linking tecnology with people's everyday life and communication needs. The approach adopted may be described as participatory action research, which in practice meant carrying out research interventions in local communities. The study was organised in three projects, two of which focused on the development of local citizen communication and one on the development of local journalism by means of modern web technology. During the course of the project the Manse Square website has grown into an important arena of local interaction in the city of Tampere, providing a public meeting-place wor a wide range of different actors