ABSTRACT
What is digital journalism? Journalists have often emphasized technology to form the definition when considering what counts as digital. That said, journalists use their technology in a wide variety of ways depending on their news organization; it may differ even for the individual journalist. Understanding the vulnerabilities of digital journalism necessitates an understanding of what digital journalism actually is. This chapter seeks to explore just that, connecting numerous streams of scholarship concerning the nature of digital journalism, and here, specifically, to understand the values of the practice. This text will situate itself within two central ideas of digital journalism that are often placed at odds: (1) that digital journalism—at the time of writing—is industry standard throughout the journalistic field, and yet (2) digital journalism maintains meaningful differences from legacy, analog journalism. From that conceptual basis, this chapter seeks to assess the meaning of digital journalism and the aspects of the practice vulnerable to exploitation by hate actors. With this in mind, this chapter examines defining digital journalism primarily through “digitization” and argues for a practice-based view of digital journalism, based on the interviews with practitioners.
