Unpacking communication tensions in visual transmediation from print to digital papers

Abstract

The interest in visual transmediation in newsrooms has emerged against a backdrop of multimodal change in design practice. Visualization in news websites can be described as having new requirements and considerations of transforming textural reportage. In this article I consider communication tensions evolved as the result of contemporary media convergence in the newsrooms, and combine them in discussion on how visual journalists make collective effects in practice. Empirical materials involving the fieldwork about in-house visual journalists’ routines, activities and practices are collected from two Finnish newsrooms, respectively Helsingin Sanomat (HS) and Lapin Kansa (LK). Considering media convergence in newsrooms, I focus on an elaboration on the visual transmediation in the two newsrooms with ethnographic research tools, particularly in corporate settings. In doing so I reveal some of the limitations and possibilities emerged in visual transmediation from print to digital papers in the newsrooms.

Keywords:

• Communication tensions
• visual transmediation
• digital newspaper
• Finnish newsrooms

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the visual journalists in Design Department of Helsingin Sanomat and Lapin Kansa for their support on the ethnographic research in this article.

Notes

1. Souza, “Investigating Design Thinking,” 1.

2. Bowen, Bowers and Wright, “The Value of Designer’s Creative Practice,” 175.

3. Cummings, “Knowledge Sharing,” 356

4. Deuze, Media Work, 42.

5. Xenakis and Arnellos, “Interaction Aesthetics and Affordances,” 57–58.

6. Deuze, Media Work, 13.

7. Wilson, Understanding Journalism, 28.

8. Lehtisaari et al., Media Convergence and Business Models, 5.

9. Caple, Photojournalism, 142–73.

10. Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 183–6.

11. Ibid., 25–27.

12. Macken-Horarik, “Interacting with the Multimodal Text,” 6.

13. Johnson, “Dewey’s Bit Idea,” 39.

14. Kress and van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse, 67.

15. Beck, New World of Work, 73–76.

16. Nonaka, “Organizational Knowledge Creation,” 15.

17. Moen, Newspaper Layout and Design, 136.

18. Kress and van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse, 66.

19. Mitchelstein and Boczkowski, “Between Tradition and Change,” 576.

20. Bowen, Bowers and Wright, “The Value of Designer’s Creative Practice,” 191–192.

21. Lawson, How Designers Think, 14–19; Johansson-Sköldberg, Woodilla, and Çetinkaya, “Design Thinking,” 125–126.

22. Krippendorff, The Semantic Turn, 23–24.

23. Wylant, “Design Thinking,” 228.

24. Paletz, Schunn, and Kim, “Conflict and Analogy,” 1.

25. See note 12.

26. Christensen and Ball, “Dimensions of Creative Evaluation,” 118.

27. Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 60–62; Caple, “Intermodal Relations,” 125.

28. Nelson and Stolterman, The Design Way, 139–149.

29. Casakin and Kreitler, “Correspondences and Divergences,” 668–669.

30. Kress, “Rhetorical Work,” 141–142.

31. Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images, 79–86; Caple, “Intermodal Relations,” 132.

32. Mullick et al., “The Basics of Ethnography,” 894.

33. Crowley-Henry, “Ethnography,” 38.

34. Hughes, “The Place of Field Work,” iii.

35. Zha, “The Role of a Visualist,” Chap. 3.

36. Gay y Blasco and Wardle, How to Read Ethnography, 1.

37. Ireland, “Qualitative Methods,” 26.

38. Brannon, “Maximize the Medium,” 100.

39. Brannon, “Maximize the Medium,” 106.

40. Zha, “The Role of a Visualist,” Chap. 2.

41. Paletz, Schunn, and Kim, “Conflict and Analogy,” 2; Pelled, Eisenhardt and Xin, “Exploring the Black Box,” 20–22.

42. von Engelhardt, “Graphic Objects,” 23.

43. van Knippenberg, De Dreu and Homan, “Working Group Diversity,” 1013–1015.

44. Barnhurst, “Newspapers Experiment Online,” 5.

45. Bateman, Wildfeuer and Hiippala, Multimodality, 263.

46. Schwalbe, “Infographics and Interactivity,” 432.

47. Williams, Jorgensen and Wardle, “A Multi-site Ethnography,” 117.

48. See note 26.