Changes to the digital media environment have been a new source of professional identity for digital journalists, write Patrick Ferrucci and Tim Vos. Their new article examines how American digital journalists construct their identity and how they differentiate their identity from others. The authors conducted 53 interviews with working digital journalists at different types of news organizations.

The results show, for example, that digital journalist differs from a traditional journalist based on how each approaches and reports on a story. The traditional journalist thinks about the story with their primary medium in mind. A digital journalist instead wants to tell the story as a platform-neutral endeavor.

There is a growing disconnection occurring between journalists who publish across media versus journalists who only publish online, the authors write.

The study Who’s in, Who’s out? Constructing the identity of digital journalists is published by Digital Journalism and it is available on the journals website here.

Picture: Smartphones at Fashion Week by Melissa BARRA, licence: CC BY-SA 2.0