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This book brings together a collection of articles published in a Digital Journalism special issue in 2019 titled “Digital Journalism (Studies) - Defining the Field”, edited by the four of us in our capacity as the Digital Journalism Editorial Team. We had three ambitions with this special issue (c.f. Eldridge, Hess, Tandoc, & Westlund, 2019)First, to offer a review of research that has been published in this journal since its launch in 2013 to examine the current state of play.

This paper is a result of the project News, networks, and users in the hybrid media system. Transformation of media industries and the news in the post-industrial era (RTI2018-095775-B-C43). We present our insights on the latest movements of the Spanish media industry and their influence in the conception of news production during 2020. Specifically, we focus on the implementation of news business models, namely paywalls and membership models, and the movements regarding intellectual property to protect the industry – and their impact on journalists as well. The irruption of the COVID-19 pandemics has accelerated some tendencies in this respect. This paper is one of the results of the research project News, networks, and users in the hybrid media system. Transformation of media industries and the news in the post-industrial era (RTI2018-095775-B-C43) (Mineco/Feder), Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Competitiveness (2019-2021).

In the field of quantum mechanics (at least in its more accessible and demotic form), Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely the position of a particle can be established, the less possible it is to determine the direction in which it is moving; while the greater certainty with which the trajectory of a particle can be determined, the less precisely one can say where it is. Journalism finds itself in an analogous situation. The industry is evidently in motion even if its direction is not clear – although on a general level we can likely agree to a direction involving journalism with fewer resources, more precarious employment, more machine-led work in production and distribution, and where reader-revenue for more niche audiences is common.

The link between journalism and participation has since long been envisioned and argued to be an important one. However, it is also a complex link. It encompasses how the news media and their social actors actively work towards enabling and engaging citizens as active participants through the digital infrastructures of their proprietary platforms, as well as the ways citizens potentially make use of such opportunities or not in their everyday lives, and how this affects epistemologies of news journalism. However, to date, journalism studies scholars have mostly focused on positive forms of participatory journalism via proprietary platforms, and thus fail to account for and problematize dark participation and participation taking place on social media platforms non-proprietary to the news media. This introduction, and the thematic issue as a whole, attempts to address this void. The introduction discusses three key aspects of journalism’s relationship with participation: 1) proprietary or non-proprietary platforms, 2) participants, and 3) positive or dark participation.