Challenges and Opportunities for Main Stream Media and Journalism in a Digital and Social Media Environment: Perspective from Israel

Abstract

Legacy media like broadcasters and especially newspapers by contrast are becoming relatively less important as distributors of news even as they remain very important producers of news. They are also under growing pressure to develop new digital business models as their existing sources of revenue decline or stagnate. The general response from legacy media has been a combination of investment in pursuing digital opportunities, cost–cutting and attempts at market consolidation in pursuit of market power and economies of scale. A methodological strategy for systematically analyzing citizen participation opportunities in the media is then proposed and applied. Because of the competition for attention and advertising, and the limited number of people who pay for online news, there are very few examples of legacy media that make a profit from their digital news operations despite twenty years of often substantial investments and sometimes significant audience reach. It is not clear that the new environment is significantly more hospitable for digital-born news media organizations. While they often have a lower cost base and can be more nimble in adapting to change, they face similar competition for both attention and advertising and so far represent a small part of overall investment in journalism. The study established that the consequences for informational diversity and media pluralism, key to freedom of expression are mixed. An increasingly digital media environment gives internet users access to more and more information from more and more sources, increasing the opportunities people have to use diverse sources and encounter different perspectives. The study concludes that the single biggest challenge facing journalism today in Israel is the public’s lack of trust in it. This is not a new challenge, but it is persistent, and it has been getting worse in the Country. Keywords: Challenges, Opportunities, Main stream media, Journalism, Digital, social media environment.