Possibilities to Reinvent Digital Journalism to Face the Challenges of the New Technological Times

Because it involves constant change, the new technological times bring challenges: in addition to the pandemic crisis that affects everyone, among the tensions is a disruptive scenario in which platforming, algorithms, and datafication have emerged, which are related to the abuse of corporations, to which is added the crisis of journalism, challenges that require digital reinvention. Other communication problems can be indicated in a map of the communicative relations that are established and in which issues such as misinformation, sensationalism, consumerism, and pessimism can be located, to which solution alternatives are proposed. At the same time that there is crisis, promising possibilities arise such as mobile journalism, data journalism, longform journalism, experimental journalism, and promising possibilities such as adaptive journalism, sustainable journalism, experiential journalism, in addition to experiments such as artistic journalism, among others that stand alongside the consolidated practices of high-tech journalism involving platforms, human-algorithm hybrid journalism, robotic and AI journalism, of which empirical examples stand out. It arrives at the issue of hyper mediations and, moving forward, reflects on the possibilities offered by public space, regulation, and an international contract for the Internet. The methodological approach is essayistic and based on bibliographic review, and uses, as sources of evidence of the empirical cases referred to, journalistic documentation online, available on the Web. Thus, seeking to face such tensions, the purpose of this paper is to focus on possibilities of reinventing journalism through promising practices that highlight digital technologies, examining journalistic robots, use of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and other journalistic practices. As a result, several promising possibilities for the reinvention of journalism can be highlighted: (i) journalistically innovating on the Web so that it becomes a public space that allows citizen communication; (ii) consolidating the international movement to sign an Internet principles contract that includes digital journalism; (iii) contributing to improving the experience of both the communicators and the enjoyment of the interlocutors, among other imaginative possibilities and consolidated practices. Seeking a tension between these positions, we consider focusing on promising experimental practices that emphasize digital technologies, examining journalist robots, algorithms, and other journalistic experimental practices. It follows that the challenge of reinvention is to develop communicators' critical digital skills and the ability to sensitize interlocutors to feel from the other's perspective. Digital journalism can make use of different possibilities to face the challenges in new times.