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PP 296
Online Video News: Opportunities and Challenges
A. Kalogeropoulos
1
1
University of Oxford, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford, United Kingdom
Online video news: Opportunities and challenges Recent technological developments and the spread of social media use have facilitated the increase of on‑
line video consumption, and subsequently of online news video use. News organisations are aware of these changes and invest in producing online news
videos. Online news video is one of the latest types of digitalisation in news organisations. This comparative study aims to map how digital innovation, in
the form of online news video, is introduced and utilised in news organisations and thus, to contribute to the literature of digital innovation in newsrooms
and news organisations as a whole (e.g. Boczkowski, 2004). To understand the online news video strategies of news outlets we conducted semi-structured
in-depth interviews with heads of video and digital departments of news organisations. Since we expected to find differences in the way news organisations
engage with digital innovation, there are two levels of comparison in this study: First, we conducted it in four countries (UK, USA, Germany, Italy) belonging
to all three media systems (Hallin & Manchini, 2004) which are associated with different pathways to digitalization. Second, we compare the strategies
of different private outlet types (print, broadcaster and digital-born outlets) given that they face different challenges when producing and distributing news
video for digital audiences. The interviews touched upon the current state of online news video in news organisations. By employing a thematic analysis,
we identified opportunities and challenges for news organisations in the production, distribution and monetization side of online news video. When it
comes to the production of online news videos, different types of outlets face different challenges. Print and most digital-born outlets have to move from
being a primary source of text news to creating video and broadcasters face the challenge of having to produce or repurpose video content with a different
vocabulary than they were used to. However, digital-born outlets seem to be in a better position since they do not have to adapt to a digital vocabulary
and are more flexible to experiment with new ways to video story-telling. The biggest challenge for all outlets was at the distribution and subsequently at
the monetization of online news video; the introduction of auto play video in social networking sites and the problems that arise with the use of pre-roll ads
before short news videos have created a yet unsolved puzzle for private news organisations. However, most outlets currently heavily prioritize online news
video.While they do not see it as a means of direct profitability yet, they perceive it as an opportunity for future monetization and current engagement with
their brand. This tendency is particularly prominent in Anglo-Saxon outlets and is attributed by the interviewees to the increasingly competitive landscape
of news provision and the role that social networking sites like Facebook play in news distribution.