Abstract

Media practitioners and policy makers are calling for more public support to facilitate the digital transformation of local journalism. However, newer academic literature focuses on explaining why public support for local media has become a necessity from a market failure and societal point of view. Almost no attention is dedicated to the question which known public support instruments might be considered as helpful from the perspective of local media and their digital transformation strategies. Therefore, this study draws on strategic path dependence theory and investigates how local media’s perceptions of innovation constraints (i.e., lock-in mechanisms), their innovation status (i.e., lock-ins) and their preferences for public support instruments to enable innovation (i.e., public un-lock mechanisms) differ depending on the type of strategy. Four strategies are compared: two content strategies (multimedia formats and artificial intelligence applications) as well as two commercial strategies (revenue diversification and digital payment models). Data about the four strategies are collected with an online survey of local media, which operate in the Swiss Canton of St. Gallen. The findings show significant differences between the investigated strategies and suggest a differentiated approach to public support of local media in the digital age.

摘要

媒体从业者和政策制定者正在呼吁获得更多的公众支持，以促进本地新闻业的数字化转型。但是，较新的学术文献着重于解释为什么从市场失灵和社会的角度来看，公众对本地媒体的支持成为必要。从本地媒体及其数字转换策略的角度来看，几乎没有人关注哪个已知的公共支持工具可以被认为是有帮助的问题。因此，本研究借鉴了战略路径依赖理论，并研究了当地媒体如何看待创新约束（即锁定机制），创新状况（即锁定）以及他们对支持创新的公共支持手段的偏好（即，公共解锁机制）因策略类型而异。比较了四种策略：两种内容策略（多媒体格式和人工智能应用程序）以及两种商业策略（收入多样化和数字支付模型）。有关这四种策略的数据是通过在瑞士圣加仑州进行的本地媒体在线调查收集的。调查结果表明，所研究的策略之间存在显着差异，并提出了在数字时代对本地媒体进行公共支持的差异化方法。