title: The impact of new technology on the news production process in the newsroom
Creators: name: Zangana, A
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2017

description: The change brought about by new technology in the television newsroom has become a key aspect of the development of the television industry in Iraqi-­‐ Kurdistan; since the newsroom has begun to adopt a new automated system, it has particularly shaped journalists’ practice and the method of news production within their workplace network. This change has led to the creation of a new form of journalistic practice, particularly with regard to multi-­‐skills, multi-­‐ media and multi-­‐tasks within the newsroom network. Hence, these technological changes have provided the news practitioner with more opportunities to obtain a detailed understanding of their practices, interactions and actions. This research project provides an ethnographic account of newsroom culture and journalists’ practice using automation and non-­‐automation systems (see, chapter two distinction) in two Kurdish news channels in Iraqi-­‐Kurdistan. It draws upon in-­‐depth interviews with journalists; non-­‐participant observation and collected documentation related to the research questions. The current research project is based upon two models: One is Community of Practice (COP)(see chapter 3), developed by Etienne Wenger (1998) and Jean Lave (1991). The COP approach provides a focus on subjects related to the workplace culture, mutual engagement, identity of the members, shared history of learning, exchange of information, experience and shared knowledge. The other is the Actor-­‐Network Theory (ANT) (Bruno Latour, 1992. Michel Callon, 1992. John Law, others), which offers a better means of carrying out an examination related to socio-­‐technical phenomena in the newsroom network (see chapter 3). The ANT approach is suitable for discovering the interactions and relationships between heterogeneous actors (human and nonhuman) in the workplace network. The research project examines how Kurdish newsroom practice and culture and journalists deal with new technology within the framework of the workplace. Alongside this, the project addresses the key characteristics and compared automation and non-­‐automation systems when conducting news practice in the newsroom. In this context, the research investigates the roles of journalists in each system and their everyday interactions and practices in their particular circumstances. This study examines journalists’ relationships and involvement in their workplace learning, their interaction within their community, their understanding of their practice and the shaping of their production in the newsroom network. In addition, this study looks at the extent to which new technology has a role in improving the skills that journalists need to conduct their profession. To achieve this, the researcher has conducted in-­‐depth interviews newsroom journalists and news workers working for two TV channels, GK and KNN. The findings show that the use of new technology in the KNN newsroom has had a big impact on the news practice and everyday life of journalists in the workplace, particularly, in comparison with the findings from the non-­‐ automation system used in the GK channel. The overall responses to these questions in the interviews reveal that the automated newsroom has impacted on news management production, and has increased the amount of news production, interaction of news workers, and exchange of experience and knowledge within the framework of their environment. However, there was no increase in news production associated with the non-­‐automation system used in the GK newsroom network.