Resumen :
La presente tesis doctoral estudia la construcción de la innovación en los medios de comunicación
nativos digitales, en un contexto de continuas transformaciones tecnológicas, sociales y
económicas, que obligan a las empresas a buscar productos, procesos, formas organizativas y
modelos de negocio q... Ver más
This doctoral thesis analyzes the construction of innovation in digital native media, in a context
of continuous and accelerated technological, social and economic transformations, which encourage
companies to look for new products, processes, organizational forms and business
models in to achieve sustainability. After a theoretical review, the case study method is applied
to El Confidencial and Quartz, two news outlets considered as innovation examples in their
respective geographic areas, Spain and the United States. These companies were chosen
through a process based on an expert panel and an algorithm composed of social and professional
relevance criteria.
Participant observation and 20 in-depth interviews with editors and professionals from both
media, as well as other documentary resources, are carried out to study the companies' internal configurations and dynamics around eight main topics which are essential for innovation in
journalism: the professional profiles, identities and roles, the creation of multidisciplinary
teams, the spatial dimension of newsrooms, workflows, leadership, creativity, corporate culture
and knowledge transference between the different areas and employees.
The results reveal that this type of organizations hire professionals with diverse thematic and
technical specializations that constitute highly valuable resources both in the ideation and development
of the products and in the elaboration of the contents. The creation of heterogeneous
working groups is encouraged in order to cover all the aspects present in the needs of the target
audiences. In addition, to meet this objective more quickly and efficiently, they adopt flexible
workflows such as agile methodologies, especially in those units which are responsible for
generating the products, since they allow constant testing of the products with users, and their
subsequent reformulation or development.The effectiveness of transformational leadership on the innovative capacity of the companies
is verified, since it fosters the creation of a shared vision that allows the alignment of workers'
actions. In this way, companies promote organizational creativity through intrinsic motivation
and professional autonomy, which are associated with this style of leadership. Knowledge
transference is also encouraged, as companies look at the factors that affect the process of innovation
diffusion and try to influence them, through various methods. Contact between different
professionals and subcultures leads to a more innovative organizational culture. However,
those areas which are most closely related to the content present greater reticence and
difficulties when it comes to innovating due to a greater dependence on immediacy, and a more
classic professional identity.
In conclusion, this research contributes to media management and media innovation fields, as
it provides a holistic conceptual framework applicable to the analysis of practical cases, studies
the relationship between innovation and the processes that lead to it, and builds on the perspective
of the actor-network to reject technological determinism. In addition, conclusions are
drawn about the performance of these particular media, and a decalogue of recommendations
for integrating the culture of innovation in these organizations is provided.
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