Theoretical Perspectives on New Aesthetics and Narratives in Digital Journalism

What we call today traditional media (print and broadcast) accustomed the readers/viewers with visual packages of information that mediated their perception of the world and their moral sense in specific ways. In parallel, the narrative formats and structures of journalism shaped the concept of truth and of what can be deemed relevant, newsworthy. A vast research was dedicated to these two elements of journalism content in an effort to examine how they shaped the aesthetics and the discourse of the 20th century. With the expansion of the Internet in the past 30 years and the rise of digital journalism, new aesthetics and new narrative models are becoming central, more or less replacing traditional ones. This paper is a literature review on the evolution of online journalism aesthetics and narratives towards new expressions and formats. It is part of a larger study on the evolution of online journalism roles and values and it seeks to answer two questions: what are the particularities of online news writing and what is their impact on the values and functions of journalism?