The Illusion of Change: Unveiling News Production and Consumption Dynamics in Zimpapers News Hub
摘要
Digital technologies have metamorphosised the practice of journalism and also the consumption of news. Therefore, the chapter, leveraging a social constructionist approach to technology as a theoretical lens, is aimed at examining how journalists create and package news for Zimpapers News Hub, a news application. It is also aimed at exploring how audiences receive and consume news from the application. This chapter employs a qualitative approach and utilises in-depth interviews with sampled journalists and users of Zimpapers News Hub as sources of empirical data. Its findings indicate that against the populist assumption that digital media has altered journalism practice and news consumption patterns, in Zimbabwe News Applications such as Zimpapers Hub are just an extension of mainstream media and the production of news for these apps and the consumption of news on the apps have not changed. The chapter maintains that both journalists and consumers still keep to content creation and consumption habits that they used to adhere to before the robust digitisation of news media.