Abstract

CASERO-RIPOLLES, Andreu. The Impact of Covid-19 on Journalism: A Set of Transformations in Five Domains. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2021, vol.40, pp.53-69.  Epub Dec 20, 2021. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.40(2021).3283.

The covid-19 outbreak is a highly disruptive event in our society. Its consequences have affected different social domains. Our objective is to analyse its impact on journalism in a panoramic and comprehensive way. We intend to identify the main alterations and changes that the outbreak of the coronavirus has caused. The methodology is based on the qualitative analysis of secondary data, taking the case of Spain during the first period of the pandemic as a reference. The results allow the identification of positive and negative effects in five areas: news consumption, business models, working conditions, disinformation, and relations with political actors. These findings reveal that covid-19 has had a considerable impact on journalism. This incidence is ambivalent as it has positive and negative effects that affect different aspects of this domain. The main positive consequences are increased news consumption and the promotion of new formats and information products, such as infographics or newsletters. On the other hand, the weakening of business models due to the reduction of advertising revenues, the deterioration of journalists’ working conditions, the reinforcement of political control mechanisms over the media, and the increase of disinformation are the main negative effects.

Keywords : covid-19; coronavirus; journalism; media; business models.

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