New audiovisual formats in the cybermedia: from TV reports to videonews

Abstract

The new digital communication ecosystem has brought about a reconfiguration of its uses as a result of adapting the new media and electronic devices to the existing ones. Hypermediality, facilitated by the Internet and the media’s conversion to multiplatform media, has redefined content. This has led to the emergence of new formats exclusive to electronic media, due to the synergistic merging of written press narrative strategies integrated into audiovisual reports. This study aims to analyze the electronic media’s audiovisual content and to determine different formats. For that purpose, a methodology is developed based on the description of the formal elements of these types of items from a reading of the narrative and audiovisual language, identifying the elements founded on conventional television journalism formats. The methodology is based on the analysis of a representative sample of the audiovisual contents from El País’, El Español’s and Playground’s digital portals from June and July 2018. The analysis concludes by categorizing the audiovisual contents into four formats, which are grouped according to their structure, coverage, and production complexity. Audiovisual content in cybermedia is not only articulated as an extension of the news text by illustrating facts and the main figure’s statements, but it can also be integrated into the text autonomously, and even makes up independent sections in the medium.