REPURPOSING OF CONTENT IN MULTI-PLATFORM NEWS PRODUCTION

Abstract

One of the characteristics of convergence journalism is the prominence of repurposing of content. This article analyses news production processes at the Norwegian public service broadcaster, NRK, through the concepts of genre and adaptation. Convergent, or cross-media, news journalism involves media content travelling across media boundaries. As different media platforms use different sets of sign systems (audio, video, writing, images and graphics), this requires some form of translation or adaptation. This article analyses some examples of audiovisual content that travels across media platforms; mainly from television and radio to the Web, but also between radio and television. News content made for a specific programme on a specific platform, with a characteristic rhetoric, is adapted in part or as a whole to be republished on a different platform with a different rhetoric. In conclusion, the article outlines a typology of different forms of repurposing in cross-media news journalism, expanding on those found in Dailey et al.'s (2003) “convergence continuum”.