Future Research

As more and more people are moving on to chat apps, further research on national and cross-national uses of chat apps for newsgathering is pressing. For example, as mobile chat apps become an established part of news production, will chat apps change the need of professional journalists to be onsite to get the story, or will good journalism of the future simply require an extension of shoe-leather reporting into the digital realm? Do chat apps present unique functionalities requiring that news organizations seeking to use them institutionally set different policies and approaches distinct from those applied to their social networking sites? And will media consumers’ growing familiarity with chat apps change norms and expectations of how chat apps’ newsgathering is featured in published media? With the digital fixer, especially for people who do not already have a network or knowledge of language, can chat apps emulate one-to-one newsgathering methods that happen on the phone or email? All of these questions raise new ones around trust building, especially when reporters discuss trust with sources in the context of censorship and surveillance.