Introduction: Introducing the complexities of developments in Digital Journalism Studies

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that when journalism comes to resolving the conflicts that emerge between people, including journalists, the unbounded spaces of the internet pose particular challenges. It also shows from a political economy perspective how, higher up among fields of power in society, ownership, regulatory frameworks, policy, and politics further pose risks to a more optimistic future for digital journalism being realized. The book discusses how within legal protections for the public – for those who would rather be 'forgotten', for various reasons – institutions have been able to regulate privacy from digital search, even as the long-term implications of such protections for journalism's informative roles remain unclear. It looks at how this has taken shape across 20 years of multiplatform reading – comparing newspaper and online readership figures alongside one another – to put newspapers' struggles into perspective.