Visual impact in the digital press: a Spanish empirical research

Abstract

Visual resource (photography and video) inclusion in digital journalism is obtaining importance in the multimedia area. The principal resources of digital press are multimedia, hypertext and interactivity. Multimedia is in an initial process of evolution. The objective of this research is to observe empirically the use of visual resources by the digital pure player press. These media try to take advantage of the new multimedia possibilities in the development and presentation of the contents. We have analyzed empirically video and photography inclusion in the multimedia framework (text, photography, video, audio, infograph and animation programs) in four digital newspapers (Libertad Digital and El Plural, in Spanish, and Vilaweb.cat and e-Noticies, in Catalan) analyzed according to journalistic genres.