Digital native news organisations in the Mexican media system

With the development of the Internet, the news media landscape has transformed significantly, opening spaces to new kinds of journalistic organisations. Online-born organisations – digital natives – have emerged across the world in a myriad of forms and shapes, challenging legacy news organisations. The literature is enthusiastic about digital natives; they are perceived as innovative in their use of technological resources, narratives, and opening spaces to new markets and audiences to produce ‘better journalism’; however, we have little understanding of what kind of content they produce. This thesis studies digital natives in Mexico – an under-researched context – to understand the capabilities of digital natives to overcome the problems journalism faces in the country, such as the clientelism of legacy news organisations and limited autonomy to report.
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the potential of digital natives for producing news content that can contribute to fulfilling the main roles of journalism: providing information, monitoring those in power, and representing a plurality of voices. The thesis analyses the organisational resources, practices and content produced by two Mexican digital native news organisations, Animal Político and Aristegui Noticias, and two legacy newspapers’ online versions, Reforma and El Universal. This project uses a mixed method approach consisting of the content analysis of 1,400 news articles and 28 semi-structured in-depth interviews with the staff of the four organisations to answer the research question: How are Mexican digital native news organisations using the affordances of the Internet to produce a kind of journalism that can contribute to democracy in Mexico?
The adaptability of digital natives to changes in the digital landscape and media systems allows them to set up their organisations to include new practices and cover niche markets. This study suggests that digital natives are embracing practices and distributing organisational resources that can fulfil the role of providing information to citizens differently than legacy news organisations because: 1) they are less focused on immediacy in their reporting and more concerned with providing context and explanation to the readers; 2) they distribute resources to cover issues about underserved groups in society, promoting a greater plurality of voices; and 3) staff routines are designed in such a way that they can dedicate time to more in-depth journalism such as investigative reporting and fact-checking, which allows them to hold power to account.