Journalism and history in a change of era

Abstract

The effects of the digital technologies and the Internet on the social media system offer a change of perspective on the history of journalism, which is now at the end of an evolutionary era. After four centuries, the press and journalism have been replaced in their role as drivers of the media industry by the increasingly dominant audiovisual media, websites and social networks. Consequently, researchers are faced with a new dimension of historical time that affects our most recent past. This study suggests several factors to be considered in connection with the crisis in journalism, the nature of the media and the specific era of Catalan journalism today.