The Berkman Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard University has released a report titled News and Information as Digital Media Comes of Age. Media is transforming at a rapid pace, driven by the rapid expansion of the number of people and organizations newly engaged as authors, editors, and publishers, says the report.

The growing audience of online media not only consumes the news. In addition, many people also shape the news agenda for themselves and others by selecting, combining, and commenting on stories, as well as creating their own.

Understanding these trends requires a broader and more holistic view of the media environment than isolating new or participatory media, terms that are losing value as meaningful distinctions.

The aim of the research is to identify areas where core journalism functions in a democracy are at stake and where there is potential for the networked digital media environment to offer something richer and more representative than anything previously available.

Six key issues are: 

• Under pressure from falling revenues and the disruption of their business model, traditional media outlets are reducing and shifting the scope of their original reporting. 

• Web-native media entities are not addressing all of the crucial reporting gaps left by traditional media. Current structures and mechanisms do not provide sufficient incentives for them to do so. 

• In the changing media environment, news consumers risk relying on news sources that are neither credible nor comprehensive. 

• Participation in the online media space is not evenly distributed with some populations and ideas remaining underrepresented. 

• There are elements of critically important journalism that have not yet found reliable sustainability models in the online media environment. 

• Efforts to understand and address these issues are limited by a lack of solid empirical evidence, relying instead on incomplete information, anecdotes, and intuition.

The authors of the report not only examine these issues in detail, but also wrestle with solutions. The report concludes that the more just, tolerant, and democratic society promised by the new digital media environment is real, but cannot be accomplished through magic. Like all efforts to improve our world, it will require commitment and hard work.