Critical Moments of Coordination in Newswork

Abstract

This article focuses on journalistic practices and coordination, more specifically how journalists coordinate when producing Online Live Broadcasts (OLB). An analytical framework that lends from the Knowledge-Based View is developed and used to study directives for OLBs, as well as problems solved in critical moments of coordination. The researchers used mixed methods for the study of an online-first news publisher in Sweden that has won international awards for developments in OLBs. The news publisher has developed directions for how four distinct actors participate in OLBs, working from the newsroom, from the field, and from a TV-production studio. These actors have different general- and specialized expertise and are instructed to coordinate via teleconference and Slack. Our analysis identifies four key stages for an OLB: (1) Initiating and committing, (2) Knowledge coordination, (3) Performing the live moment, and (4) Boosting. These stages encompass seven critical moments of coordination, which refer to how problems requiring diverse explicit- and tacit knowledge are solved by the actors participating in the news production process. The seven critical moments of coordination are (1) Observing and initiating, (2) Initiation approved, (3) Mobilizing MoJo, (4) Knowledge-building, (5) Coordinating explicit knowledge, (6) Performing the live moment, and (7) Boosting.