Online news galleries, photojournalism and the photo essay

Abstract

This paper investigates the online news gallery as a site for new genres of multimodal news reporting, and the extent to which such galleries may be used as a method of news storytelling. News media websites are now well established and the relative ease with which multimedia can be incorporated into such websites has led us to question the extent to which galleries exploit the semiotic potential of the web to tell stories in new ways, or even to draw on long established traditions like the photo essay. We draw on two (of three) phases of data collection and analysis in this paper: an exploratory survey of a small number of galleries in established online newspapers; and an international survey of English language online newspapers, investigating the uptake of galleries and other multimedia. To tell a story, or not to tell a story: that is the question, and the answer, as online news gallery authors exploit the potential of galleries to varying degrees.