Date of Award

2-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Digital Journalism (MADJ)

First Supervisor/Advisor

Hesbon Owilla

Second Supervisor/Advisor

Alex Taremwa

Department

Graduate School of Media and Communications

Abstract

The media world over continues to ponder over the most viable business models to sustain their business considering the effect disruption has had on their revenues as a media, but most importantly maintain their relevancy as a profession. As a result, media houses continue to make management moves in response to the disruption, and part of those is transmedia journalism. This study is set to analyse the adoption of transmedia journalism by Ugandan legacy media houses in the effect to address revenue challenges, the quality of journalistic content produced by these media houses, and their financial viability. Using a survey this study was able to collect data from 136 legacy media houses in Uganda. Phase I involved the issuing of the questionnaires to the respective media houses, in Phase II, a survey was done and data was analysed using tables, and in Phase III where the analysed data was presented chronologically to present the findings. The results indicated that there was indeed increased adoption of transmedia journalism in response to revenue challenges caused by disruption. The study also found that the media houses that had adopted transmedia journalism fell short in the quality of content, especially on issues around fact-checking. The study found that, yes the media houses who had adopted transmedia journalism had made financial gains in the past year since they adopted the model, but did not have a clear monetization plan to sustain their gain which questioned their long-term sustainability. The research pointed out legacy media’s inclination towards audio/podcasting as a new media format. The results show a deliberate move of the legacy media houses in trying to shift their approach, however, uncertainty on which is the proper approach still hoovers over the media industry.

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