BBC News Online: A Brief History of Past and Present

Editors: Brügger, N.

Pages: 213-232

Publisher: Peter Lang

Place of Publication: New York

ISBN: 978-14331-0469-5

Abstract:

This chapter is concerned with the news website, BBC News Online, which is one of the success stories of the Corporation’s online strategy. In taking a historical approach to the study of this website, the chapter concentrates on technological innovation and ‘user-generated content’ (the BBC’s preferred term for audience material), which have played a central role in the evolution of BBC News Online (for a more focussed policy discussion, see Thorsen, Allan & Carter, 2009).

This chapter explores four key historical periods of the BBC News Online website—the Corporation’s online activities leading up to the official launch in 1997, the early years of the website that led to it being firmly established as one of the world’s most popular news sites, the eight months from December 2004 to July 2005 when user-generated content was propelled from a culinary add-on to centre stage, and finally the present-day experimentation with technology that is starting to fulfill early visions of integrated multimedia storytelling. With rapidly evolving online news forms and practices, it is equally important for a web history to document the present. Technological experimentation and projects that might never see the light, could conceivably be forgotten or overshadowed if documented retrospectively. The chapter concludes by highlighting areas of concern in relation to preserving the BBC News Online website as a historical web artefact and the human processes associated with its evolution.

Source: Manual

Preferred by: Einar Thorsen