Media business transformation based on information technology : A pilot study of three Swedish newspapers

Abstract: The newspaper industry has been transformed after the emergence of information technology. According to the transformation of media businesses by technology advancement this study realizes the importance of opportunities and threats brought by new information technology in the newspaper industry. Therefore, to develop an understanding of how the newspaper industry can transform due to technology advancement three research questions were answered; RQ 1. How can information technologies transform the newspaper industry? RQ 2. What are the barriers in adopting new technology in the newspaper industry? RQ 3. What opportunities are brought by new technology in the media industry? Five important factors were analyzed to answer the first research question. These five important factors are customers, competition, offering, activities/organization, and resources/factor market interaction. Beside these five factors, the concept of convergence plays an important role in media industry as it describes how newspapers combine old and new media in order to adopt to new technologies. For the second and third research questions, different barriers and opportunities were analyzed. One of the opportunities brought by information technology is the possibility of interacting with the readers which help the media firms to develop their product. Another opportunity is to provide different channels to publish the news in order to have more revenue, and the third opportunity is to provide the possibility for readers to access the news ubiquitously. However, there are some barriers brought by information technology such as work overload for newspaper companies by publishing news continuously during the day. Attracting readers to buy newspaper products is another barrier that cause the newspaper companies face difficulties in performing their tasks. Furthermore, finding a way to adapt to new technology is another barrier carried by information technology.