Making Space for a New Medium: On the Use of Electronic Mail in a Newspaper Newsroom

Abstract

Within the field of computer-supported cooperative work, there are a continuously growing number of studies of the use of electronic media in groups and organisations. Despite the existence of this impressive body of research, there have been comparatively few in-depth studies of how the computer as a medium of communication is integrated in specific professional practices. The present study examines the role of electronic mail in a medium-sized Swedish newspaper office (newsroom) environment. Using an ethnographic perspective, the study attempts to combine two approaches: it is both focused on the social and communicative processes that are affected by the use of email and oriented toward the messages as such, looking at what kind of interaction is produced through particular email exchanges. Data have been collected during repeated observations, interviews and study of documents and artefacts in the newsroom environment over a period of almost 3 years. The picture that has emerged suggests that it is not the medium as such, but its interaction with other contextual preconditions that is decisive for the effects of the introduction of email. Important factors are the physical localization of co-workers in the near and remote editorial environment as well as their organisational roles in the time-critical news production process. Together, these relationships create a significantly more complex picture than previous studies of what happens when a new communication technology is introduced.

Introduction: aims and scope of the study

Within the field of computer-supported cooperative work, there are a continuously growing number of studies of the use of electronic media in groups and organisations. Despite the existence of this impressive body of research, there have been comparatively few in-depth studies of how the computer as a medium of communication is integrated in specific professional practices. This is particularly notable with respect to the use of electronic mail, which has spread phenomenally during the past two decades. This article describes a study of the role of electronic mail (henceforth email) in a specific social and cultural setting: a medium-sized Swedish newspaper office (newsroom) environment. In this context, email has become an important medium for internal communication as well as information exchange with readers and news sources. We particularly focus on the continuous interaction going on at the news desk, i.e. the place where the central planning and coordination of the work at the newspaper takes place. The aim is to describe how email is embedded in the everyday interaction in the newsroom environment, and attempt to provide a picture of what this form of communication means when used for various tasks in this context. The following issues will be dealt with:

• 1. What is the impact of email compared to other forms of contact and information exchange?

• 2. What general patterns of email communication can be seen in the daily work practices of journalists and editors?

The research approach is ethnographic; it is based on the analysis of data collected during repeated observations, interviews and study of documents and artefacts in the newsroom environment over a period of almost 3 years.

Research on email in organizations and workplaces

Research in the past decades has shown the importance of communication for the coordination of work processes, and the emergence of modern management routines through the introduction and use of new media (Yates 1989). Recent developments in information technology have led to a radical increase in the range of communication forms available. This, in turn, has led to new strands of research about what lies behind the use of different media, and the effects on organizations of new alternative communication forms that are added to the old ones.

One important condition for communication in organizations is how the physical environment makes it possible to choose between communication alternatives. If members are located in the same building, there are many options for maintaining contact. Communication can take place face to face, or in mediated form: via stationery or mobile telephones, paper notes, or digitally through email or internal web services.

Two partly contradictory perspectives can be distinguished in research about the use of email in relation to other media. One perspective emphasizes that the effects of media are strongly dependent on the inherent properties of the medium – in particular how rich in information the medium is (see e.g. Daft and Lengel 1984; Kahai and Cooper 2003). As a so-called ‘lean’ medium, email has been considered suitable mainly for simpler forms of communication (Murray 1988; Bälter 1998), while issues that may involve conflict, negotiation and more complex discussions are seen to be more difficult to resolve via email. This perspective on email and other text-based digital media has been related to the lack of communicative cues (the reduced cues perspective), the lack of social contextual information (social context cues perspective) and a weak perception of the communication partner (social presence theory; Rice and Love 1987; Short et al. 1976; Sproull and Kiesler 1991). However, this view of media has been questioned to an increasing extent (cf. Baker 1998; Bertacco and Deponte 2005; Burke et al. 2001; Duthler 2006; El-Shinnawy and Markus 1997; Boneva et al. 2001; Haythornthwaite and Shoemaker 2000; Horrigan and Rainie 2002; Preece et al. 2003; Shedletsky and Aitken 2004: 63).¹ A number of studies have attempted to explain how a ‘lean’ medium, email, can nonetheless produce rich information (Waldvogel 2001).

According to another perspective, email has been seen as leading to new communicative structures. In several early studies, email was found to create fundamental changes in an organization’s communication, leading to new patterns of contact and flattened hierarchies (Sproull and Kiesler 1991). In particular, it was claimed that the medium can lead to more egalitarian communication. Contacts are established on the basis of common interests and are less hampered by differences in status tied to profession, social position, etc. (Coate 1998; Culnan and Markus 1987; Garton and Wellman 1995; Hiltz and Turoff 1993). Studies have been performed where users were asked to describe the time that they spend on communication in different media (formal and informal face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations, letters, paper notes and circulars, as well as email) a few years after email was introduced as a new medium, and how communication is distributed among different types of recipients (Bair 1979; Kiesler et al. 1984; Köhler 1986; Sproull and Kiesler 1991, cf. also Bishop and Levine 1999). A pattern in those descriptions is that email leads to increased communication with individuals who are not in the immediate physical vicinity. This has been taken as evidence of a bridging of hierarchical structures, proof that the new medium has opened channels for new encounters between people who previously had very limited or no contact with each other. Palme (1995:9) writes: “One important result is that electronic mail does more than just change the form of communication from other media to computers. The introduction of electronic mail changes communication patterns, so that people communicate with different people more often, and about other subjects than before.”

It should be pointed out that several of the above-mentioned studies are based on interviews and surveys. Individuals have provided subjective reports about their media use, and this is the main source for the picture emerging of email as a medium. It is also important to consider the fact that the communication in these studies took place in contexts where there were few or no contacts at all before the introduction of email. Moreover, there have been strong technological developments in digital media, which means that some of the investigations describe conditions that are becoming obsolete.

A partly diverging view regarding the social effects of the introduction of email emerges in more recent studies. Differences in social position between participants have been shown to remain in experiments, regardless of the medium. When knowledge about the communication partner is limited, there is evidence that stereotypical conceptions are evoked about the group that the other party represents (Brigham and Corbett 1997; Romm and Pliskin 1997; Weisenband et al. 1995; see also Waldvogel 2001 for an overview). Certain features of the medium such as distribution lists may also contribute to the reinforcement of existing structures (Brigham and Corbett 1997; Skovholt and Svennevig 2006).

The last decade’s immense increase in networked communication has entailed a dramatically extended use of email in workplaces, both functionally and in terms of the number of messages sent. Several studies have shown that users access their email often or continuously during a workday (Lantz 1998; Bälter 1998; Mackay 1988), and it is also common to have access to work-related email at home. In fact, email is used not only for communication, but is increasingly viewed as a tool for task management (Mackay 1988; Bellotti et al. 2003) and for the delegation and distribution of work. Email has even been described as a habitat; an environment from which the activities of the workday are coordinated and through which essential work information passes (Ducheneaut and Bellotti 2001).

Several studies in workplaces have shown that this growing use of email leads to excessive amounts of information to be managed by users, leading to a sense of information overflow (cf. Bälter 1998). A different but related concept is “communication overflow,” referring to a situation where the individual is increasingly burdened by communication that is undesired or disturbing (Ljungberg 1996). Although filtering has been an often proposed solution to such situations, users tend to develop their own strategies for organizing their email in order to limit these problems (Whittaker and Sidner 1996; Bälter 1998; Bälter and Sidner 2002; Lantz 1998). The strong increase in the use of email for professional purposes, together with the improvement of email software with respect to search and storage facilities, has led many users to archive and re-use vast amounts of email (Fisher et al. 2006).

It is important to consider the aspects of the email medium that have led to its growth and popularity. The medium is ubiquitous, fast and often informal, which makes it different from other forms of written communication, and potentially more interactive. At the same time, email is increasingly used for the transmission and discussion of work-related documents in the form of attachments (Ducheneaut and Bellotti 2001). Although email is thus used for almost any kind of transfer of written information, including more formal genres, the interactive aspect of the medium remains a resource that can be realized in different ways depending on the context.

Most studies of the professional use of email have been made in academic or technical environments, and there is less knowledge of how email is used in other work contexts. Nevertheless, professional email communication has been studied with respect to managers within medical service organizations and doctor-patient relations (Andreassen et al. 2006; Castrén et al. 2005; Gaster et al. 2003; Houston et al. 2003; Katz et al. 2003). Hård af Segerstad (2002) studied email messages written to a Swedish city council office, and Skovholt and Svennevig (2006) examined the use of email within a Norwegian telecom project group.

Consequently there have been few studies so far of the use of email in journalistic or editorial work, where time-critical conditions and communication related to the ongoing news production are part of the work situation. This means that there is only limited knowledge of how email interacts with other forms of communication in the everyday internal work in a newsroom.

Zack (1993) presented a large field study of the use of electronic messaging (called EM in his study) in the editorial groups of two newspapers. The study combined observations with interviews and surveys, and also included shadowing of certain staff categories. Based on the findings, Zack argued that the main determinant for a medium to enable effective communication is its capacity to help build or sustain a shared interpretive context among group members. In the study, electronic messaging was typically used in situations with a strong element of shared context, whereas face-to-face communication was preferred in such phases of the work when new context was being built up, e.g. when planning a new newspaper edition or when problematic issues were to be discussed. These results can be related to previous studies of electronic networks in organizations which have found that personal relationships, based on face-to-face contacts, tend to be important to complement the use of electronic networks for coordination of work, especially when dealing with non-routine matters (Kraut et al. 1998).

Zack’s account includes an in-depth discussion of the relevance of the media richness theory for predicting media choice. The theory is complemented with an analysis of interactivity in different media, based on material from the time-critical newsroom setting. Interactivity is thus presented as a central concept according to which face-to-face and electronic messaging modes differ along several dimensions. The results of the study support the notion that truly interactive discourse requires access to a face-to-face mode, whereas electronic messaging mainly offers support for simpler, ‘alternating’ conversational structures without the possibility of fine-grained interruption and repair.

Hössjer (2008) deals with distributed journalistic work in a Swedish journal where most of the discussion is carried out via email. The editors, board, and various associates form a digital network whose structure provides scope for social interaction among individuals within the professional frame for the contacts. The journal represents a less time-critical milieu than a newspaper regarding production time (monthly publication), although the time pressure in relation to other work assignments is high for the journal members. Based on a corpus of 3,200 email messages from the editor-in-chief’s mailbox, it is demonstrated that writers discuss a wide spectrum of subjects when the possibilities for face-to-face contacts are limited. Apart from short messages dealing with routine matters, the writers bring up more complex issues such as criticism, bad news, or reminders about things the recipient has not managed to accomplish. In these situations, contrary to the results of Zack’s study, an interactive dimension is added in the messages, including social themes, that creates a common ground between the actors. The writers are also shown to take special measures to avoid threatening each other’s face. A truly interactive discourse is thus developed here although the main form of contact is not the face-to-face mode.

It is obvious that such a distributed mail situation as the one discussed in the latter study is frequent in modern society, placing emphasis on electronic mail’s potential to allow people from different contexts to communicate, gather information, form teams and pass knowledge across time and place boundaries (cf. Kettinger and Grover 1997). It has been witnessed in the research literature that individuals communicating across distance build up and maintain relations, discuss common interests or problems in a more or less purely email-based setting (see Baker 1998; Bonebake 2002; Boneva et al. 2001; Haythornthwaite and Shoemaker 2000; Horrigan and Rainie 2002; Parks and Floyd 1996; Preece et al. 2003; Shedletsky and Aitken 2004; Stafford et al. 1999).

A dominating theoretical view concerning this kind of email interaction is presently that people learn to verbalize and elaborate feelings that would be expressed non-verbally and hence be implicit in FTF interactions (Walther and Burgoon 1992). Yum and Hara (2005) write: “CMC² partners can not only become intimate over time, but may even become ‘hyperpersonal’ and create a greater sense of intimacy than FTF partners can (Walther 1996). The equivalent of nonverbal symbols (i.e., emoticons) and other visual signs can contribute to the success of relationship development over time.” These forms of interaction point to the fact that the medium functions as a relational communication channel.

The notion of computer-mediated discourse (CMD) refers to an emerging tradition of research where linguistic and communicative aspects of the computer medium are studied. The perspective that emerges of communication patterns in these studies diverges from the kind of theories that emphasize the inherent properties of media. Computer-mediated conversations occurring within widely different communities and settings are collected and analyzed: e.g. discussions about research issues, shared interests, difficulties or diseases, or discussions in an educational context (Hössjer 2008; Preece et al. 2003; Rubin 2002; Shedletsky and Aitken 2004, 63 ff.). Notably, this class of studies often concerns significantly more complex issues than those associated with the ‘lean’ properties of the email medium.

These studies take their point of departure in various forms of oral and written language, which are compared with online discourse. Several early studies referred to the conversational aspects of email and other forms of CMC (Severinson Eklundh 1986; Wilkins 1991). Recent studies have shown how factors of the context shape the language that evolves on the Net (Lea 1992; Herring 2001; Cherny 1999; Danet et al. 1997). The results of these studies also show an important impact of the technical aspects of the medium, such as synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication and effects of the design of the communication system itself for the emerging strategies of use (Severinson Eklundh 1996). Some researchers have investigated what elements are included in email messages and their various functions (Herring 1996; Crystal 2001; Severinson Eklundh 2008). Others have examined the specific dialogue structure that results from the lack of immediate feedback and the time delay of asynchronous discourse (Severinson Eklundh 1986; Baym 1996; Herring 1996).

The view of email as influenced by oral communication has permeated many studies. Others, such as Hård af Segerstad (2002), have treated email and other CMC forms as adaptations of written communication, resulting from the specific production and reception conditions of online communication. Still other researchers have pointed out that a strict characterization of email in these terms is not meaningful (for an overview, see Baron 1998). Email can be seen as a hybrid form that bears features of both conversational discourse and the written mode of communication (Shank 1993; Heim 1987; Baym 1996; Ferrara et al. 1991; Murray 1988; Kiesler et al. 1984; Wilkins 1991; Collot and Belmore 1996; Yates 1996; Herring 1996). Various aspects of the medium interact in a complex way depending on the situations in which the communication takes place (see Yell 2003).

In conclusion: existing research about email use has been done from various perspectives and in several disciplines. However, in spite of the established position that the medium has acquired in today’s society, we know comparatively little about the communicative significance attributed to email interaction by participants in different professional contexts, and where email is studied as one of several forms of contact (Jackson et al. 2001; Waldvogel 2001). In-depth studies, including empirical observations and text studies, are rare of how the introduction of email affects individuals’ choice of medium of communication, and how changes in this regard interact with the structure of different types of email messages.

In terms of the issues relevant to this study, there are two main branches of research on email. On the one hand, there is a linguistic branch that examines email messages as products with respect to their different structural properties. On the other hand, a body of work-related studies exists that is interested in the social processes that evolve when email is introduced in an organization. The study presented here attempts to combine these two aspects: it is both focused on the social and communicative processes that are affected by the use of email, and on the messages actually produced, looking at what kind of interaction takes place through particular email exchanges.

Theoretical and methodological concerns

The present study focuses on different aspects of the internal use of email within the newsroom, and the messages and dialogues produced, with respect to the overall work context where these messages represent one among several forms of communication. We study the role of the external environment for participants’ choices of media for communication, after email was introduced in the organization, and what these conditions mean for individual contacts between workers. Specific individuals’ use of media is related to a social and cultural context, applying an ethnographic perspective. In contrast to the majority of studies previously referred to, the setting is strongly time-critical. Furthermore, email is studied in a context where individuals have had previous contact via other means (face-to-face, or via telephone).

An ethnographic perspective

Within the area of computer-supported cooperative work, research since the mid 1980s has broadly focused on the role of technology for the coordination of group activities (see e.g. Bannon and Schmidt 1993; Randall et al. 1994; Suchman 1987; Sommerville et al. 1992). Ethnographic and ethnomethodological approaches have been used to capture intricate patterns of collaboration and how these emerge under different contextual conditions. The present investigation is strongly influenced by these so-called workplace studies. A central idea is that the detailed description of mundane, everyday activities will help reveal how participants themselves experience their professional life. This research builds on extended periods of contact with a group of people in their natural environments, in order to understand their values, relations and conduct (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995; Morse 1994; Garfinkel 1967). Several methods are used in parallel, to understand the contextual conditions and circumstances that influence work practices and collaboration, including the use of technological artefacts and media.

The ethnographic researcher works with open questions rather than with specific hypotheses. This does not mean that the work is non-theoretical, but rather that theories are used merely as platforms of interpretation for the observations made. The findings from observations are integrated by the researcher with related findings from previous studies, so that both the researcher and the participants in the investigations contribute to the development of the theories in the field. The researcher tries to account for what appears to be key events in the environment observed; at the same time, he or she can work from their own conceptual framework that the observation is focused around (cf. Karlsson 2003:18). The central aspect of the research is that those concepts have evolved from the observation environment, both from below (from the current flow of events) and from within (from the participants’ perspective) and that the concepts serve to understand structures as parts of a whole. In this way, the aim is to reach an understanding of structures that “include recasting everyday understandings and practices that are taken for granted, or turning the familiar into the strange” (Savage 2006; see also Dixon-Woods 2003).

The role of the physical environment for communication and coordination of work

In workplace studies, the character of the physical environment has been shown to have a great impact on people’s work patterns and collaboration. By offering spaces for informal contact and supporting an awareness of others’ presence and movements, a corridor or a building may encourage or facilitate impromptu communication between members of a workgroup.

In a study of a computer company, McDonald and Ackerman (1998) showed that the way that people chose colleagues to ask for help was strongly related to a proximity principle. It was more common to choose a colleague close by who had no expert knowledge, than to look up a knowledgeable person in another department. Similarly, Groth (2004) investigated how workers use the external environment to keep up to date with events and gain continuous knowledge about the work in an organization. Individuals were observed to walk around in their office corridor, building up informal networks with people around them, using the external environment to acquire concentrated knowledge: reading notes on their colleagues’ doors, noting who is passing through the corridor, etc.

In a re-analysis of data originally reported elsewhere, Kraut et al. (2002) found aspects predicting the probability of successful collaboration among scientists and engineers in a large telecommunications company. Results showed that the pairs of researchers were unlikely to complete a technical report together unless their offices were physically near each other, even if they had previously published on similar topics or worked in the same department in the company. Virtually all joint publications occurred among researchers with compatible expertise. But researchers with the most compatible expertise were more than four times as likely to publish together if their offices were on the same corridor than if their offices were on different floors of the same building, and researchers whose offices were in different buildings almost never collaborated with each other even if they had highly similar interests.

The polarity closeness – distance, in these studies, indicates the central role that a physical distance dimension plays for collaboration. What can be described as a spatial component emerges also in relation to the communicative practices observed in the current investigation. We are interested in what this dimension means and specifically how it is connected to the use of email in the newsroom environment in relation to different social groupings of news workers.

Design of the study

Material

The data for the study consists of material from a medium-sized Swedish newspaper with a circulation of about 170,000 copies a day. The editorial office has about 300 employed staff, including both full-time and part-time workers. The newspaper appears 6 days a week. The material is based on observations and interviews carried out during a 3-year period (2001–2004), and a corpus of email messages. The observations comprise a total period of 6 weeks, with visits of about 1 week per half-year (spring and autumn).

The field observations were made by means of shadowing. Shadowing is an ethnographic method where the researcher follows a small number of persons, as opposed to studying a larger group through surveys. The method can be seen as a special case of participant observation, where the researcher follows a person in all his or her concerns (Czarniawska 1998).

The shadowing episodes have been documented by a note-taking technique developed especially for this investigation.³ The method builds on a form of shorthand notation that makes it possible to capture ongoing dialogue without recording (Hössjer 2002).⁴ In this form of annotation we have managed to include single dialogue turns representing a propositional content. The structure and the content of different dialogues have been documented, as well as the continuous flow of dialogue turns (see the Appendix for an explanation of the transcription principles of the quoted examples). As a complement to these annotations of dialogues we have taken notes based on an observation scheme, related to the exchange of dialogue turns and the types of communication used. The observation scheme accounts for where in the environment different communicative events occur, between which individuals these events unfold, their mode of communication (email, telephone, face-to-face), what their purpose is, and how they follow upon one another in time (cf. Spradley 1980). In addition to this scheme, the documentation has also included drawings and photographs taken with a digital camera.⁵

Email was introduced in the newsroom in 1995, about 6 years before this study was initiated. At this time, computer-mediated communication had already been introduced in many parts of society as well as in other news editing settings. Here, we will not attempt to describe the different phases in the general development of email use. Rather, our aim is to describe the situations and events observed as experienced by the individuals concerned in the organization and made explicit through repeated observations.⁶ On these grounds, we investigate in what forms communication is achieved after email is introduced as an opportunity for interaction in the editorial environment (see also Hössjer 2006).

The main emphasis in the analysis lies on the so-called news desk, i.e. the place in the newsroom which is the focal point in the planning and coordination of news production. In the context of the study, it is primarily associated with one of the two news editors in the newsroom. The responsibility of a news editor (working at the news desk) includes planning the daily news work, i.e. to coordinate the actions that will result in the next day’s newspaper, together with the picture editor and the copy desk chief. This person, henceforth called NE, has been used as a main source for the analysis of the role of email in relation to other communication alternatives, and is the person who has been shadowed in the investigation. This person is also the main informant in the interview material (repeated interviews were carried out, six times in total). The information collected from NE has been combined with information from a sequence of interviews with representatives for different personnel groups (reporters, copy editors, computer department staff and department managers). This has been done in order to detect possible differences in perspective between different groups of employees and to strengthen the basis for drawing conclusions.

In total, 19 individuals were interviewed, including NE. Interviews were carried out with 12 journalists in the newsroom: three reporters, three copy editors, three department chiefs and three persons who worked in the newsroom’s fact department. In addition, technical issues around email were the topic of six interviews with people in charge of computers.

The six interviews with NE were all realized as in-depth interviews in a separate office in the editorial environment. They were carried out in connection to the observation periods (one interview during each period). Each interview took 1.5–2 h and was documented through written notes (as sound recording was not accepted; see note 3). The points of departure were questions related to the work as news editor, the role of email in the ongoing flow of news, and different work tasks, some of which were discussed in several of the interviews. The interviews with the other journalists were also carried out in connection with the observation periods, and aimed to capture how email was used in their daily work (including subjects, addressees, frequency, and use of other media).

The interviews with computer staff were aimed at eliciting information about various technical aspects of the newspaper’s use of email. Issues discussed were how the usage of email was organized, the types of distribution lists used, and recurring problems that workers in the newsroom had had with their email. All interviews were structured, and were documented with written notes.

It should be noted that during the interviews, all informants volunteered to make their own, spontaneous comparisons between the usage of email at the time of the observations, and the situation that prevailed before email was introduced. When routines for email use were described, more or less detailed comments were thus made also about the situation before the introduction of email. In our analysis of the data, we have been able to view those recollections and descriptions in the light of one another, and a coherent pattern has emerged of the usage of email both with regard to how it is perceived by different individuals (with different positions), and in relation to what emerges from the observations. The descriptions have therefore enabled us to complement the observations with a picture of the changes that have occurred in communication patterns through the use of email.

Even if the focus of this investigation lies on describing the communication patterns with email in the newsroom environment, there is thus a time dimension tied to the patterns observed, which yields a perspective on the role of email in the editorial work where changes are viewed through the informants’ own perspective. To some extent, it has been possible to get at the circumstances regarding the work situation without email because all the informants had an employment period that was long enough for them to have experienced the introduction of email in the organization. This also means that a comparatively detailed picture of this transition in newsroom communication emerged.

The email messages that were analyzed were taken from NE’s mailbox. This material consists of two parts. The first part includes messages (n = 116) that are segments of extended episodes of interaction related to a particular topic that may move across different communication media, and where the interaction in conversations, meetings and telephone calls has been documented in dialogue annotations. These messages are thus included in chains of communication events associated with single topics (message corpus 1). The material was collected in connection with the observations, as we aimed to investigate how email interacts with other forms of communication in the ongoing flow of discussions on a certain topic, where a certain issue moves between different forums during a workday – morning meeting, email, telephone, face-to-face conversation, email etc.

The second part of the corpus includes messages that capture a cross-section of different topics as they were handled via email. The material consists of NE’s total flow of internal messages during one week in February to March 2002. It comprises a period of five working days as well as the messages that arrived during a weekend when NE was not on duty. Of the total number of received and sent messages, the following account covers those messages (n = 151) that are tied to NE’s internal communication (message corpus 2).⁷ During the week after they were collected, all of the messages were discussed in interviews with NE, who described the situation surrounding the particular email exchange (these interviews were separate from the six previously mentioned interviews, carried out during observations). However, it should also be noted that a significant part of the flow of messages in NE’s inbox consists of messages written to and from different external senders⁸ and that this type of messages is not included in the analysis presented below. In this way, the messages in corpus 2 constitute only a part (53%) of the total number of messages (284) in NE’s mailbox during the week in question. This collection of messages does not overlap with the material in corpus 1.

Analysis

The whole investigation is divided into two parts that together will shed light on how email is integrated in the everyday interaction of the newsroom. Firstly, we describe the role that email plays in relation to other forms of communication in the environment – face-to-face communication, telephone calls, faxes, paper notes etc. – and what the choice offered by the email medium means for the social structures in the newsroom environment. The basis for this part of the study is the data from observations, interviews and the messages from corpus 1. Secondly, we focus on the character of the email interaction as such in the communicative landscape of the newsroom when it is used to accomplish various editorial tasks. This part of the study is based on message corpus 2.

The first part of the study includes a spatial analysis of the environment, aiming to reflect certain aspects of the social practices in the newsroom. The spatial aspect lies in the account of how the newsroom is organized physically in terms of different kinds of localities: corridors with offices in relation to open office landscapes. This description is connected to the issue of where different individuals have their workplaces and what conditions the external environment creates for different types of interaction. The analysis captures larger structures: how the physical locality is laid out with respect to where different individuals have their desks and how such circumstances interact with what kinds of (communicative) acts (conversations face-to-face, via telephone, interaction via email etc.) can be carried out within the scope of different activities and events. Using this account as a basis, we study how the actual interaction unfolds between individuals with different professional roles, and who are located in different places in the near and remote local environment.

The second part of the study is tied to the email communication as such. The messages have been analyzed with respect to a number of message categories and forms of interaction that are used in the contact between different individuals in relation to their professional roles. In terms of the distinction between one-way and two-way communication we describe what kinds of message flow have developed between different individuals: whether messages are sent monologically (one-way) to one or more recipients in the form of circulars, or group messages of different kinds, or if there are dialogical (two-way) exchanges of turns between individuals. These structures have then been related to the communication patterns that develop, both at short distances and across larger areas in the newsroom environment.

Thus, the investigation as a whole includes, first of all, communicative patterns in the external social environment (a spatially oriented analysis) and how email in this light interacts with communication in other forms (face-to-face communication, telephone calls, faxes, paper notes) between different groups of workers, depending on where their workplace is situated (in the near and remote local environment). Secondly, the study also includes a text study of messages that were actually sent, focusing on the kinds of contacts that staff members with different places and positions have when they communicate via email.

Part 1: Social interaction and media use in the physical newsroom environment

Workplaces for different groups of employees

The spatial analysis of the newsroom shows that workers are placed according to their position as well as the department they belong to. The reporters are placed in a separate reporter corridor, and the editors in the management corridor have their own area, just like the editors at the news desk. Workers that are involved in the final layout of text and pages are gathered in what is here termed the central newsroom with its large office landscape. Figures 1 and 2 show how the editorial work as a whole is situated in different localities. The workplaces are located in different buildings and on different floors. In the different buildings there are both offices connected through corridors and open landscapes. Figure 1 depicts the placement of the central newsroom in relation to the neighbouring localities in the same and adjacent buildings. Figure 2 shows how different workers are placed within the office landscape of the central newsroom.

Figure 1

Workplaces for different groups in the newspaper editorial environment. C-room=room for management staff, R-room=reporter room.

Figure 2

Workplaces for different groups of employees in the central newsroom. NA=news assistant, NE=news editor, CE=copy editor, PE=picture editor.

As Figure 1 shows, the central newsroom, the reporter corridor for journalists with assignments relating to the largest newsroom (corridor B) as well as the corridor for people working in the management group, the editorial group and the computer department (corridors A and C) are all located on one and the same floor. One of the two news editors has an office in the reporter corridor (corridor B). This editor has the responsibility for long-term planning of different news tasks, whereas the news editor in the news desk (NE) is in charge of the current planning from one day to the next. A staircase connects these units with the advertisement and financial departments and the staff canteen, which are located on other floors. On the same floor, but in other buildings (Building B and C) that are reached via connections (corridors C and D), there are departments for features, culture, entertainment and other areas of editorial coverage.

Within the central newsroom (see Figure 2) there are workplaces for a news editor, a picture editor and a copy editor. The latter two are responsible for pictures vs. the use of space on different pages, respectively. All three of these editors, as well as a news assistant, do their work at a desk island (the news desk) in a large office space. Further away in this space there are the workers on the night staff: the night editor, copy editing staff, photographers and graphic personnel. Still farther away, as independent units separated by glass walls, there are the fact-finding department and the sports department. A large archive cabinet creates a partition in the room from adjacent meeting rooms with glass walls, and a coffee room within the newsroom. Further away in the office landscape sits the IT-editor. At the other end close to the picture department, there is a coffee machine. The news desk is the most salient office island when the room is entered from the main entrance and its staircase (see Figure 2). It is centrally located, close to the entrance, a few steps from a table with fax machines and printers.

As suggested by the figures, there are different preconditions for the different types of direct communication that are possible or easy to achieve between different individuals. The editors at the news desk can have an oral conversation with each other in a normal tone of voice, while carrying out other tasks. Improvised discussions face-to-face concerning particular details can be arranged continuously by individuals’ rolling their chairs closer to each other when they wish to look at a text or point in it, etc. Contacts with co-workers (e.g. night editor, editing staff, photographers) further away can be made by shouting across the room, or directly when the editors are fetching documents at a printer or fax machine, getting a cup of coffee at a dispenser, etc. For editing staff, photographers or other professional groups sitting within the office landscape as well as for the editors at the news desk, it is the interaction with colleagues at their own desk island that requires the least movement. The farther away a colleague is located, the longer the interruption of work is required when this colleague is to be approached for a direct conversation. For the reporters, such excursions are required every time they have to negotiate something with their chief editors, and vice versa.

In this way, the physical environment creates external conditions for the type of dialogue that becomes possible or easy to carry out. Thereby, it also contributes to creating distinguishable professional enclaves in the newsroom: the reporters in the corridor, the news desk, the night editing staff, the archive, the management corridor, etc. The central location of the news desk within the central newsroom helps establish its role in the organization: as the focal point in the planning of the news work.

Communication between and within different groups of co-workers

Table 1 provides an overview of different parts of the daily work at the news desk from the perspective of the news editor, and how the choice of alternatives for communication has changed after email was introduced. The table is based on a combination of data from observations and interviews made with NE and the other journalists (cf. Section 4.1). Text in italics in grey rows describes different task areas that are included in the work, column 1 with whom a dialogue is carried on regarding a certain topic, and column 2 and 3 the forms that the contact takes before vs. after the introduction of email in the organization. Column 2 is based on interviews concerning the situation before email was introduced, whereas both interviews and observations depict the situation after the introduction of email (column 3). The order between the choices for communication (from up to down) gives a rough picture of how common different alternatives are. Each item in the description has been confirmed by informants with different professional roles.

Table 1 Work routines and use of media with and without email in internal organization.

There are three main changes connected to the internal work of the news editor that have occurred since the practice of sending and receiving email was introduced in the newsroom. This can be seen from Table 1 by comparing columns 2 and 3, and the order of the options in each cell. Texts are now sent via email instead of, as before, being placed in special manuscript baskets at the news desk (this still happens but less frequently). Telephone consultations between different personnel are now handled via email. Finally, matters are now resolved via email that were previously dealt with through verbal contacts with colleagues not in the immediate vicinity. The alternative of using email has, on a broad front, come to change the communicative landscape of the newsroom.

According to the informants, the special efforts that excursions are associated with, together with the characteristics of the media, have implied that oral direct communication has become reserved for certain difficult topics. In this respect, the introduction of email can be said to have entailed that direct, oral communication has more limited usage. What has disappeared, according to the informants, is to a great extent the spontaneous conversations between co-workers that are not in each other’s immediate physical vicinity in the newsroom environment. Between these groups, there is now very little oral dialogue face-to-face; such verbal contacts are mainly taken about sensitive issues. This is also confirmed by the observations. An excursion on the part of the editor appears to be motivated mainly by objections or concerns that the editor might have with respect to a reporter’s assignment, and where the matter can be expected to be seen differently by the reporter in question (cf. Hössjer 2002: 32 ff). This is now the only form of direct verbal contact between these groups, with the exception of the short, formalised routine meetings that are arranged once every day in the morning, concerning the division of work between reporters and NE. The telephone is mentioned by workers as having a kind of support function. It is used in the internal work when details in the email messages need a quick confirmation. It can also be used to call a colleague to the news desk for a discussion face-to-face.

Table 2 provides an overview of how much different forms of communication are used in relation to each other in the material collected. The figures are based on timekeeping of NE’s activities during one day of the observations in the newsroom. The figures are rough percentages of the total number of minutes and reflect the situation as it may evolve during a day when NE is on duty at the news desk. The total work time that this information is based on is 8 h for the news editor, with the deduction of half an hour for lunch and the time for movements (about 20 min), i.e. an effective work time of about 7 h.⁹

Table 2 Percentage distribution of various types of communication involving NE during a workday.

The overview in Table 2 specifies where and through which medium various activities are carried out. Most of the work time is taken up by oral communication (60%) and the main part of that communication (86%, meetings not included) consists of spontaneous consultations at the news desk with different colleagues: with management colleagues sitting at other desks in the same office island, or with editorial co-workers who are passing by, where the contact is easy to establish through the physical proximity, or through telephone calls. Conversations that require that the editor leave his desk to see someone in another room, a corridor or to fetch documents further away in the office landscape comprise a more limited part (7%, 2% and 4%, respectively).

Reading and writing activities take up a significant part of the communication. These activities are carried out to a great extent through email, which is thus the dominant form of communication between workers in the remote local environment. Reading and writing on a computer screen are the dominating forms of writing and reading activities (writing on screen: 96%, reading on screen: 67%).

Examples 1:1–3 show how the interaction may evolve in those cases where NE approaches a reporter in his or her room.¹⁰ The assignment (archaeological excavation with amateurs) that is the reason for the contact has been recorded in the so-called list – a coordination document with a central role in the editorial planning process¹¹ – as a report, but with a note from NE that it might be saved for some other day. The reporter (Svante) has gone directly to the excavation site. When he sends a preliminary report of the result of the assignment, he has already been back at the office for a while, and can give rather exact information about the number of characters in the text. The kind of presentation chosen, however, is based on the assumption that it can be published the day after, which implies a collision with the space for other texts, and the note that NE has made in the list.

Example 1:1: email

NE chooses not to respond to the message by email, but instead he walks to the reporter’s office. He is making the judgment that the issue can become a matter for discussion, since the reporter has a diverging opinion from his own about when the text should be published. When starting the conversation with the reporter, NE is standing in the doorway. The reporter is sitting with his back towards the door, but rolls around on his chair when NE starts talking. It is clear from the argument that follows that the matter is sensitive. Both NE and the reporter are fully aware from the start what the issue is. NE goes right to the subject without any introduction (There are two reasons that it is difficult to get this text in), and the reporter makes it clear in his response (I have to write it) that he is aware of which assignment is intended. Both argue in uncompromising terms such as must, have to, we won’t take it, the whole thing remains undone, etc.

Example 1:2: face-to-face in the reporter room

Anders: Listen, Svante. There are two reasons that it is difficult to get this text in. If you write it too long, we won’t take it in.

Svante: I have to write it for tomorrow. I have already started.

Anders: If you do a report you have to write it so that it can be published on Friday.

Svante: You told me to write. That is the information I got. I have tried to avoid... I have been trying for three hours and I am charged up. The whole thing will be ruined if it is published later.

Anders: You don’t have to look at it in that way. Would everything be destroyed if it came a day later?

Svante: Yes...

Anders: You will have to write it later.

NE leaves the room and interrupts the conversation at the same time as he starts to talk with another reporter (Lennart) who is just passing by. The first reporter (Svante) comes out shouting (It won’t work!). NE and the reporter are standing in the corridor and their tones of voice have been raised considerably. The reporter runs into his room and shouts (Damn it!) and NE follows. Both are now screaming openly and loudly to one another.

Example 1:3: face-to-face in the reporter room

Anders: Lennart, how did you write this thing about the young people…

Svante: [It won’t work! ((shouts))

Anders: But Svante. You must show respect for others today. It is a must. It is an intermediary situation...

Svante: [Damn it! ((shouts)) [walks into his office and slams the door]

Anders: [You have to! [follows into the room] There are two pages of pictures. We have such things as the environmental minister. I can’t do anything about this. I think... Please! I am trying to think about the perspective of the readers [leaves the room again].

That such discussions are felt to be very unpleasant was confirmed by the editors that were interviewed. One of them talks about a kind of built-in hierarchy between different media when it comes to the contact with co-workers in the remote local environment. In the simplest case, it is enough to send a short email message, referring to a fax with hand-written comments, or with an attached text file and comments made with the word processor’s Track Changes function. Email, according to the editors, is suitable for instructing co-workers, for asking reporters, photographers, etc. to take on new assignments, for performing various services or for receiving preliminary reports on current assignments. The telephone can be used when there is a need for an immediate reaction: when follow-up questions are necessary and unclear matters need to be resolved directly with the person concerned, without having to leave one’s own desk. Only in the more sensitive cases (cf. the examples), or in those cases when it might be an advantage that the reporter and the news editor have access to the text simultaneously, is direct verbal communication used, provided that the individuals are not accessible and can be reached easily through talking in a normal voice or a shout across the room. In this way, a functional order is created between different communication alternatives, where the choice will differ depending on how the persons concerned view the communication. Knowledge of these conditions creates frames of interpretation for the choices that are made. For a reporter as it is described in the reporter interviews, for example, the fact that an editor appears in one’s office without prior notice gives a certain indication of how the editor views the matter to be negotiated. The direct, oral contact becomes “charged,” and this charge creates a form of pre-understanding before the conversation (Hössjer 2002).

Not all discussions with reporters in their offices lead to such strong clashes of opinion as in the example above. On some occasions the editor might stop briefly to talk to a reporter who happens to be in his room when he passes. However, in most cases there is a deliberate aim of approaching a reporter directly, in order to initiate a potentially sensitive conversation. That the editors seek contact through a direct conversation (rather than making decisions on their own) is based on the assumption that this, in the long run, leads to a better working climate. Any other option, they feel, might make a working relationship difficult or impossible.

According to the informants different forms of communication were previously less distinct from each other functionally. Before the introduction of email, NE’s routines included making so-called tours, daily after lunch, in the reporter corridor as a part of the work with planning the news work, in order to obtain information about the reporters’ ongoing work. This is now handled via email in the form of progress reports: short work descriptions that are sent by the reporters, usually at lunchtime. The reports contain summaries of ongoing assignments: their content, angle and length (see further Part 2). Suggestions, wishes, questions concerning an assignment that could formerly have been discussed in connection with NE’s tours, are now handled via these messages sent to NE by reporters. This is the predominant form of contact between NE and reporters. The messages are responded to by NE via email (direct answers or comments). We will discuss the interaction in these kinds of messages in more detail below (see further Part 2).

During NE’s tours in the past, work-related conversations could be mixed with small talk about other topics, according to the informants. For example, talk about the planning of a current work assignment could be combined with remarks on the results of one’s children’s soccer match in the past weekend. Such social conversations have actually been observed between those colleagues who have regular contacts face-to-face (see further below). At present though, the situation is different for co-workers who are seated at some distance. The greater the physical distance, the more the communication is dependent on one single medium. The cost of choosing other forms of communication can be said to have become so high that these are not seen as real alternatives compared to the options that email offers for circulating different kinds of information. In this respect, the choice of communication alternative shows how the situation is perceived by participants, where the form of communication (the medium) contextualizes the contact in different ways:

• 1. Email: unproblematic issue and/or question of a routine character

• 2. Telephone: issue that requires quick and clear feedback

• 3. Oral conversation: sensitive issue or question of a more complex character

In contrast with the type of communication that takes place between individuals that are located far from each other, we have the sort that occurs in the immediate surroundings. This includes interaction between colleagues who are either at the same desk island, who have adjacent offices or who are located in such a way that they can easily call out to each other across the room. Dialogues are frequent between the editors at the news desk, between the copy editing staff working at night, between the reporters in the news corridor, and between individuals in the editorial management. In these constellations, there is rather a tendency for a reversed sequence of priorities compared to the one above. Oral, direct communication dominates in the continuous, everyday work. Colleagues update one another about current events, contacts that have been established, and information gathered (cf. Hössjer 2002:3). The editors at the news desk talk to each other intermittently, in short periods: silent work at the computer, a brief question, silence again, new question, information etc. In the background a radio might be on, and its sound level is raised during newscasts. Colleagues are passing by at some distance; they stop when some relevant information appears on the radio, or come up to discuss some question (Hössjer 2002, ibid.). In a similar way, reporters in the reporter corridor may walk in and out of each other’s rooms.

An example of such a cluster of different subject threads at the news desk is given in Example 2. In this situation, NE (Anders) has just had a problem printing a document. He comes back from the printer with the document, and initiates the dialogue while sitting down at his desk, starting to go through his email messages. After some reading of the subject lines, he opens up the top message from one of the reporters (Vivvi). It contains a text draft that she has just written. In passing, he says to the other editor (Anna) that the same reporter came by the desk earlier. He opens the document and expresses spontaneous disappointment about its content. A colleague comes by on the way to the printer, asking for the picture for an assignment that he is working with. NE answers, at the same time as he goes on working with the texts on the computer screen.

Example 2: conversation at the news desk

Anders: I don’t know if I dare print any more. Vivvi came around a while ago.

Anna: Is that a chronicle that she has written?

Anders: [Opens Vivvi’s text on his screen and reads quickly through it.]

I give up on this. She was supposed to write a report. It was assigned this morning. She went down afterwards [when the photographer had taken pictures].

David: Has Jens turned in the graphics?

Anders: Check it with the chief editor.

The interaction is brief and fragmented on the surface, but is made coherent by the fact that various sorts of information are frequently given in this way, which means that the recipient already has the contextual knowledge necessary. One important aspect is that the editors at the news desk can continuously overhear conversations that their colleagues are having with passing co-workers and with others on the telephone. The conversations of the colleagues form a kind of background sound carpet that may be focused on explicitly when some relevant information is distinguished in the ongoing communication stream.

Within this general kind of interaction there are also other types of subject threads. As other studies of workplace communication have shown, so-called small talk plays an important role. Social themes are interwoven in the ongoing work dialogue and contribute to strengthening the sense of workplace community. In Example 3, the newspaper’s IT editor (Magnus) is stopping by. He sits further away in the office landscape, but he has just picked up a document from one of the printers. On his way back from the printer, he informs NE (Anders) about a message that he has received from a reader, with opinions on the newspaper’s coverage. He intends to forward the message to the paper’s reporters, as a collective request not to neglect its topic. The same issue has been discussed earlier at a management meeting, and the information is now given in passing, at some distance from NE’s desk as a confirmation that now is the time for him to send the message. But NE does not respond to the statement with a work-related utterance. Instead, he connects to the topic of the IT editor’s recently concluded vacation. In this way, social themes are mixed into the ongoing work dialogue, where the transition to a private sphere can be viewed as a way to give indirect appraisal of the IT editor’s initiative to send out the information. The change of subject serves both to show that the work issue is closed, and to signal a positive attitude. The latter is done by NE first showing an interest in what the colleague did on his vacation, and then showing empathy when it is revealed that the latter had a minor accident in this connection.

Example 3: conversation at the news desk

Magnus: You know there is a reader who came up with some comments. I am sending them off now to the reporters.

Anders: Did you have a good time in Mallorca?

Magnus: Yes, no major injuries. My head is intact.

Anders: What? Did you crash?

Magnus: Not me, but Björn had a fall when we were going to the mountains. But it was nothing serious.

Anders: I’m glad it went well then.

In the notion of creating a team, Fletcher (1999: 48), includes all such themes that are external to work and that encourage the social sense of togetherness: when individuals take time to listen and react empathically to non-work-related information, and generally try to create an atmosphere that encourages collaboration (cf. Eelen 2001; Holmes and Schnurr 2005; Mills 2003; Watts 1992, 2003; Wierzbicka 1999). With the new communicative structures that have appeared in the newsroom, with email being used in the organization, this team building is primarily connected with the interaction within different editorial enclaves.

Email, as it appears from observations and in accounts by informants, is used in the local environment for assigning different tasks, when there are many details to be communicated, specific information about contacts to be taken, telephone numbers to people, institutions, and attachments with texts to be commented on, etc. A comment that frequently recurs in the interviews is that the information in an email message is permanent, and can be processed at a time that suits the user. Email functions as a kind of log, a memory aid in the ongoing news work: work reports, orders, bullet lists of information concerning various details etc. This can be seen in the observations but is thus also claimed by the informants. Oral communication is the main medium, but email is used continuously regarding details associated with different assignments – also between co-workers who are located quite close to one another. It even happens, although rarely, that a worker calls up a colleague (on a mobile phone) who has his desk just a few yards away, or who has temporarily left his workplace in order to come to the news desk for a conversation. The immediate local environment is in this regard the setting where the options for communication are the most variable and multi-dimensional. Ongoing talk and calls across the room, including social themes, are combined with the overhearing of different conversations and email messages. Daily meetings are scheduled and may also be arranged on short notice when the situation demands it.

In this way, the usage of email can be claimed to manifest distinct interactive structures in the newsroom environment that interact with the localization of different groups of co-workers. The limited direct contact across various groups, combined with the oral dialogue going on within these groups, can also be said to have strengthened the groupings that existed earlier between different co-worker enclaves. This reinforcement of social structures emerges from the fact that the localization of co-workers in different editorial enclaves is the same as before email existed in the newsroom. When this circumstance interacts with the patterns observed, and – according to unanimous descriptions in interviews – is the result of a change connected to the introduction of email – the work conditions found can be said to strengthen hierarchical structures, considering that co-workers are placed in the enclaves according to their role in the newsroom hierarchy. More elaborated forms of communication (variable and multi-dimensional) exist within these enclaves, whereas it is very limited across those groups. And when social small talk no longer occurs between different such groups – e.g. between managers (such as NE) and subordinates (e.g. reporters) – and the direct oral contact is also mainly limited to drafts being questioned, problems and difficulties being discussed etc., this contributes additionally to the creation of social distance. Different groups of employees are in this way separated from each other, and there is a social distance related to the type of oral contact and the role of employees in the newsroom hierarchy.

The overall social group structure is thus manifested by a high frequency of oral contacts within closely situated clusters of co-workers, and a low frequency of such contacts across distances in the local office environment. How the choice of communication mode takes place within this framework is developed in Figure 3. In closely situated clusters (e.g. between the people at the news desk) face-to-face dialogue serves as the main medium, and email is used for specific routines that have become associated with that medium (e.g. assignments of certain kinds of jobs). Across greater distances in the environment, however, (e.g. between the news editor at the news desk and the writers in the reporter corridor) the relationship is partly reversed. Face-to-face conversations are used for questions that are judged to be of the sort that cannot be handled at a distance (on the telephone or via email) and where the subject of discussion justifies physical movement.

Figure 3

Types of communication in the near vs. remote local environment.

In the light of the opportunity for deeper discussions and small talk that face-to-face contact offers, the contrast between how communication develops in the immediate vicinity and across distances becomes particularly prominent. Also, considering the central role of small talk in workplaces (see above), clear-cut differences emerge not only between individuals in the near vs. remote environment, but also between co-workers who are at different levels in the internal hierarchy of the newsroom. The frequent small talk with colleagues at the same hierarchical level in the near environment can be contrasted with the lack of such elements with colleagues in the distant environment, who also have a different hierarchical position in the organization.

Part 2: Communicative patterns in email messages

Part 1 of the study has shown that with email being used in the newsroom, there is a gap in communication between groups of co-workers that are located far from each other and at different levels in the internal hierarchy. This gap manifests itself in the fact that email is the predominant form of communication between those groups. In this section, we will look more closely at the email messages that are actually sent, in their potential capacity of bridging these groups together. As a way of understanding the depth and interactivity of communication the main question in the following is whether the communicative gap in the remote environment and between workers at different hierarchical levels is balanced by the particular character of communication occurring via email. What types of messages are exchanged between different groups? In particular, we will examine whether the email exchange is built on one-way or two-way communication. Is it a question of delivery of information, or directions, etc. that the receiver can integrate in his or her work without further email contact, or are the message sequences more dialogical in nature? In the latter case, what kinds of dialogues take place and how are they related to the occurrence of the kind of social small talk that has been shown to have an important role in professional work climate? This will be realized for groups in the near and remote environment and for workers at different levels in the internal hierarchy. As before, the analysis takes its point of departure in the situation at the news desk (through NE’s mailbox), which involves, through its central role, a cross-section of different types of messages being sent internally in connection with the news work. This analysis is based on Corpus 2 (cf. Section 4.1).

Table 3

Table 3 Types of messages, senders and receivers in NE’s internal email communication (Corpus 2).

shows the number of messages that are realized as one-way (M = monological) and two-way communication (D = dialogical), respectively. The table includes both the emails that NE sends and the ones that he receives from co-workers. In the top header of the table the sender is given, and the respective column (excluding the leftmost column) indicates those email genres that are produced by different groups of writers, combined with information for each work role and genre (inside the table) about who is the recipient of the message. An overall distinction is made depending on whether sender and recipient are located in the vicinity of each other, or at a distance. This is indicated in the table by using lower-case and capitalized headings, respectively, in the recipient fields. This overview table includes only those genres that are sent internally within the newsroom, and the basis for the text labels is those message genres that were discerned by NE.¹² The leftmost column of the table displays how the messages are related to different parts of the news production process (marked in boldface) as well as the type of message with respect to the form of contact (marked in italics). The message genres are sorted according to their orientation to providing information, commissioning/ordering work, or discussing work-related issues. Within these structures we distinguish between cases that are one-way (monological) or two-way (dialogical) in character. A very small group of messages (Social themes) are not covered in the categories connected to the overall news production, but are described in terms of their interactive character.

As the table shows, the bulk of the internal messages – 108 of totally 151 (72%) – have a monological character. They are sent without any expectation of a response from the recipient.¹³ These are starkly conventionalized messages that are integrated in different editorial activities and routines. The messages have a form-based character where the information is sorted into distinct fields (entertainment report, circular, internal information). They have the form of a standardized text, saved as a kind of template in the computer, that is modified according to the situational circumstances and sent out on a daily basis (e.g. reminder about briefing, see Example 1:1).

For NE, who has the responsibility for general coordination of the news production process, email messages are aimed at receiving and delivering current information. The messages that are sent by NE contain monological orders or reservations of space in the newspaper for various articles (page bookings) and reminders about work reports from the reporters (reminder about briefing). NE distributes news coverage assignments and tasks among co-workers. He sends out messages that, in varying ways, follow up and take a position concerning details of the work of the news reporters (suggestions, wishes, discussion, comments, answers, questions). He delivers information about the planned organization of the edition of the newspaper, which is distributed to everyone in the newsroom. However, it should be noted that there are also a few cases of messages with social themes (5 messages). These are congratulations and some joking poems; the latter relate to an email contact that NE had with one particular reporter.

In a similar way, the editors of different departments coordinate various activities. They have the overall responsibility for the news work in their particular area: culture, entertainment, sports, county and economy. The email messages representing these editors serve such general purposes (information, circulars and entertainment reports) between different departments. They are sent out one-way. Example 4 concerns information about the content of a TV supplement. Such information is sent out once a week to a list of permanent recipients, and is divided into pre-defined parts: TV, Video/DVD, videolist and entertainments.

Example 4: email – internal information

The news assistant is NE’s secretary, and has the responsibility for monitoring the external news situation. This is illustrated in the frequent summaries (cf. Example 5) that are written on the basis of the news broadcasts of the local radio station. These summaries are sent one-way with a certain delay (at the most 1 h) to NE, the web and economy departments, the picture editor and the county editor. The reports arrive at about 1-h intervals: at 0830, 0930, 1030, 1130, 1230, 1330, 1430, 1530 hours. The summaries have the form of a bullet list. Each news item is presented as a note of a few lines, under a bullet without a heading. The number of items is 2 in Example 5, but varies widely across messages.

Example 5: email— radio report

The reporters at NE’s newsroom work with summaries of ongoing work (progress reports). This implies that the email messages that they produce focus on individual jobs. For example, they write reports about the progress of their assignments. These are generally written in a kind of bullet form (when there is more than general information) that recurs from message to message. Under each new bullet point, information is given concerning ongoing work, partly as sentence fragments. This kind of text arrangement is included in a template with an occasional salutation and a final greeting.

The progress reports are accordingly a kind of briefing, i.e. a summary of the state of the work for individual reporters. These reports have, as mentioned in Part 1, replaced the daily tour that NE made previously around lunchtime in the reporter corridor. The progress reports are sent daily, usually around noon, to NE from the reporters that are on duty. The messages are focused on the information that NE needs for the coordination of work. Example 6 deals with a work description. Information is given on a booked interview and where the reporter will be while the interview story is being written, as well as how she can be reached.

Example 6: email – progress report containing work description

Example 7 is a text description. An estimate is given of the length of several news stories, in the form of a list complemented with information about the number of characters.

Example 7: email – progress report containing text description

As the examples illustrate, these are strongly work-focused messages that can be seen as replacements of the tours that NE made earlier to the reporter corridor. They have a logistic character, in the sense that they are written to be easy to handle (bullet-point lists, and short texts).

The monological messages are sent to fixed lists of recipients (cf. e.g. internal information and radio report), or a single recurring recipient (cf. the progress reports from reporters to NE). In most cases, they are aimed at providing information about current activities, taking advantage of the permanent character of email compared to other media.

The messages that NE sends to individuals at the same hierarchical level (i.e. other editors) are circulars aimed at distributing information or planning upcoming work (entertainment report, TV supplement). Messages are sent for their information, in order to avoid duplication of work between different departments. For co-workers that are not at the same level as the sender (i.e. reporters) the circulars sent are related to assignments that they have been given by NE. The information in those types of circulars was previously distributed at meetings, or by paper summaries that were provided to those concerned in special files on a desk. In this regard, email has brought with it a considerable simplification, as physical transportation of paper documents has been replaced by electronic messaging.

The majority of the monological messages are exchanged between colleagues in the remote local environment. As mentioned before in Part 1 of this paper, messages are also occasionally exchanged between co-workers that are located close to each other. For example, there are circulars sent to an entire distribution list. Another example is that radio reports from the news assistant are also sent to NE who is seated in the immediate vicinity. Other messages of this character in the corpus are bookings and orders of different kinds that are sent from an editor to another who is located close by.

Only a minor part of the messages (n = 43, 28%) are dialogical in the sense that they explicitly request a response from the recipient, or display a reaction to something already written. These messages are short and strongly work-focused. They seem to be written at high speed, with terse formulations that have also an oral character – the latter has also been noted in other, less time-critical environments (cf. e.g. Severinson Eklundh 1986). An example is the following: “Hello, have had new email contact with Fransson. Is it OK that the Newspaper publishes on March 6 and the Daily News on March 7, asks Lotta”. Of these messages, only a limited number (n = 12) deal with something other than solving small problems, coordinating time schedules or deciding on staff allocation issues. Question-answer sequences are not uncommon, nor are suggestions, wishes, instructions and comments, and in all cases the message threads are short. No social themes are included here, with the exception of opening greetings and concluding signatures and the five messages where the whole message is devoted to this kind of content.

The main pattern is a simple question followed by a simple answer, as illustrated by Example 8. The question in this example is about an assignment that was just finished, which is responded to by NE in a single sentence. The reporter outlines two alternatives for dealing with the issue, and thereby makes it easy for the other party (NE) to react to it without writing a lengthy response.

Example 8: email – question

Table 4 Message threads in Corpus 2.

Also within the dialogical message exchange, patterns arise that can be related to social structures in the near and remote environment. Table 4 displays the length of the dialogical threads that occur in the material collected.

As the overview in the table shows, in about half of the messages there is a short dialogue: a reaction follows something written in a previous message. Most of the short threads (with two turns) are generated between NE and the reporters in the newsroom environment. These usually concern limited matters, related to the production of different articles. Such issues are discussed only via email, even if the original idea of the article may have been introduced in a meeting or in a direct conversation with a reporter. A common case is that a reporter sends a progress report which NE comments on. Alternatively, there is a question, a request or a suggestion, which is countered by a short response or comment from NE (cf. Example 8).

This pattern is in line with what Zack (1993) observed in his investigation, where the majority of email conversations analyzed represented what he called alternating dialogues: dialogues in the prototypical form of a simple question that is followed by a short answer, in contrast to the more elaborated, interactive conversations that are maintained face-to-face.

The pattern of the dialogues between editors (which occur now and then) is somewhat different. The dialogue changes tracks more often, is transferred to an oral conversation or meeting on one of the relevant subjects: discussion about text drafts, long-term planning, editorial issues, and consultations of various sorts. A question may be raised via email and then answered face-to-face. In cases that concern an editorial issue, a switch of this kind appears to be the norm. The message (only one case in the material, cf. Table 3) is responded to by an editor approaching NE at his desk. This conversation leads to the scheduling of a meeting where a decision is made, with several editors participating.

In the message chain shown in Example 9, the dialogue is carried out between the two editors. NE is seated in the news desk and the colleague in the news editors’ room (the planning room) in the reporter corridor (cf. Figure 1). The initiating contact (message 1, from the news editor’s colleague) is about an idea for how the Newspaper should give attention to the International Women’s day which will take place about a week later.

Example 9:1–9:4: email – idea discussion

A suggestion is outlined by NE’s editor colleague and is supported by a work description for a reporter who has been working on an article. The suggestion involves how the reporter’s work can be combined with other journalistic contributions. It is followed by a message from NE (message 2) where he launches another alternative. The next message is a statement (OK) from the colleague (message 3) saying that there is now an open situation, with two alternatives that may need to be balanced against each other in an oral discussion.

Here the discussion is in a sort of situation that corresponds to Message 1 in Example 8 above. In contrast to Example 8 these are however two more complex alternatives, which cannot easily be negotiated via email. The statement by NE’s colleague is followed up by NE with yet another message (Message 4). NE accounts for the options existing to discuss the issue orally during the workday, and he also indicates that his idea might be difficult to carry out.

In this way, the discussion moves back and forth between different standpoints where the ultimate solution is not evident from the start. Compared to Example 8, the development of the two alternatives is more extended here. The discussion starts in email, but is transferred to an oral conversation when it becomes too complex to finish it in this mode.

As suggested in Example 9, these cases concern issues that are complicated, and cannot be resolved in a few email exchanges. Regardless of whether the dialogue is carried on with someone at the same office island, or at some distance, it is not a big effort to let the communication switch over to oral interaction. In other words, the change from email to spoken interaction (cf. Example 9) might also happen when managing editors are located far from each other (at the news desk vs. in the management corridor, cf. Figure 1).

An important aspect is that these cases concern co-workers that are on the same level in the organizational hierarchy. These colleagues do not give each other work orders (as in the case of NE and the reporters). The contact builds on the fact that different factors can be balanced against each other in a more unconditional, problem-solving dialogue. In this way, a contrast is created that strengthens the social structures observed in the newsroom (Part 1). On the one hand, a difference emerges between the near and remote local environment, which has to do with whether email or face-to-face communication is the main medium. On the other hand, there is also a distinction between the orientations of communication in those contexts: whether it is oriented towards simple themes, or is of a more problem-solving character.

Looking at the communication going on via email in the newsroom from a general perspective, it is clear that the patterns that stand out with respect to the choice between different alternatives for communication in the newsroom (examined in Part 1) are further emphasized in the structures exhibited by the email communication as such (Part 2). The communication between different co-workers across the remote environment is mainly built on one-way communication: short, conventionalized messages that include work-related information of various kinds. The two-way communication that is actually taking place can primarily be seen within the framework of what has been called an alternating dialogue: simple topics, exchanged in short messages chains between two co-workers (Zack 1993). In this sense, the email communication in the remote local environment is not of an in-depth character, and does not compensate for the communicative gap that was observed in the first part of this study.

Compared to the colleagues who are close to each other and who also have the same level of position in the internal hierarchy, the above differences are especially pronounced for those co-workers that are located at a distance from one another, and those who are at different levels in the internal newsroom hierarchy. For those two groups, the daily communication via email, and its relationship to other media, is of a very different character.

Discussion and conclusions

During the 40 or so years that have passed¹⁴ since the first email messages were sent, the conditions for the use of digital technologies, as well as attitudes towards them, have changed radically. Sending email does not, as before, represent a choice of some unknown technology. Email is now a part of many people’s everyday life, both at work and privately. Individuals use email to write many different sorts of messages, adapting them in various ways to the situation and their own communicative needs.

Several previous investigations have focused on communicative aspects of email. These studies range from linguistically oriented ones, studying sequences of messages and their structure, to social and work-related studies of how email is introduced in an organization. In most of those previous studies the purpose has been to understand the effects of email as more or less new medium (cf. Section 2), and the research has been done primarily in academic and technical contexts.

A pattern that emerges in those descriptions is that email leads to increased communication between individuals who are not in the immediate physical vicinity of each other. This has been taken as evidence of a bridging of hierarchical structures, demonstrating that the new medium has opened channels for new encounters between people who previously had no or very limited contact with each other. This pattern has been found both in the context of workplaces where people are co-located (Coate 1998; Culnan and Markus 1987; Garton and Wellman 1995; Hiltz and Turoff 1993) and in communication at a distance, connected to interorganizational contacts or where private citizens use email to contact public authorities (Hård af Segerstad 2002).

In the present study, the purpose has been to provide a picture of the communicative patterns including email in a newspaper editorial environment. The study presented deviates from the above research efforts in several important ways. Firstly, it focuses on a context that has not been described to a great extent before in relation to its email usage. What serves as a basic condition here, compared to the majority of the studies referred to, is that the communication in the newsroom is part of a strongly time-critical environment, where an important precondition is the continuously ongoing flow of news. Secondly, the email usage in this environment takes place between co-workers who also have contact in other forms: contacts that were established long before the present study (cf. Zack’s study of “ongoing management groups”).

Using an ethnographic approach, we have concentrated both on the social and communicative processes that are affected by the use of email, and the email sequences produced, looking at what kind of interaction actually occurs through particular email exchanges. On the basis of an analysis of co-workers’ physical localization and its significance for communicative patterns, on the one hand, and the study of email messages as such, on the other hand, we have attempted to give an in-depth account of the role of email in the communication landscape of the newsroom. Although the email corpus that we had access to was limited, we have been able to reach findings in the two parts of the study that support each other. We have been particularly interested in what a physical distance dimension (a spatial component) plays for collaboration and specifically how it is connected to the use of email in the newsroom environment in relation to positions and groups of news workers. This perspective has been used as a platform of interpretation.

The picture that emerges from the analysis of our data differs from what has been found in other studies about email. Rather than creating encounters between people, or bridging social barriers, we have found that the effect of email has been rather the opposite. Hierarchical structures have been reinforced between different co-worker groups in the newsroom. Highly variable and multi-dimensional communication (face-to-face, telephone etc.) goes on within these groups (in the near or immediate environment), but to a very limited extent across the groups (in the remote environment), resulting in a communicative gap in the newsroom environment as a whole.

This communication gap between workers in the remote environment is connected to the use of email as a main form of contact, and theoretically it might be the case that this communication would compensate for the lack of other contacts. The communication maintained among workers in the remote environment, however, builds primarily on email as one-way communication: short, conventionalized messages containing information of different kinds related to the news work. The two-way communication that actually occurs follows the pattern described as alternating dialogue: short messages followed by a reply (Zack 1993). The email communication in the remote environment is in this regard not of an in-depth character and does not balance the communicative gap observed in the newsroom environment.

It might be tempting to interpret these effects as contradicting the results of studies pointing at email as a medium for social contacts. But what is at issue here is rather a displacement in the communicative patterns, where email interacts with other communication alternatives depending on contextual conditions. This becomes evident when email is studied both in an organizational context, and on the basis of email messages as such. Information exchange is a vital part of the newsroom work, and when email is introduced in this kind of environment it lends itself readily to such purposes. The main part of the messages sent are anchored in the ongoing news work, which requires a rapid flow of information. Parts of the oral interaction that previously fulfilled these functions have disappeared when email – adapted for quick information transfer – was introduced in the newsroom. This also had the consequence that other forms of spoken contacts were reduced, with effects on the social structures of the newsroom.

When email co-exists with verbal interaction in the immediate physical environment, it takes on the role of a supplemental medium. When it becomes the dominating form of contact, and this contact is information-oriented, the medium does not contribute to the bridging of social divides, even though there are occasional examples of more personal themes in the material collected. When such a pattern in the remote, internal environment is combined with a tight interaction and social team building within particular co-located groups, the effect becomes a reinforcement of existing group structures. The ‘costs’ related to a spatial component that individuals consider they have to pay, in the form of various efforts, are balanced against each other, resulting in different choices depending on the external circumstances – how far away somebody sits, what the subject matter is, who the communication partner is, whether something needs to be memorized or documented in writing, etc.

These circumstances can be compared to the role of email in settings where the participants have not had previous contact and where the environment is less time-critical. For example, Hård af Segerstad (2002) describes how the contacts between citizens and a municipality administration increased when email was introduced in the administration. People who had not turned to the administrative office before, suddenly contacted them with questions of different kinds. Similar accounts of email in organizations have been described in several other studies, although these studies were built on interviews and did not involve any study of the message exchange itself (cf. Section 2). Contacts were established on the basis of common interests and were less hampered by differences in status tied to profession, social position, etc. (Coate 1998; Culnan and Markus 1987; Garton and Wellman 1995; Hiltz and Turoff 1993).

In less time-critical environments, it can be argued, there is time for the extralinguistic strategies that may be required for handling more complex issues: extended dialogues, politeness work to avoid conflicts, etc. (Hössjer 2008). In these settings there is also a possibility to engage in more extended contacts and problem-solving work. In various network communities, individuals carry on discussions around different research issues and interests, common problems or illnesses, or learning activities (Shedletsky and Aitken 2004, p. 63 f., Preece et al. 2003). Discussions then might become more profound and extended in time than in the time-critical, information-focused newsroom environment. Email is the only form of contact, and the communication takes on a dialogical character. Therefore, quite different conditions are created for the bridging of communicative barriers. More text-based research is necessary in order to investigate this issue further.

In a research perspective where individual email messages or message threads are studied as isolated text entities, however, differences in the preconditions for communication may not be revealed. The same holds for studies where social structures in the surrounding environment are focused on without a consideration of the messages where communication is held. The relationships between the external, social structures and the interactive properties of the message exchange are not likely to be brought to the surface.

In this investigation, we have attempted to combine aspects of both perspectives. The picture that has emerged here suggests that it is not the medium as such, but its interaction with other contextual preconditions that is decisive for the effects of the introduction of email. Together, these relationships create a significantly more complex picture than has previously been found of what happens when a new communication technology is introduced.

Appendix

The following key explains the transcription marks of various examples of conversations.

...:

Three dots: The turn continues but no note was recorded.

... :

Three dots underlined. Break in dialog by speaker.

the [text]:

Square brackets: Comment, clarification of reference between turns.

((shouts)):

Double parentheses: Comment on how a dialog takes place: for instance if someone is shouting, is handing over a text, etc.

[:

Simple square bracket: Overlapping speech. Indicated when a turn starts before another turn is finished. Exactly where the overlapping begins is not indicated.

[[:

Double square brackets: Simultaneously initiated utterances.

(word):

Simple parentheses around word: Interpretation uncertain.

/:

Slash: A brief pause; indicated only in telephone conversations where the interlocutor’s response is not heard.

//:

Double slash: A long pause; indicated only in telephone conversations where the interlocutor’s response is not heard.

(Lena):

Simple parentheses: Uncertainty about person’s name, for example. Speaker’s identity is not clear.

have :

Underlined auxiliary verb: omitted auxiliary verb that was supplied in transcription.