The use of external and internal information sources in relation to task complexity in a journalistic setting.

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Fulltext version of doctoral dissertation

Katriina Byström
Department of Information Studies
University of Tampere, Finland

The Use of External and Internal Information Sources in Relation to Task Complexity in a Journalistic Setting

Abstract

Journalists rely mostly on external persons as their information sources. The externality of information sources was dominant through all complexity levels examined, i.e. 72-75 percent. It was characteristic of the journalistic setting that external (information) sources were nearly always oral (94 %), likewise internal information sources, when used, were as often written (93 %). As the tasks become more complex the information needed was acquired from different kinds of information sources than in the less complex tasks: persons concerned and documents were popular information sources in the simple tasks, whereas experts and literature were more valued in the complex tasks. The results are based on a task diary data of 86 original journalistic tasks recorded by 13 journalists working in a Finnish regional newspaper.