Digital transformation of news media and data journalism practices: A field study on newsrooms in The United Kingdom

The research thoroughly investigates the transformation brought about by data journalism practices in newsrooms, using the United Kingdom's news media as a basis. Through the lens of Bourdieu's Field Theory, the research seeks to explore the mutual transformation between structure (newsroom) and agent (journalist). For this purpose, an ethnographic approach from qualitative research methods was adopted to collect primary data from newsrooms. In the research, in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions were conducted with a total of 42 data journalists through data triangulation, and field notes were kept in newsrooms through the participant observation technique. According to the research findings, data journalism practices in newsrooms not only play a key role in news production but also have significant potential to influence other types of journalism. Furthermore, data journalism is constantly evolving in an interdisciplinary structure and has moved from being a niche newswork to being one of the indispensable and dynamic units of newsrooms. This situation has also made visible some common and differing epistemological tensions among data journalists: both newcomers and seniors in the field. Finally, in light of all the data and findings, the research proposes a new sub-habitus namely "data habitus" for the journalistic habitus.