Online news, online journalism, online debate? A feature analysis of popular Dutch online news media

The central aim of this study is to map the field of online news as it exists in the Netherlands, and the relationships between journalistic and technical production of news and public debate. Based on the literature, its presents an overview of what online journalism should do in order to allow citizens to take part in the public debate. Then it indicates what types of online journalism were used on eleven popular Dutch online news sources. These sources were also subject to a feature analysis that indicates what features were applied for the presentation of news. The subject of this case study, the filmed execution of Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein, allows us to focus on multimediality and hypertextuality as well, and highlight how video was offered by the news sources under question.