Since its emergence, journalism has taken advantage of the technological advances existing in its historical context. First the printing press, then the telegraph, radio, television, and so on. The same happened with the Internet, especially because of the new potential it offers, since it allows to condense the advantages of the previous means of communication. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have transformed the way in which the media are organized, socialized and consume content, as well as the way in which information products are produced. In this scenario of transformations, the relevance of using journalistic genres is under constant debate.
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The World Wide Web (WWW) has a set of very useful characteristics for Journalism: it is instantaneous, decentralized, immediate, worldwide, interactive, capable of unlimited extension of its contents, its scope is flexible and adaptable in an infinite number of possibilities. It can be used to break the isolation of individuals and groups or, on the contrary, to deepen it. Anyone with the necessary equipment and humble technical knowledge can mark their presence in cyberspace, announce their message to the world and be heard, just as they can be the recipient of countless information. For these reasons, the Basque professor Guillermo López García states that the impact of ICTs on today's society constitutes "the most relevant historical event of the last two decades".
ICTs directly influence the hypermedia production processes with the appearance of new channels of communicative flows, the resizing of the time factor and the significance of the place where the individual chooses or needs to communicate. All these transformations also influence, in a certain way, the organization of roles and relationships, both internal and external. These roles have evolved to such an extent that digital journalism today requires the use of hypertextual and multimedia resources and interactive elements that enrich the message being communicated.
With the passage of time, the traditional genres, popularized by the printed press, were taken to other media such as television, radio and then to cyberspace. Even in the hypermedia platform offered by the Internet, it is possible to contemplate cases where the genres remain unchanged and well defined as informative, interpretative and opinion. However, in the new digital context, enriched with hypertextuality, the matrix typology when elaborating the genres becomes diffuse and intermingles with multimedia and interactivity, since hyperlinks, sound, text, photographs, interactive graphics, among other resources that the platform supports, are added.
The new digital panorama articulates a new journalistic discourse that motivates to consider new ways of storytelling, where multimedia, hypertext and interactive resources bring with them a series of adjustments to journalistic formulas and genres. This is how cyberjournalism arises, an informative and informative activity in cyberculture.
Cyberjournalism, as expressed by Salaverría in his book Redacción periodística en Internet: "is the specialty of journalism that uses cyberspace to investigate, produce and, above all, disseminate journalistic content". Therefore, having its foundation in digital and computer culture, it has schisms from the models of the analog press both in its processes and in the material and individual techniques. The new practices and attitudes are developed along with the technological tools, which stamp new senses, practices and expertise regarding information.
The new "cybersystem" has meant a revolution in the journalistic field, with the convergence of technologies, companies, formats, roles, professions and platforms as a necessary condition for survival. However, digital technologies did not by themselves trigger the radical change in the ways of thinking professions, of thinking the world. Their arrival is part of a broader framework, where aspects of the social and cultural sphere influence the processes of knowledge formation, exchange and distribution.
