Multimedia Stories: A Melting Pot of Innovations

This thesis explores multimedia storytelling as a melting pot of innovations and as an indicator for technological and structural change and adaptions in the intersection of journalism and technology. It focuses on the rise and development of multimedia storytelling in the past two decades, assesses the current state of the art of multimedia story production in Germany and the US, and explores the future development of this genre as assessed by journalists working in the field. Combining research-based knowledge, story-based quantified insights, and production-based qualitative insights, it is a comprehensive, empirical assessment of the phenomenon of multimedia stories as one example of a digital news format.