Objective: This study aimed to analyze the components of mobile journalism using a content analysis approach.
Method: This applied research was exploratory in nature and employed a qualitative content analysis approach. The statistical population consisted of journalists, daily writers, media professors, and actual audiences of mobile journalism. A total of 20 participants were selected through purposive sampling, and data were collected via semi-structured interviews.
Results: Following content analysis of the 20 interviews, 157 basic themes (new) and 53 organizing themes (new) were identified from a total of 165 key points. Through the content analysis method, these were consolidated into six comprehensive themes—audience domain, content domain, access domain, infrastructure and legal domain, harms to communities, and the spread of fake news—as the overarching factors of mobile journalism.
Conclusions: The findings indicate that the overarching theme of "audience," comprising 16 organizing themes (e.g., increasing superficiality among individuals, vulgarizing audience taste, and enhancing audience persuasion), accounted for the highest number of organizing themes. The overarching themes of "content" and "spread of fake news" ranked next, with 14 and 7 organizing themes, respectively. Furthermore, political harms of mobile journalism, socio-cultural harms of mobile journalism, personal harms of mobile journalism, increased public distrust, opinion manipulation, and public polarization were among the organizing themes categorized under "harms of mobile journalism."