Centred on the research and innovation project ‘ProjectNews’, this thesis applies Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a methodological construct to understand the role of prototypes within and beyond a network of industry and academic partners. This interdisciplinary study combines interaction design, innovation and journalism to contribute to notions of what a prototype is and how it impacts journalism-centric innovation. In doing so, it moves beyond traditional notions of prototypes as functional tools, to argue that they are ‘symmetrical’ actors within an innovation network that exists beyond the limited timespan of a funded project. The thesis places prototypes within complex techno-social assemblages and demonstrating multiple meanings and with a diverse range of agencies. The main contributions of the research include the theoretical notion of the ‘teleotype’ within the innovation team. This construct describes a partly shared and partly individual idealised imagining of what the prototypes could and should become. This phenomenon both binds the team together with a shared understanding and catalyses tension when shared perspectives diverge. Key findings also include how stories of past prototypes and the imagining of future prototypes directly shape innovation activities and outcomes before innovation formally begins; that prototypes hold a nuanced collection of shared and unshared social and political meanings; have agency to fire emotions, enrol actors into a network and catalyse learning; establish evolutionary nature of prototypes and the ideas they contain; represent shared (journalistic, design and social) values; and how the presence of multiple conceptualised ‘journalisms’ within the multidisciplinary cohort both aids and limits the overall outputs. Ultimately, this thesis argues that, within journalistic contexts, prototypes are complex entities that engage with and influence the innovation ecosystems through which they travel. This influence is both immediate and ongoing.