New.Journalism.Review

Times Higher reports on the introduction of bar code readers to take registers at Derby University.
http://ping.fm/LowmR

Despite its problems, anything that can automate basic administration must be welcomed. Filling in registers of 100 students manually each week is the equivalent of doing the dishes by hand, when you could use a lovely Bosch dishwasher instead.   

Lecturers already undertake crippling amounts of non-academic / 'house-keeping' work. Each year more hurdles are put in the way which prevents them from doing what they are paid to do – i.e researching, writing and teaching. From a human resources perspective (or, indeed, any perspective) filling in registers manually is a total waste of time and money. 

The government now requires that academics have to take registers to keep tabs on those pesky overseas students (the assumption is that overseas students are all secretly plotting ways to stay in the country, rather than writing assignments).

I don't agree that lecturers should be asked to carry out what amounts to UK border control checks. If I have to do this, at least allow me to wear a nice blue uniform, with a hat and have some shiny metal handcuffs. But as it's now the law, let's at least do it vaguely efficiently.

In an analysis of how UK websites are embedding participation and collaboration, I found the following academic texts useful.

If you are one of my students, you may well have the pleasure of reading some of these articles. 

Most of the journal articles can be found on Google Scholar or the usual databases. The ones highlighted focus on UK developments……..

22 Journal Articles:

Bardoel, J. (1996). Beyond journalism: A
profession between information society and civil society. European Journal
of Communication, 11(3), 283.

Bennett, W. (2003). Communicating global
activism. Information, Communication & Society, 6(2), 143-168.

Deuze, M. (2003). The web and its
journalisms: Considering the consequences of different types of newsmedia
online. New Media & Society, 5(2), 203.

Deuze, M. (2005). What is journalism?:
Professional identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered. Journalism,
6(4), 442.

Dutton, W. and Helpser, E. (2007). Oxford
internet survey: The internet in Britain. Oxford: OxIS.

Helsper, E.
(2008). Digital inclusion: An analysis of social disadvantage and the
information society. London: Department for Communities and Local
Government,

Hermida, A., & Thurman, N. (2007).
Comments please: How the british news media are struggling with user-generated
content. 8th International Symposium on Online Journalism. Austin:
University of Texas.

Hermida, A., & Thurman, N. (2008). A
Clash of Cultures. Journalism Practice, 2(3), 343-356.

Marchi, R. M. (2005). Reframing the runway: A
case study of the impact of community organizing on news and politics.
Journalism, 6(4), 465.

Lasica, J. D. (2003). Blogs and journalism
need each other. Nieman Reports, 57(3), 70-74.

Lasica, J. D. (2003). What is participatory
journalism. Online Journalism Review, 7, 2003.

Nguyen, A. (2006). Journalism in the wake of
participatory publishing. Australian Journalism Review, 28(1), 143–155.

NUJ Commission on Multi-Media Working.
(2007). Shaping the future. London: NUJ. 

Park, H. W. (2003). Hyperlink network
analysis: A new method for the study of social structure on the web.
Connections, 25(1), 49-61. Petersen, S. M. (2008). Loser generated
content: From participation to exploitation. First Monday, 13(3)

Pavlik, J., Morgan, G., & Henderson, B.
(2000). Information technology: Implications for the future of journalism and
mass communication education. Report of the Subcommittee on Educational
Technology Prepared for AEJMC Taskforce on Journalism and Mass Communication
Educator at the Millennium,

Quiggin, J. (2006). Blogs, wikis and creative
innovation. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(4), 481.

Schultz, T. (2000). Mass media and the
concept of interactivity: An exploratory study of online forums and reader
email. Media, Culture & Society, 22(2), 205.

Singer, J. B. (1997). Still guarding the
gate?: The newspaper journalist's role in an on-line world. Convergence, 3(1),
72.

Singer, J. B. (2003). Who are these guys?:
The online challenge to the notion of journalistic professionalism.
Journalism, 4(2), 139.

Snyder, H., & Rosenbaum, H. (1999). Can
search engines be used as tools for web-link analysis? A critical view.
Journal of Documentation, 55, 375-384.

Thurman, N. (2008). Forums for citizen
journalists? adoption of user generated content initiatives by online news
media. New Media and Society, 10(1), 139.

Wallsten, K. (2005). Political blogs and the
bloggers who blog them: Is the political blogosphere and echo chamber. American
Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting. Washington, DC September, 1-4.

20 Books:

Allan, S.
(2006). Online news: Journalism and the internet. Maidenhead: Open
University Press.

Axford, B.,(2001), New media and politics.
London: SAGE.

Bauer, M. W., & Gaskell, G. (2000), Qualitative
researching with text, image and sound : A practical handbook. London:
SAGE. 

Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks
: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, Conn. ;
London: Yale University Press.

Burnett, R. (2003) Web theory : An
introduction. London: Routledge.

Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the
network society Blackwell Pub.

Castells, M. (2001). The internet galaxy :
Reflections on internet, business, and society. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Curran J., Morley D. (2006.), Media &
cultural theory. London: Routledge.

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the
oppressed (New rev. 20th-Anniversary ed.). New York: Continuum.

Friend, C. (2007), Online journalism
ethics : Traditions and transitions. Armonk, N.Y. ; London: M.E. Sharpe.

Gillmor, D. (2004). We the media :
Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people. Beijing ; Farnham:
O'Reilly

Jones, S. (1999). Doing internet research:
Critical issues and methods for examining the net. Thousand Oaks, Calif. ;
London: Sage Publications.

Keeble, R. (2005). Print journalism : A
critical introduction. London: Routledge.

Kline, D. (2005), Blog! : How the newest
media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture. New York: CDS
Books.

Kovach, B. (2003), The elements of
journalism : Bill kovach & tom rosenstiel. London: Atlantic Books.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media :
The extensions of man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Rheingold, H,
(1994)
The virtual community: finding connection in a computerized world, Secker &
Warburg, London

Salwen, M. B.(2005). Online news and the
public. Mahwah, N.J. ; London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody :
The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

Tapscott, D. (2007). In W (Ed.), Wikinomics
: How mass collaboration changes everything. London: Atlantic Books.

Six LINKS
 

Anon. (2005). Bill gates: Free culture
advocates = commies. Retrieved 18 Aug, 2009, from http://boingboing.net/2005/01/05/bill_gates_free_cult.html

Bowman, S., & Willis, C. (2004). We
media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information. At Http://www.Hypergene.net/wemedia/, Accessed, 1

Bruns, A. (2007). Habermas and/against the
internet. Retrieved Aug, 2009, from http://snurb.info/node/621

Economist,The (2006), Among The Audience, Retrieved 1 Sept 2009, from
http://www.economist.com/surveys/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=6794156

. Johnson, S. (2009). Are we on track for a
golden age of serious journalism? Retrieved 15 Aug, 2009, from http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/05/areweontrackforagoldenageofseriousjournalism/

Kelly, K. (2009). The new socialism:
Global collectivist society is coming online. Retrieved 15 August, 2009,
from http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism

I've spent a lot of time looking at  journalism degree course structures. The following information will hopefully prove useful for those choosing a university journalism degree course. It may also prove relevant to any academics looking at revalidation, as it contains some journal articles that I have found personally very useful.

My bias is looking at the  kind of technology we should be teaching, as this is my background.

Teaching the technology

McKean states that modern journalism is collaborative and students need to be open to 'constant change'.

On the technology front, he states:

There is a lot of technology to learn and it obviously needs to be contextualised. As discussed at a recent AJE conference at City University, the 'widget cutter'- to- 'thinking journalist' ratio needs careful consideration.

Journalism as joint-hons only?

I particularly enjoy this quote from Mencher:

This is starting to sound like an argument for only allowing journalism to be taught as a part of a joint-honours degree.

It helps for students to have a subject specialism (i.e. 'context', 'framework', whatever you want to call it!), so why not study politics, economics, science or business etc with journalism? But in UK universities, unlike in the US, journalism is often offered only as single hons.

Mencher continues…

The 'jack of all trades' challenge

McKean states:

McKean seems to be referring to a specialism in a media platform. This needs to be untangled. I’m finding that students should be operating  ‘platform neutral’ these days (and I didn't come to that conclusion lightly.) They must be as equally skilled editing a podcast, as they are in banging out 500 words for the print edition by 4.30pm. But is this deskilling?

There is a different view -  you could focus on  a pathway approach – i.e. students choose their 'mother media' (e.g. magazine production) and become highly specialised in this area. Students will have teaching in a 'secondary media' (such as web or broadcast), but not very much. But the industry surely demands more flexibility than this?

Journalism degrees need a clear USP

Journalism degree courses seem to lean in one of the following directions:

a) Platform specific:
Degrees with names that include a platform (print journalism, broadcast journalism etc) worry me. Let’s not judge ‘books’ solely by their ‘covers’, but are these degrees really converged?

b) Genre specific (news/features/documentary degrees)
These are probably based around writing and technical skills. So prospective students must think about how transferable these skills are to new media platforms. In some cases, the answer is "very".

Pavlik, John, Gary Morgan and Bruce Henderson (2001) ‘Information Technology:Implications for the Future of Journalism and Mass Communication Education’, Journalism and Mass Communication Education: 2001 and Beyond. Columbia state:

c) Subject specific – BA  Sports Journalism,  motoring journalism, fashion journalism, political journalism etc
These probably have the strongest future. Students on these courses can worry that they are too niche. But too niche does not exist! It is about having the expertise in a  specialist subject, but taking a 'platform neutral' approach to output. As someone who teachers on one such degree, it provides the course some much needed focus. Students build up contacts and obtain a deep understanding of  the industry they write about.

These students are just as likely to get PR work in their chosen industry, as they are traditional jobs in journalism. This rejects the old idea  that students are trained as 'subject generalists' and output content exclusively to a 'single media' platform (e.g. newspapers). This came from the idea that entry-level jobs in journalism were mostly based in local newspapers, where a core requirement is often to be able to write about 'anything' on the patch.

D) Mainly theoretical (no practise)
Nothing wrong with these degrees as such, but they are often mis-sold to unwitting students.

In reality, the categories are not mutually exclusive. But there are so many issues to consider and we have not even started on whether journalism is actually a  'profession' or not.

See also A New Journalism Degree is born

A minor-storm erupted last week regarding the launch of the MA in Social Media by Birmingham City University.

Described inaccurately by the  Daily Mail as
a  "Masters degree in Facebook" this was a cue for references to
"Mickey Mouse degrees", "ex-Poly students" and "tax payers money +
drains" etc etc……[Feel free to complete].

My favourite comment on the Daily Mail site was from "Paul", who (apparently) lives in Los Angeles. So incensed by the launch of an MA (not even from a university in his own country), that "Paul"  forgot how to spell…

"Paul from Los Angeles" is clearly an idiot (where are those moderators when you need them?). And whilst the Daily Mail's reporting could easily be dismissed as "lazy journalism", sadly, it reflects a wider misunderstanding of the role of higher education in the mainstream media which dates back to the 70s when universities were attacked for teaching sociology.  

The reality is that  an MA in Social Media is relevant to anyone who communicates with audiences online or needs an understanding of the importance of online communities. So that could include people who work in the: computer games industry, PR, marketing and just about any business with a website. 

I'm no expert, but there has been a lot of interesting academic material on the rise of online communities, crowd-sourcing and the formation of social relationships coming out of the US and Australia in the past year. It is early days, but this is a subject that has a proper academic underpinning.

Whilst the volume of academic material and research is astonishing, one of the most common errors that students tend to make when discussing  the Internet is to assume its impact is the same in all countries. In reality, whilst the Internet is (obviously) global in nature, its impact is not homogeneous. That's to say, for example, a young person in the UK does not always have the same experience of Internet communities as someone in the US, Singapore, Germany or perhaps China. We interpret online actions differently.

Some more comments from Daily Mail contributors…

.

In short, we desperately need a UK (or perhaps European) perspective on things. This is where the academics at Birmingham City University are leading the way.

I teach on a journalism degree course and often have friends in the industry ask me whether there is "enough" to say about journalism to fill a three year course.

The reality is that we're not short of things to teach. We obviously teach the basic writing skills, as we have always done. But there is also more technology to understand, ethics, law and business skills to learn. This is a sector that is changing beyond all recognition and we need to equip our students to understand this.

The same will be true for an MA in Social Media which lasts just one year. There will be a lot of academic theory to assimilate, as well as the practical development of new and, hopefully, groundbreaking online applications.I would be really excited to be a student on such a course.

I do have some criticisms. Birmingham City University says that the course comes from the angle of cultural
studies, but I doubt if this will be enough. Running courses
cross-faculty is always very difficult, but from my experience students want to know how things work from a technical stance. It can be tricky to decide where the cut-off point is, but it would be wise to make links with the computing department  (as
they have done on the excellent MA in Electronic Publishin  at City University in
London, which is run by two faculties). 

But  social media is a) important to the UK economy and b)  something worthy of academic study. So let's drop references to "Yak excremnet" (whatever that is?) and the rather tiresome discussion of "Mickey Mouse degrees" (much loved by tabloid journalists) and lets have a serious debate about the impact of social media.

We’re introducing Second Life to L1 journalism students next week. I normally attempt to cultivate a cool, ‘technological determinist’ image. But in this case, I have had to work extra hard to explain the relevance of SL to our students.

The buzz surrounding SL was pretty high back in May 2008 when I was planning the teaching. Fast forward 10 months, and it seems about as academically sexy as receiving a £70 fine for spending five hours in an Aldi car park (thanks Parking Eye!) 

Statistics – it’s Second Life versus Twitter versus Britney – let battle commence!

In terms of blog coverage, SL was once the talk of the town.
Now that young upstart Twitter is the belle of the ball. Just to keep
it ‘scientific’, Britney is acting as our ‘base’ for blog buzz.    

Keyword popularity across the Blogosphere

This chart illustrates how many times blog posts across the Blogosphere contained the following keywords.

“Second Life” vs. Britney vs. Twitter

» Configure this widget for your site!

UK universities using Second Life

Like many UK universities, the place where I  work has received research funding to create a cool-looking virtual campus and to investigate teaching possibilities (particularly in distance learning).

Eduserv released a detailed report of  Second Life usage in higher education in Autumn 2008 which outlines some great examples of good practise.

As a journalism lecturer, I have to consider SL’s relevance to unit outcomes.Fashion and interior design courses at the university are already using SL as a means to preview student projects and obtain tutor feedback.

SL in journalism teaching – any use?

SL offers the possibility to stage ‘virtual news events’. We do a number of these mock exercises in “first life” already. But these can be expensive to run, take considerable planning and we would like to do more of them.

Students also study ‘virtual communities’ from a theoretical perspective. So SL gives students real experience of this, outside the normal Facebook arena which most students seem to use. 

CNN is also still asking its iReporters to submit citizen stories, many of which can be found on the CNN iReporters site here. Although other large media brands seem to be scaling back their efforts and I’m not sure whether the CNN experiment has been particularly successful. 

SL is very bandwidth-intensive and this has presented networking problems. Only a few IT rooms have the software installed (the other university PCs are just not up to the job). So the ‘business case’ for teaching SL is starting to look shaky already.

SL also needs to be made easier to use. Philip Rosedale said in a .Net Magazine interview (February 2007) said that it took around four hours to learn the basics, which could be described as quite a ‘barrier to entry’. This need to change before it gets any sort of mainstream acceptance.

That said, I still think that virtual worlds are a key to the Web 3.0 model. And whilst it may not be SL that wins the race, we are fulfilling our duty in getting students’ pointing their heads in the right direction.