Rooting for the story: Institutional sports journalism in the digital age

This dissertation examines contemporary daily sports journalism through the lenses of media sociology and new institutional theory. In-depth interviews with 25 sports journalists (reporters and editors) identified the institutionalized norms, values, practices and routines of American sports journalism, demonstrated how that institutionalization affects story selection, and showed how the profession is changing due to digital and social media. The interviews show that although traditional sports journalism is highly institutionalized, digital sports journalism is far less so. Traditional sports journalism is still centered around a story, and digital sports journalism follows Robinson\u27s (2011) journalism-as-process model. The journalists interviewed are expected to perform acts of both traditional and digital journalism during the same work day, which leads to tension in how they do their jobs

Transformer-based Live Update Generation for Soccer Matches from Microblog Posts

It has been known to be difficult to generate adequate sports updates from a sequence of vast amounts of diverse live tweets, although the live sports viewing experience with tweets is gaining the popularity. In this paper, we focus on soccer matches and work on building a system to generate live updates for soccer matches from tweets so that users can instantly grasp a match's progress and enjoy the excitement of the match from raw tweets. Our proposed system is based on a large pre-trained language model and incorporates a mechanism to control the number of updates and a mechanism to reduce the redundancy of duplicate and similar updates.Comment: EMNLP 202

New Voices: What Works

Reviews grantees' accomplishments in building community news sites, keys to sustainability, and lessons learned about engagement, staffing, business models, social media, technology, partnerships, and limitations of university, youth, and radio projects

Twitter\u27s Impact on Sports Journalism Practice: Where a New Medium Meets and Old Art

This project aims to determine if and how the relatively new journalistic tool of Twitter is impacting journalistic decision-making and news production as a legitimate tool amongst sports writers. Using the methods of qualitative textual analysis and in-depth interviewing, this project analyzes the words and tweets of nine journalists at prominent U.S. newspapers in an attempt to fill a void in research among the topics of journalistic decision-making, sports journalism, and Twitter and to answer questions that arise from the marriage of a certain type of journalism and a particular new media platform

Thriving and Surviving in a Multimedia World

The Unreachables -- Playing catch-up -- Small-town multimedia -- Tips and tricks -- Ethics of blogging -- New curricula -- Sports journalism -- Broadcast journalism -- Website comments -- Future tech is here -- Citizen journalism -- Freelance -- Oops! -- Twitter in the courtroom -- The mp3 sound of music -- Hyperlocal strategy -- Teen magazines online -- Editor\u27s note -- Staff bio

Mapping AI Arguments in Journalism Studies

This study investigates and suggests typologies for examining Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the domains of journalism and mass communication research. We aim to elucidate the seven distinct subfields of AI, which encompass machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, expert systems, planning, scheduling, optimization, robotics, and computer vision, through the provision of concrete examples and practical applications. The primary objective is to devise a structured framework that can help AI researchers in the field of journalism. By comprehending the operational principles of each subfield, scholars can enhance their ability to focus on a specific facet when analyzing a particular research topic

“Why Do You Want My Password?”: Assessing Ultimate Control of a Journalist’s Twitter Account Used for Work Purposes

A journalist’s value to an employer can be seen differently in the age of social media. The value to the employer is not necessarily just measured by the number of words or articles produced, or even by how much their work drives increased website traffic or increased subscriptions. In addition to generally maintaining a social media presence, journalists are often encouraged or expected to use their social media accounts. However, such accounts might be in the individual journalist’s name and might pre-date the term of employment with that specific media entity. Therefore, a debate can rise over who might “own” an employee-journalist’s Twitter account, which would include access to the account’s follower list, when the employment relationship terminates. Although this scenario had been debated in the courts, albeit not necessarily with journalists, throughout this decade, courts have “punted” and avoided speaking directly on the issue. In September 2018, the trend continued when the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Virginia ordered a settlement to one such dispute. This Note proposes that absent a clear and mutual understanding over post-employment control of the relevant social media account, the former employee should retain control over the social media account in most circumstances—especially when the account appears to be in the individual’s name

“Why Do You Want My Password?”: Assessing Ultimate Control of a Journalist’s Twitter Account Used for Work Purposes

A journalist’s value to an employer can be seen differently in the age of social media. The value to the employer is not necessarily just measured by the number of words or articles produced, or even by how much their work drives increased website traffic or increased subscriptions. In addition to generally maintaining a social media presence, journalists are often encouraged or expected to use their social media accounts. However, such accounts might be in the individual journalist’s name and might pre-date the term of employment with that specific media entity. Therefore, a debate can rise over who might “own” an employee-journalist’s Twitter account, which would include access to the account’s follower list, when the employment relationship terminates. Although this scenario had been debated in the courts, albeit not necessarily with journalists, throughout this decade, courts have “punted” and avoided speaking directly on the issue. In September 2018, the trend continued when the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Virginia ordered a settlement to one such dispute. This Note proposes that absent a clear and mutual understanding over post-employment control of the relevant social media account, the former employee should retain control over the social media account in most circumstances—especially when the account appears to be in the individual’s name

The Role of Social Media Editors in Television Newsrooms: An Exploratory Study

More Americans are using social media in their daily lives and finding news and information on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Media organizations are using social media sites to locate sources and verify information to increase ratings and circulation. Reporters and editors are interacting with audiences more than ever before. The result is a weakening of news organizations’ systems of editorial control and, consequently, their traditional gatekeeping function. To assist with disseminating information about news stories and engage with their audiences more, some media organizations are creating a new position at newspapers and broadcast stations, known as a social media editor, producer or manager. They are more common in larger news organizations and differ from website editors because social media editors focus on creating conversations with the audience. Their place in the newsroom, however, is developing and uncertain, especially at the local news level. This study aims to understand their developing role in the local television newsroom and discover their functions and how editorial decisions about made about what content will be posted to social media. Through long interviews with 23 participants in social media editor positions around the country, this study shows how individuals in these positions are responsible for a variety of roles and functions, and many others in the newsroom depend on their expertise, training and suggestions to carry out their daily tasks. There is a need for positions like these in media organizations, and they are challenging the traditional gatekeeping role by relying heavily on audience interest and engagement in decisions about posting content to social media and less on traditional news values

Twitters Impact on Sports Media Relations

The introduction of Social Media (SM) into sports communications in professional leagues is disrupting the traditional methods of sports media relations. In the past, teams used websites to post information for fans, but it was strictly a one-way format of communication whereby a story was posted for fans to read. To fully engage with this new communication channel, the sports communications departments in professional leagues have begun to use SM to communicate directly with fans through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Currently, SM like Twitter allows the team communication departments to communicate directly with fans in an interactive two-way format that is not mediated by a reporter or someone from a traditional media outlet. In addition, the open format of SM means that media relations staff are no longer the only intermediary between the media and the players; through the use of SM like Twitter, a professional athlete can now communicate directly to fans without gatekeepers like the media or the sports communications department of the team. This thesis will explore how SM has changed media relations from several different perspectives. The first perspective is related to the risks that are associated with the use of SM by professional athletes: without an intermediary or a filter for athlete-fan communication, many athletes have caused irreparable damage to their reputation and the reputation of their team. The second perspective is related to the benefits for teams that use SM as a platform to connect with fans: the ability to connect with fans using SM is new to sports communications and represents an interactive one-to-one and one-to-many mode of communication through which the fan can directly communicate with the team. Finally, this research will look at how Twitter has changed media relations in sports from the perspective of the lived experiences of people who work in sports media. To explore the risks associated with athletes’ use of social media, this research used Situational Crisis Communication Theory as a theoretical framework to explore reputation-damaging incidents that occurred through social media. The study reviewed national media stories reported in North America from 2009 to 2010 that were perceived to have negative impact on athletes’ reputation. In total, 17 incidents were reviewed — seven incidents in particular demonstrated the athlete as the source of the SM crisis. Through the review and categorization of these 17 situations, the study was able to identify four broad categories of situations that a sports communication manager needs to be prepared for. The four categories identified were “Rookie Reporter”, “Team Insider”, “Opportunist”, and “Imposter”. Each of these categories are invaluable for team communication managers to recognize in order to address the risks associated with social media. To explore the benefits associated with the communications department’s use of social media, this research used Uses and Gratification theory as a theoretical framework to explore how and why fans followed team Twitter accounts. This study was conducted in partnership with the Canadian Football League (CFL) and a total of 526 people responded to an online survey that was tweeted out to them for their feedback. The results of the survey indicated several significant findings — in particular, the phenomenon of converged sports fan consumption was identified, which has not been previously acknowledged in academic research. The phenomenon of converged sports fan refers to the multi-screen environment whereby a sports fan decides where, when, and how they want to consume sporting content. This research identified that in-game consumption of SM while watching television and the mobile consumption of SM are both dominant ways for fans to interact with their teams. This multi-modal format of connecting with the team supports the idea of Henry Jenkins’s Black Box Fallacy (2006, p. 13): as teams move forward in developing communications platforms to reach their fans, they will need to recognize that all channels can and do work together. In order to further understand how Twitter has changed sports media relations, the study used long semi-structured interviews with a phenomenological research design to understand how Twitter has impacted sports media relations. The phenomenological analysis of the informant interviews suggested that Twitter is the source of three themes of change: general media relations, mechanical job functions, and other changes specific to sports media relations. The significance of Twitter’s impact on sports media relations cannot be understated. With the ubiquitous use of SM like Twitter, it is important to understand how sports media relations can use SM to manage the image of their respective teams and athletes. After looking at SM and sports from three different perspectives, the pivotal finding was the role that Twitter and mobile communications play in ‘flattening’ sports media relations. Similar to how Friedman (2006) argued that the convergence of the personal computer drove globalization, Twitter and the increased adoption of mobile communications have flattened the role of sports media relations. This research will explain how the flattening of sports media relations happened and what the implications might be for sports media professionals