Interactive Newsprint: The Future of Newspapers? Printed electronics meets hyperlocal and community co-design

The news industry is currently in a well-documented state of flux, with publishers from across the developed world examining new business models, reinterpreting existing relationships between their income streams and readers, while maintaining their ability to generate editorial output that is relevant and interesting to the communities they cover. Interactive Newsprint seeks to add a new and revolutionary dimension to this media evolution by asking: can printed electronics and internet-enabled paper (technologies that utilise standard paper and printing processes and through conductive ink and battery power offer capacitive touch interactions similar to smartphones and tablets) create a new way of transmitting community-based news and information? Utilising co-design techniques and practices, the project seeks to produce community- relevant hyperlocal text and audio content and place it on a centuries-old platform: the newspaper. As a result of the paper's internet connectivity, the project is also examining potential benefits of transplanting some online features such as analytic data on user interactions. Led by the School of Journalism, Media and Communication (JoMeC) at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), the 18-month, EPRSC-funded project is therefore examining the potential for community co-design and printed electronics to transform paper- based news and information for the 21st Century, along with revenue and data generation that is unique to digital formats such as websites, social networks, smartphones and tablets. Building on work carried out on the EPSRC-funded Bespoke project, researchers from UCLan, University of Dundee, University of Surrey and commercial printed electronics firm Novalia are prototyping a series of paper-based community news platforms that are populated by content produced by community reporters and generated through an iterative co-design process. This paper will outline the methodology, technological potential of interactive newsprint and how the project is looking to embed analytic data into traditional printed-paper formats. It will also focus on how members of the Preston community are shaping both the news and platform over the 18-month process. As the project is mid-way through, the paper will present an overview of the project to date, outline the design methodology and describe and demonstrate the early-stage prototypes. The paper will also hint at new editorial construction practices as community and professional reporters all contribute to the hyperlocally-themed editorial output. The authors will present a discussion of the theoretical framework that underpins the project as a whole. In addition to the practical illustrations, the paper will outline the authors' initial thoughts on how interactive newsprint – through its internet connectivity and potential for data transfer – could revolutionise editorial and advertorial relationships

Towards the democratization of journalism participant: three models of transparency in the management of coral interviews of MARCA.com

Las entrevistas corales de MARCA.com son una de las principales formas del ciberperiodismo híbrido: los usuarios organizan una entrevista ante los invitados que propone el cibermedio. Su atractivo radica, fundamentalmente, en los bajos costes de producción informativa, en la posibilidad de introducir el concepto de polifonía de Bakhtine (cit. por Araújo y Melo, 2003), y en la generación de un discurso más flexible, según describíamos en un trabajo anterior (Barredo y Oller, 2013a). La interrelación de estas características ocasiona que, en los cinco enfrentamientos entre el Real Madrid y el Barcelona de la temporada 2010 – 11, el 30% de las palabras totales se produjeran de manera coral (Barredo y Oller, 2013b). Sin embargo en esos estudios previos hemos percibido un funcionamiento arbitrario: el ciberdiario, además de las pautas explícitas de las normas de participación, escoge o descarta las preguntas en función de criterios no revelados. Con este artículo ofrecemos tres modelos de gestión que profundizan en el concepto de transparencia ciberperiodística, los cuales pueden evitar, en nuestra opinión, la fosilización de las entrevistas corales o su vinculación con formas derivadas del marketing (publientrevista) y no con el periodismo.Interviews of MARCA.com are one of the main forms of online hybrid journalism: users organize an interview with the guests proposed by the online media. Its appeal lies mainly in the low information production costs, the possibility of introducing the concept of Bakhtin’s polyphony (quoted by Araújo and Melo, 2003), and the generation of a more flexible speech, as we described in a previous paper (Barredo and Oller, 2013a). The interplay of these characteristics is the cause that in the five matches between Real Madrid and Barcelona in the season 2010-11, 30% of the total words came from coral interviews (Barredo and Oller, 2013b). However, in these previous studies we have noted an arbitrary function of the organization: in addition to the explicit guidelines in the rules of participation, the online newspaper discards or chooses questions based on undisclosed criteria. With this article we offer three management models which explore the concept of online transparency. Those models can avoid, in our opinion, the stagnation of the coral interviews or similar forms linked to direct marketing (advertorials) and not to journalism

Beyond voice: Audience-making and the work and architecture of listening as new media literacies

Considerable attention in communication, media and social science scholarship is focused on voice, which is considered as an important form of social capital and necessary for social equity. Studies have extensively examined access to communication technologies and various forums such as the public sphere, as well as media literacy required to have a voice. Despite continuing concern over a 'digital divide', the emergence of Web 2.0-based 'new media', also referred to as 'social media', is seen as an empowering development contributing to the democratization of voice. However, based on two studies of online public consultation and critical analysis of the literature on voice and listening, this article argues that two important corollaries of voice, as it is commonly conceptualized, are overlooked. To matter, as Nick Couldry says it should, voice needs to have an audience and, second, audiences must listen. While considerable attention is paid by mass media to creating, maintaining and engaging audiences, comparatively little attention is paid to audiences and listening in discussions of new media and social media. In an environment of proliferating channels for speaking coinciding with demassification and 'fragmentation' of audiences, engaging audiences and the work of listening have become problematic and are important media literacies required to make voice matter. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Online Journalism: Crowdsourcing, and Media Websites in an Era of Participation

The era of journalism and the participation of the readers on online media websites have changed online journalism. The research interest is now focused on removing the distinction between the publisher/entrepreneur and the journalist/user, with the ultimate goal of actively involving citizens in the journalistic process but also in the web presence of media websites. The evolution of technology, the deep media crisis and the growing dissatisfaction of the citizens, create the conditions for journalism to work with citizens, and in particular through citizen journalism and journalism crowdsourcing. This concept is a form of collective online activity in which a person or a group of people volunteer to engage in work that always involves mutual benefit to both sides. The main research question of this research concerns the analysis of the current situation regarding crowdsourcing, co-creation and UGC and the adoption of best practices such as crowdcreation, comments from the users, crowdwisdom, instant-messaging applications (MIMs) and crowdvoting used by media websites around the world. Very few media have tried to apply even nowadays, the proposed model of journalism, which this study is going to research. The results of the study shape new perspectives and practices for online journalism and democracy

Teaching responsible suicide reporting (RSR) : using storytelling as a pedagogy to advance media reporting of suicide

Reporting suicide is an important but challenging area of journalism practice. Learning how to report this complex, distressing subject is vital for journalists if they are to avoid contributing to the 800,000 annual suicidal deaths worldwide (WHO, 2019). Tuition on suicide reporting in higher education tends to be didactic and theoretical, focussing on media guidelines and codes of conduct. Thereafter, journalists’ ability to implement this guidance is mixed. To address this, the authors devised the Responsible Suicide Reporting Model (RSR) which is grounded in news-work and embeds media guidelines within journalistic storytelling, consisting of a typology of suicide narratives and 'othering', ethical rules and a standard of moderation. This study tests the effectiveness of teaching the RSR Model using storytelling-as-pedagogy and problem-based learning. Firstly, we investigated students' perspectives on current educational offerings on suicide reporting through a survey of 229 students in the UK and Ireland who had no exposure to the RSR model. We then ran workshops with 80 students in the UK, teaching them the RSR model. The results showed that students with no exposure to the model–while they seemed to be aware of the theory of responsible suicide reporting–did not know how to implement it. Students who participated in workshops, where the RSR model was used, reported a greater understanding of responsible suicide reporting, believing they became better critically reflective practitioners

Community Service: Editor pride and user preference on local newspaper websites

Armed with readily accessible online traffic logs that provide detailed information about the items users are selecting to view, editors are voicing concern about the potential effect on their own content decisions. Through a survey of local British newspaper editors, this article examines the overlap between user preferences, as suggested by assessments of website traffic, and content that editors identify as their best. Results are considered in the context of two related subsets of agenda-setting theory, as well as the sociological process of “making news.” The study finds overlap between broad categories of stories preferred by editors and users, but a considerable disconnect over the nature of the items within those categories

Automated Journalism 2.0: Event-driven narratives. From simple descriptions to real stories

This article introduces an exploratory computational approach to extending the realm of automated journalism from simple descriptions to richer and more complex event­driven narratives, based on original applied research in structured journalism. The practice of automated journalism is reviewed and a major constraint on the potential to automate journalistic writing is identified, namely the ab-sence of data models sufficient to encode the journalistic knowledge necessary for automatically writ-ing event-driven narratives. A detailed proposal addressing this constraint is presented, based on the representation of journalistic knowledge as structured event and structured narrative data. We de-scribe a prototyped database of structured events and narratives, and introduce two methods of using event and narrative data from the prototyped database to provide journalistic knowledge to a com-mercial automated writing platform. Detailed examples of the use of each method are provided, in-cluding a successful application of the approach to stories about car chases, from initial data reporting through to automatically generated text. A framework for evaluating automatically generated event-driven narratives is proposed, several technical and editorial challenges to applying the approach in practice are discussed, and several high-level conclusions about the importance of data structures in automated journalism workflows are provided

Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture

Within media theory the worldwide shift from a 19th century print culture via a 20th century electronic culture to a 21st century digital culture is well documented. In this essay the emergence of a digital culture as amplified and accelerated by the popularity of networked computers, multiple-user software and Internet is investigated in terms of its principal components. A digital culture as an undetermined praxis is conceptualized as consisting of participation, remediation and bricolage. Using the literature on presumably ‘typical’ Internet phenomena such as the worldwide proliferation of Independent Media Centres (Indymedia) linked with (radical) online journalism practices and the popularity of (individual and group) weblogging, the various meanings and implications of this particular understanding of digital culture are explored. In the context of this essay digital culture can be seen as an emerging set of values, practices and expectations regarding the way people (should) act and interact within the contemporary network society. This digital culture has emergent properties with roots both in online and offline phenomena, with links to trends and developments pre-dating the World Wide Web, yet having an immediate impact and particularly changing the ways in which we use and give meaning to living in an increasingly interconnected, always on(line) environment

Adoption and Use of Digital Media in Election Campaigns: Australia, Canada and New Zealand Compared

This article examines the role of digital media in three recent national election campaigns: Australia in 2007 and Canada and New Zealand in 2008 . Examining the process of technology adoption and strategic use by parties and individual candidates, it explores similarities and differences in the use of these evolving campaigning channels. Against the current literature on variables influencing technology adoption, specific attention is given to the use of different communication channels as tools to target specific audiences, the adoption of a wide variety of technologies to ensure broad (‘mass’) reach, and the co-ordination of messages across different platforms. The analysis aims to identify structural, organisational, technological and cultural determinants of variation in the adoption and deployment of these technologies