US 2012 Live: When the Classroom becomes a Newsroom.

In November 2012, 300 students came together in the Media School at Bournemouth University in the UK to report the US Presidential Election. Over the course of 10 days, students published 176 articles on a rolling news website, garnering more than 20,000 hits. On election night itself, students produced 10 h of live coverage on both TV and radio, airing 30 pre-recorded video packages and 35 pre-recorded radio packages. This experiential project adopted a so-called ‘live case’ methodology that encapsulated a high degree of application and a cer- tain level of structure, which allowed for the ‘variety and uncertainty’ or reality to intervene. It also empowered and enabled students to reflect on and evaluate their individual experiences in light of their own learning styles. This paper will discuss the challenges and successes experienced during this experiential project, and will provide a nine-step guide on how others could replicate a similar project

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

Fear in childbirth: are the media responsible?

This is the second year that the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health convened a debate as part of the Festival of Learning at Bournemouth University (BU). The debate encourages members of the public and service users to get involved in our research and education and ensures that what we do at BU is relevant and current. Last year the team debated the pros and cons of allowing women free choice with regard to major medical interventions, such as caesarean section (Hundley et al. 2013). This year the focus was on the role of the media in childbirth. Social perceptions and beliefs about childbirth can increase women’s requests for interventions, such as caesarean section, with long-term health implications for mothers and babies. The debate was planned to explore the role of the mass media in shaping these beliefs and identify whether media portrayals are responsible for rising rates of intervention. Attendees were given the opportunity to voice their views and to vote for or against the motion. The motion for debate was: This house believes that: The media is responsible for creating fear in childbirth

Citizen journalism and civic inclusion: Access Dorset

Access Dorset TV (ADTV) is a pioneering community media partnership aiming to provide a voice to over 4,000 disabled and older people across Dorset (UK) through citizen journalism – produced by and for its user-groups. ADTV (http://www.accessdorsetcentre.org) provide web-based peer support, information and lifestyle videos produced by disabled people about their life experiences, events, social action projects and independent living. This case study will discuss how the project enables participants to make a meaningful contribution to public debates about issues affecting them, thus fostering civic inclusion, community cohesion, and empowerment for marginalised citizens and community groups

Do midwives need to be more media savvy?

Fear is increasingly cited as a reason for rising rates of intervention in childbirth, with women it is argued opting for operative birth in order to avoid going through labour. Explanatory factors are said to include previous negative birth experiences, but increasingly the way that childbirth is portrayed by the media is suggested to be having a significant effect on women’s perceptions and raising anxiety with regard to the birth process. Last year, with growing interest in the impact of the media on maternal perceptions, Bournemouth University held a debate on the role that the media plays in creating fear in childbirth (Hundley et al., 2014). Not surprisingly the debate sparked fairly heated discussion, but a point raised by our media colleagues made us stop and think. They argued that the responsibility for balanced reporting of childbirth lay not with the media but with the midwifery profession. Midwives they said needed to be more media savvy

A3: Hydrogeology of the Former Chlor-Alkali Facility Superfund Site and Downstream Bed Sediment Mercury Contamination in the Androscoggin River, Berlin, New Hampshire

Guidebook for field trips in Western Maine and Northern New Hampshire: New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference, p. 61-80

The infantilization and stigmatization of suicide: a multi-modal analysis of British press reporting of the Bridgend suicides

Between January 2008 and June 2008 20 young people between the ages of 15 and 29 took their own lives in the South Wales Borough of Bridgend. In this study I examined a sample of both national and Welsh newspapers over this six-month period, employing both quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (discourse analysis, interviews with journalists) methods to determine how the British press reports suicide and also to determine how journalists balance their social responsibility to report suicide with their role of maintaining stability in society. Emile Durkheim's framework for suicide and Edwin Shneidman's theory of "psychache" helped contextualise why suicide occurs, while Bob Franklin's, Stuart Allan's and Barbara Zelizer's theories of news constructions, framing and production processes helped further my argument about the press' responsibility to report responsibly while maintaining the status quo. My findings show that journalists created five key categories in which they could further stigmatize the issue of suicide: reaction to death by those left behind; reason for death; description of the deceased; infantilisation; and suicide and internet usage. These categories were summarily framed by questions around why suicide occurs and by ideologies of childhood. This study concludes that the most prevalent discourse around suicide is that it should never happen; people should die naturally, preferably in old age. To reinforce that discourse, journalists tend to deem all adult suicides to be childish acts and "other" those that die into a category of the "deviant non-child". It appears, then, that an overarching assumption underpinning press reports of suicide is that it is a destabilising force in liberal democratic society. As such, journalists play a significant role in maintaining balance and replicating acceptable discourses around the issue of suicide in this societ

Media, Health and Health Promotion in Nepal

It has been recognised that the media can affect our perceptions, views and tastes on a wide-range of issues. The mass media in it various forms (newspapers, television & radio, the internet and Twitter) and formats, have a far reaching influence through, for example news programmes, documentaries, advertising and entertainment. At the same time the media can also be seen as a channel for agencies responsible for public health to get their messages across to the population. Public health agencies are always searching for ways to disseminate health information and messages to their intended audiences. These are, of course, global concerns, but as both public health and the media are part of the society in which they operate there will be locally specific issues and considerations. To date most of the research into the media and public health has been conducted in high-income countries, and there has been very little research in Nepal on the interaction of public health and health promotion with the media. This overview paper highlights some of the key issues that public health practitioners, media editors and journalists, health policy-makers and researchers could consider