Re-defining journalism education: Using systems thinking and design to revolutionize the future of storytelling

The problem Journalism education has not kept pace with the growing complexity of the professional practice. The first crisis in journalism had to do with transitioning to a vastly more complex digital environment. Now, journalism is struggling to sustain itself amidst outdated business models, fractured audiences, declining trust, and a White House bent on undermining the whole operation. At stake is a vital part of the checks and balances system of a functioning democracy. Journalism + Design is a forward-looking, iterative education program preparing students and professionals alike to function in the complex ecosystem of contemporary journalism. We use systems thinking and design practices to help journalists better understand the interconnected nature of the problems they face, both as journalists having to operate within a complex adaptive system as well as practitioners and future practitioners expected to report on and explain the most important stories of our times – climate change, the effects of unfettered global capitalism, income inequality, racism, crumbling democracies. These are all stories of complex adaptive systems, or what Rittel and Webber called, wicked problems – impossible to even name, let alone solve, and with boundaries that blur into other wicked problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Design and systems journalism initiative This abstract seeks to outline the theory and practice behind our efforts to bring design practices and systems thinking into journalism education for both students and professionals. As mentioned above, the problem for journalists is two-fold: First, how do we build a sustainable system by which news is gathered, verified, synthesized, and distributed in a way that is independent from powerful interests? Many people talk about “saving the newspapers” or in other ways propping up existing entities. French economist, Julia Cagé, in her book, Saving the Media, argues that what will fix the news is a new, not-for-profit business model (Cagé, 2016). There’s Victor Pickard who, in his piece for The Guardian, recognizes that traditional ways of thinking about the news is not helping the industry, but still recommends a new, non-commercial business model (Pickard, 2009). Our analysis is that what is at stake is not so much the longevity of existing manifestations, but rather ensuring that some system for doing the above-mentioned work itself exists in the future – whatever that might look like. Second, how do we prepare journalists to tell the most important stories of our times – those of complex adaptive systems, or, wicked problems? This does not require merely digital skills, which is the strategy of most news organizations. Rather, it requires the ability to understand the forces behind events in the news, the interconnections between those forces, the non-linear natures of how events occur and multiply, and how to identify feedback loops and leverage points. A systems approach to redesigning journalism education and professional development is necessary to address these problems. The Journalism + Design initiative involves identifying leverage points for interventions in the education and professional spheres as well as opportunities for inspiring public discourse, such as publishing papers and popular articles, launching a podcast, and convening open workshops with community partners. The additional challenge is how to foster a change in attitude among the future of journalism community from one of trying to solve the problem of the crisis in journalism to one seeking to sustain a healthy system of journalism. Re-designing journalism education and professional development A significant part of the work of this initiative has been the development of an undergraduate journalism major at The New School in New York that marries fundamental journalistic practices and ethics with a systems and design practice. Our definition of design is a set of flexible processes for navigating unknown environments. We define systems thinking as the practice of studying wholes rather than parts in isolation, studying patterns of change overtime and identifying driving forces. This work has been primarily done through the Journalism + Design program at The New School. The program started four years ago with seven classes and 30 majors. Today, we offer 27 classes, have nearly 100 majors and see 406 students taking our classes. It has already become the second biggest major in the school. The excitement generated by the program among professionals led to the development of workshops and events outside the college, such as systems thinking for beat reporters, basic design process workshops, and systems and design support for projects around complex topics like homelessness, gentrification, and gerrymandering. In addition, the initiative has also begun work fostering systems and design approaches to journalism among community leaders in underserved urban neighborhoods in order to help build informal information networks to serve needs unmet by professional news organizations or the closing of local professional news outlets. The aim is to equip journalists with the ability to surface and diversify story ideas and sources, explore complex relationships, be more resilient in the face of uncertainty, identify how the structure of complex systems dictate outputs and consequences, and develop and maintain participatory and collaborative partnerships with non-media organizations and community members. Presenting In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the theories and intellectual work behind this initiative as well as surface learning to be gleaned from the work itself. This presentation will provide the audience with years of innovative research, curriculum, and insights, and, since playful experimentation is a key tenant of how our program was designed, our presentation will incorporate how our initiative actually operates in the field. More specifically, it will look at how systems thinking and design cooperate, how our program has integrated them into fast-paced, overworked newsrooms, and what this initiative means for sustainable journalism and democracy at large

The Technology Integration Model (TIM): predicting the continued use of technology

The human-computer relationship is often convoluted and despite decades of progress, many relation- ships relating to continued use are unclear and poorly defined. This may be due to a lack of interdisci- plinary collaboration, especially from a theoretical standpoint between computer science and psychology. Following a review of existing theories that attempt to explain continued technology use, we developed the Technology Integration Model (TIM). In sum, the main objective of TIM is to outline the processes behind continued technology use in an individual's everyday life. Here we present the model alongside a description of its scope and the relationships between constructs. This can help generate research questions relating to technology use while simultaneously addressing many previous short- comings of existing models. As a unifying theory, TIM can quickly be adopted by researchers and developers when designing and implementing new technologie

To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.C.L. was supported by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF VRG13-007); L.M.D. was supported by ERC 647910 (KINSHIP); D.I.B. and N.I. received funding from CONICET, Argentina; L.K., F.K. and Á. Putz were supported by the European Social Fund (EFOP-3.6.1.-16-2016-00004; ‘Comprehensive Development for Implementing Smart Specialization Strategies at the University of Pécs’). K.U. and E. Vergauwe were supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_154911 to E. Vergauwe). T.G. is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). M.A.V. was supported by grants 2016-T1/SOC-1395 (Comunidad de Madrid) and PSI2017-85159-P (AEI/FEDER UE). K.B. was supported by a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland (number 2015/19/D/HS6/00641). J. Bonick and J.W.L. were supported by the Joep Lange Institute. G.B. was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV-17-0418). H.I.J. and E.S. were supported by a French National Research Agency ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ programme grant (ANR-15-IDEX-02). T.D.G. was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. The Raipur Group is thankful to: (1) the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India for the research grants received through its SAP-DRS (Phase-III) scheme sanctioned to the School of Studies in Life Science; and (2) the Center for Translational Chronobiology at the School of Studies in Life Science, PRSU, Raipur, India for providing logistical support. K. Ask was supported by a small grant from the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg. Y.Q. was supported by grants from the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (5184035) and CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology. N.A.C. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (R010138018). We acknowledge the following research assistants: J. Muriithi and J. Ngugi (United States International University Africa); E. Adamo, D. Cafaro, V. Ciambrone, F. Dolce and E. Tolomeo (Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro); E. De Stefano (University of Padova); S. A. Escobar Abadia (University of Lincoln); L. E. Grimstad (Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)); L. C. Zamora (Franklin and Marshall College); R. E. Liang and R. C. Lo (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman); A. Short and L. Allen (Massey University, New Zealand), A. Ateş, E. Güneş and S. Can Özdemir (Boğaziçi University); I. Pedersen and T. Roos (Åbo Akademi University); N. Paetz (Escuela de Comunicación Mónica Herrera); J. Green (University of Gothenburg); M. Krainz (University of Vienna, Austria); and B. Todorova (University of Vienna, Austria). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/am2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Clinical examination factors that predict delayed recovery in individuals with concussion

Abstract Background Risk factors for prolonged recovery after concussion have been well researched, but specific objective clinical examination findings have not. This study examined whether clinical examination results could predict delayed recovery (DR) in individuals with concussion diagnosis. A secondary aim explored the influence of early examination on individual prognosis. Methods The study was a retrospective, observational cohort design that included 163 individuals seen at a concussion clinic who were followed longitudinally until cleared for sports activity. Cognitive, visual, balance, vestibular, and cervical clinical testing and symptom assessment were performed at initial evaluation. DR was calculated by taking the median value associated with time to clearance for activity. Bivariate logistic regression analysis was calculated to determine odds ratios (and 95% confidence intervals) for the odds of DR with presence or absence of each clinical finding. Multivariate analyses were used to define the best predictors of DR. Results 80 of 163 individuals were considered delayed in their clearance to activity. Cognitive impairments (OR = 2.72; 95%CI = 1.40, 5.28), visual exam findings (OR = 2.98; 95%CI = 1.31, 6.80), and vestibular exam findings (OR = 4.28; 95%CI = 2.18, 8.43) all increased the odds of a DR. Multivariate modeling retained cognitive symptoms and clinical examination-vestibular testing as predictors of delayed recovery. Time to examination after injury was a mediator for DR. Conclusions The clinical examination provides value in identifying individuals who are likely to exhibit a delayed clearance. In particular, vestibular impairments identified clinically at initial evaluation and cognitive symptoms were associated with increased odds of a DR to return to activity. Our data support that early implementation of a standardized clinical examination can help to identify individuals who may be more at risk of prolonged recovery from concussion