Reporting Refugees: a case study in interdisciplinary research-led experiential learning

Inflammatory Australian media coverage of refugees and asylum seekers – an utterly marginalised subset of those from culturally and linguistically diverse communities portrayed as mad, bad, sad or other (Phillips & Tapsall 2007a, 2007b; Phillips 2009; Phillips 2011) - is frequently blamed for entrenched bigotry against these groups (Posetti 2007, 2009, 2010; Ewart & Posetti 2010; McKay, Thomas & Blood 2011). How should journalism educators respond to this problem? And how should they respond in the context of an increasingly converged and social media-engaged industry, with a research objective? At the University of Canberra (where the lead author taught broadcast and social journalism from 2003-2012) final year broadcast journalism students were partnered with the region\u27s peak refugee agency, Canberra Refugee Support (CRS), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, students at The Australian National University’s School of Music (who composed original music to score the stories under the supervision of the secondary author (who then taught Music at ANU) and the e-democracy portal OurSay. This was a public journalism (Rosen 1999, Gillmor 2004) project updated for the Social Media Age, with an emphasis on student reporters facilitating community engagement, participating in crowdsourcing and content amplification via Twitter, Facebook and blogs (C.f discussion of investigative social journalism practices and principles in Posetti 2013). The project became known by its Twitter hashtag #ReportingRefugees. This paper will discuss the project’s creative outputs, present the findings of a content analysis of fifty-two reflective practice blogs produced by the journalism students involved, and consider the reflections of project partners in the context of implications for future collaborative projects developed in accordance with this model

The Chilling: A Global Study of Online Violence Against Women Journalists

With the support of UNESCO, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) has published a groundbreaking, book-length global study on online violence against women journalists, documenting alarming trends and offering solutions to this pernicious problem. The Chilling: A global study of online violence against women journalists is the most geographically, linguistically and ethnically diverse research ever published on the theme. Publication of the 300-page book, concludes a three-year research project originally commissioned by UNESCO in 2019

Journalism eduction 2.0: training in an age of radical change in MediaShift - Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution

Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com. “We are not going to make it with uninspired and uninspiring teachers!” Archbishop Desmond Tutu challenged delegates in his closing address to the second World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC2) in South Africa last month. The anti-Apartheid warrior and Nobel Laureate described journalism as a “noble calling” and recounted his country’s hard-fought struggle for media freedom. During the event he also signed the Table Mountain Declaration, an initiative of the World Association of Newspapers that calls for an end to insult and criminal defamation laws used to censor African media

The twitterisation of journalism: charting a research agenda for \u27social journalism\u27

Social media is transforming professional journalism. And the speed of the real-time revolution raises significant challenges and opportunities for journalists their publishers and journalism educators. But it also necessitates a rigorous academic research agenda. The issues confronting journalism in the social media space include fundamental shifts in the practice of verification, the merger of private lives and professional practice, and the new journalistic role of community engagement. BBC Head of Global News Peter Horrocks said in February 2010 that social media practice for journalists was no longer discretionary. But this means that the professional training of journalists in social media theory and practice is also essential. And fundamental to teaching and training journalists in this new form of \u27social journalism\u27 should be cuttingedge academic research; relevant to industry; in the field of journalism studies. Journalism research should be informed by journalistic practice and have a professionally relevant purpose.This paper maps the research agenda of the author\u27s PhD dissertation on the tranformative impact of social media on journalism, titled The Twitterisation of Journalism.It will document the research questions underpinning this dissertation which can be adapted to any social journalism research project.The research questions to be mapped via this paper include:1) Changing practices of verification under the influence of social media and their professional implications2) The impact of the convergence of private and professional journalistic lives in the social media space3) The emerging role of audience engagement and its impact on news and current affairs journalsits and journalism4) Conflict and complaints: The impact on journalists and their employers of being openly and instantly confronted with audience complaints.5) What are the impacts on journalists\u27 workload, productivity and wellbeing of 24/7 real-time social media practice and engagement?This paper will seek to present an adaptable map of research questions designed to frame academic inquiry in a field that requires synchronising with the rapidly changing social media landscape as it impacts dramatically on professional journalism practice, ethics and education

Towards an intersectional model of policy development, advocacy and journalism: Negotiating freedom of expression in public

This practice-based PhD thesis presents a major work of hybrid journalism-policy research - the candidate’s UNESCO-published study Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age1 (Posetti 2017a2) - and associated outputs (including journalism, industry reports, and public events), together with this critical and connective exegesis that provides theoretical and reflective context for the major artefact (i.e. aforementioned book) at the core of the project. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) commissioned the major artefact in 2014 to provide quantitative data and qualitative research to demonstrate international developments in legal and normative frameworks that support the principle of confidential source protection which is central to the practice of investigative journalism, with an emphasis on emerging digital era implications. The resulting book, published by UNESCO in 2017, examined a decade’s worth of relevant source protection developments in 121 countries. Its impact was significant, as evidenced by international media coverage, citation in a major judgement on journalistic source protection from the European Court of Human Rights, through a Report from the UN Secretary General, and via a UN General Assembly Resolution on journalism safety. Described by UNESCO as a “benchmark study” (UNESCO 2017a), the book makes a major contribution to this emerging area of scholarship, especially through its development of a comprehensive 11-point framework for assessing legal source protection instruments and normative environments. It is the first study of its kind to map and analyse the convergent digital era threats posed to source protection globally. These laws and frameworks sit at the complex intersection of a range of threats involving: the undercutting of source confidentiality by mass and targeted surveillance; the risk of source protection laws being trumped by national security and anti-terrorism legislation; the expanding requirements for third party intermediaries to mandatorily retain (and potentially handover) citizens’ data for increasingly lengthy periods of time; and debates about diverse digital media actors’ entitlement to access source protection laws where they exist. This exegesis provides a critically reflective account of the development of the study (i.e. Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age) as a hybrid work of journalism and international public policy research. It presents a theoretical account of the scholarship around source protection, the fraught history of the UN’s role in commissioning research designed to develop international freedom of expression rights and standards, and the shifting nature of journalism and press freedom advocacy in the networked public sphere. It describes the act of ‘making content out of process’ and maximising research impact through the extended life of the project. This involved interwoven collaborations, engaging stakeholder communities and broader publics in the research and dissemination processes, explaining and promoting the study’s findings, and carefully negotiating iterative publication through protracted UN diplomatic and bureaucratic processes. Together, this critical reflection and scholarly analysis form the exegetical thesis, explicating the hybrid model of networked public communication at the heart of the production, publication and impact of the UNESCO-published study Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age

Transforming Journalism.... 140 characters at a time

Twitter is beconing such an important reporting tool and audience interaction zone for media outlets. But the microblogging platform brings with it professional pitfalls and highlights ethcial dilemmas central to 21st century journalism, argues Julie Posett

Media representations of the hijab

Over the past decade, the appropriateness of traditional clothing worn by some Muslim women, particularly the head covering known as the hijab, has been the focus of often fierce media debates. The hijab debate has come to symbolise the clash of cultures fanned by links between Islamic extremism and 21st century terrorism. While in several Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran, the full covering, known as the chador or burqa, has been mandatory, a backlash against Muslim culture has seen such clothing banned, along with the much more common hijab, in the interests of secularism. In this context, Muslim women are portrayed by the Western media either as veiled victims in need of liberation in foreign lands because of a lack of free choice, or a threat to the Western societies in which they reside because of their choice to adopt traditional Islamic dress. The hijab is essentially a scarf-like piece of cloth worn by Muslim women in some Islamic cultures to cover the hair as an expression of piety, based on interpretations of Qur’anic directives for modesty. It has been branded a threat to the notion of the separation between church and state and banned in schools and government institutions in some secular states, including Germany, France and Turkey, as a form of inappropriate religious identification. It has divided the feminist movement with conflicting claims that it is a symbol of both oppression and freedom of expression. It’s seen as an act of non-conformity and defiance by conservative Western political opponents and even portrayed as a terrorist threat in itself because of its potential use by suicide bombers to disguise their intentions. The coverage of these debates – which have become front-page news and have dominated talkback radio whenever they arise - has in turn sparked controversy about racism and ignorance within the media

There\u27s a tweet in every class

Twitter is now well-established as a platform for news gathering, dissemination and global interaction between journalists, their audiences and their sources. It\u27s also become a common news theme, with many breaking stories now featuring \u27the Twitter angle\u27 (See RJR September 2009)

The ‘twitterisation’ of investigative journalism

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, the \u27social tools\u27 most widely used by journalists in their work, are transforming professional norms and values. The ways journalists engage with these platforms are: challenging notions of objectivity through the convergence of personal and professional lives; propelling the mainstreaming of \u27open journalism\u27 models, which promote collaborative research and reportage; and even upending established verification processes. So, what are the implications for investigative journalism? What are the potential benefits of \u27social journalism\u27 for research, investigation and verification? How can journalists and news publishers most effectively deploy social media platforms in pursuit of investigative stories? And what are the pitfalls of this brave new world? This chapter will seek to answer these questions and work towards developing a best-practice approach to social journalism principles in the context of investigative reporting, with an emphasis on the role and impact of Twitter as the tool of choice for most journalists. The data for this chapter is drawn from: online interviews with 25 tweeting journalists conducted in 2009 (Posetti 2009a; 2009b; 2009c); a case study of Twitter and political reporting, based on the 2009 Australian Liberal leadership coup which became known by its hashtag #Spill, 1 featuring interviews with eight Canberra Press Gallery journalists (Posetti 2010b ); the record of journalist working group contributions from the 2011 BBC Social Media Summit (Posetti 2011b), at which the author acted as a facilitator and rapporteur; and a 2012 qualitative survey of 10 social media-active Australian journalists engaged in investigative reporting. The data has been analysed2 with the objective of identifying the risks, pitfalls, strengths, benefits and impacts of social journalism specific to research, source identification, investigation and verification-the hallmarks of traditional investigative journalism practice