Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present

This essay is part survey and part manifesto, one that concerns itself with the practice of journalism and the practices of journalists in the United States. It is not, however, about “the future of the news industry,” both because much of that future is already here and because there is no such thing as the news industry anymore. If you wanted to sum up the past decade of the news ecosystem in a single phrase, it might be this: Everybody suddenly got a lot more freedom. The newsmakers, the advertisers, the startups, and, especially, the people formerly known as the audience have all been given new freedom to communicate, narrowly and broadly, outside the old strictures of the broadcast and publishing models. The past 15 years have seen an explosion of new tools and techniques, and, more importantly, new assumptions and expectations, and these changes have wrecked the old clarity. Many of the changes talked about in the last decade as part of the future landscape of journalism have already taken place; much of journalism’s imagined future is now its lived-in present. (As William Gibson noted long ago, “The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.”) Our goal is to write about what has already happened and what is happening today, and what we can learn from it, rather than engaging in much speculation

Capturing Saddam Hussein: How the full story got away, and what conflict journalism can learn from it

The capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 was reported with a sense of triumph which must have greatly satisfied the United States forces occupying Iraq. This was the victory they had been looking for; the seminal moment which signalled that the invasion had been a success. But the reporting of that event was also a missed opportunity: an example of incomplete story telling. In this article, I use my personal experience of reporting on the event for the BBC as a starting point to examine what it, and the way it was covered, tell us about the omissions which are frequently a feature of conflict reporting. The article argues that the way in which reporters had to work in Iraq then meant that they did not convey all of the event’s wider implications, and suggests how that might be improved

As redes sociais na internet e suas apropriações por jovens brasileiros e portugueses em idade escolar

O fenômeno das redes sociais on-line é marcante na atual fase da internet 2.0, tendo crescido vertiginosamente, a partir do ano 2005, com a adesão majoritária de jovens, que as acessam por computadores fixos e móveis, em plataformas dos mais variados tipos. Por meio delas, trocam mensagens e compartilham conteúdos os mais diversos. Diante desse cenário, com base em duas pesquisas convergentes, pretende-se discutir os usos e as apropriações das redes sociais on-line por jovens alunos do ensino fundamental e médio e destacar os pontos mais pertinentes da atual fase da internet nos contextos pessoal, familiar e escolar. Foram aplicados questionários, inspirados em modelo de pesquisa elaborado na Itália, a 404 alunos brasileiros de oito escolas no Rio de Janeiro e a 549 alunos portugueses de 11 escolas na região portuguesa de Castelo Branco. Com essa rica empiria, verificou-se em que pontos os jovens se aproximam dos ideais de uma nova subjetividade (o leitor imerso nas novas mídias) e de um jovem naturalmente afeito aos suportes digitais (o nativo digital).The phenomenon of online social networks has been remarkable in the current phase of internet 2.0 and has grown rapidly from the year 2005, with the majority membership of young people, who access the social networks from desktops and mobile platforms of all kinds. Using these platforms, they exchange messages and share various contents. Given this scenario, based on two converging researches, this paper discusses the uses and appropriations of online social networks by students of elementary school and high school. Also, it highlights the most relevant points in the current phase of the internet in relation to personal, family and school contexts. Inspired by a research model developed in Italy, 404 questionnaires were applied to Brazilian students from eight schools in Rio de Janeiro and 549 Portuguese students from 11 schools in the Portuguese region of Castelo Branco. With this comprehensive database, we could verify at which points the youth approaches the ideals of a new subjectivity (the reader immersed in new medias) and a youngster naturally used to digital media (the digital native).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

“It’s a terrible way to go to work:” what 70 million readers’ comments on the Guardian revealed about hostility to women and minorities online

In 2006, the Guardian opened many of its articles to readers’ comments to encourage a “conversation” between journalists and their readers. Readers responded enthusiastically, and by 2016 they had posted 70 million comments on the site. However, from the outset many journalists complained about the quality and tone of comments. Female and BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) journalists in particular complained that they were subject to more abuse than their male, white counterparts. This study finds prima facie evidence to support the journalists’ claims. Using comments that had been blocked by moderators as a proxy for abuse and dismissive trolling, it was found that articles written by women did attract a higher percentage of blocked comments than those written by men, regardless of the subject of the article; this effect was heightened when the articles ran in a particularly male-dominated section of the site. There was also evidence that articles written by BAME writers attracted disproportionate levels of blocked comments, even though the research was not designed to reveal this. Preliminary research findings were published in the Guardian and readers were invited to comment on them. Guardian journalists’ experiences of comments were also surveyed. Both sets of responses are analysed here, in order to explore the contested nature of online abuse in an online news media environment, and to evaluate the potential of comments to “democratise” journalism

Social media in democratic transitions and consolidations: what can we learn from the case of Tunisia?

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The aim of this paper is to analyse the use of social media in the stages of uprising, democratic transition and democratic consolidation using the case study of Tunisia. While the impact of social media in uprisings has been widely documented in past research about the MENA region, Tunisia provides new evidence to the use of Internet in the processes of democratisation. Consequently, this research focuses in detail on the benefits but also the pitfalls of social media in transitions and consolidations. Data collection was based on interviews with Tunisian social media activists. The analysis is valuable to social media practitioners and researchers alike

A universal basic income in the superstar (digital) economy

This paper argues that the structural logic of the digital economy is to widen inequality, not only through its increasing automation of jobs but also in its efficiency in delivering ever greater profits to a smaller number of already-enriched organisations and individuals. Remedial actions that might be taken to mitigate the effects of some of the digital economy’s structural flaws are interrogated here, with a particular focus on universal basic income (UBI) and stake-holding schemes. The paper considers whether the digital economy’s inherent problems are of such magnitude that some sort of financial support for workers to buttress long periods of idleness, or to enable them to take risks in increasingly volatile and unstable global markets, is both desirable and politically feasible

Money, (Co)Production and Power in Digital

This article discusses the contribution of critical political economy approaches to digital journalism studies and argues that these offer important correctives to celebratory perspectives. The first part offers a review and critique of influential claims arising from self-styled new studies of convergence culture, media and creative industries. The second part discusses the contribution of critical political economy in examining digital journalism and responding to celebrant claims. The final part reflects on problems of restrictive normativity and other limitations within media political economy perspectives and considers ways in which challenges might be addressed by more synthesising approaches. The paper proposes developing radical pluralist, media systems and comparative analysis, and advocates drawing on strengths in both political economy and culturalist traditions to map and evaluate practices across all sectors of digital journalism

Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations

A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest. With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'tre swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is profound. One of the culture's wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky's assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler