TRAJECTORIES: Trajectories in Digital Journalism: Embracing Complexity

When the Journalism Studies Interest Group of the International Communication Association was formed in pre-Katrina New Orleans in 2004, online journalism looked very much like offline journalism. Yes, content was available on a computer screen rather than on a piece of paper or over the airwaves. But otherwise, it was much the same: produced by a news organization, dominated by text, consumed but not created by an audience. By the time the interest group became a division two years later, a hurricane had swept through the media world, and very little was the same as before. Journalism Studies as a distinct scholarly discipline has matured in this age of Web 2.0, a term that came into vogue only in late 2004 as innovators began to engage with the medium as a platform for participation and not just for traditional one-to-many publishing. As the practice of journalism has been transformed over the past decade, so too has the study of that practice. Yet practitioners and scholars both have struggled to adapt to the transformation. Journalists have moved only slowly away from the reification of old practices and toward implementation of new ones. And scholars have only tentatively begun to venture outside the comfort zone of long-standing theories as devices for understanding the nature of change. This essay looks at some of the ways in which an evolving realization of the medium’s distinctiveness has brought fundamental change to the synergistic enterprises of journalism practice and journalism studies

Emotional labour and wellbeing: what protects nurses?

Although compassionate care has wide-ranging benefits for patients, it can be emotionally demanding for healthcare staff. This may be a particular problem for those with little experience in a caring role. This study utilises the job demands-resources model to examine links between “emotional labour” and emotional exhaustion in student nurses. In line with the triple-match principle—whereby interactive effects are more likely when job demands, resources, and outcomes are within the same qualitative domain—the protective role of emotional support and emotion-focused coping (i.e., emotional venting) in the relationship between emotional labour and exhaustion is also explored. An online questionnaire was completed by 351 student nurses with experience working in healthcare settings. A strong positive relationship was found between emotional labour and emotional exhaustion, and some support was found for the moderating effects of emotional support and emotion-focused coping. Ways to help student and qualified nurses develop the emotional resilience required to protect their wellbeing, while providing high-quality compassionate care to patients are considered

The Na I D resonance lines in main sequence late-type stars

We study the sodium D lines (D1: 5895.92 \AA; D2: 5889.95 \AA) in late-type dwarf stars. The stars have spectral types between F6 and M5.5 (B-V between 0.457 and 1.807) and metallicity between [Fe/H] = -0.82 and 0.6. We obtained medium resolution echelle spectra using the 2.15-m telescope at the argentinian observatory CASLEO. The observations have been performed periodically since 1999. The spectra were calibrated in wavelength and in flux. A definition of the pseudo-continuum level is found for all our observations. We also define a continuum level for calibration purposes. The equivalent width of the D lines is computed in detail for all our spectra and related to the colour index (B-V) of the stars. When possible, we perform a careful comparison with previous studies. Finally, we construct a spectral index (R_D') as the ratio between the flux in the D lines, and the bolometric flux. We find that, once corrected for the photospheric contribution, this index can be used as a chromospheric activity indicator in stars with a high level of activity. Additionally, we find that combining some of our results, we obtain a method to calibrate in flux stars of unknown colour.Comment: 12 pages, including 14 figures and 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA