Uneasy Relationships: Journalists, Social Media and the Implication for News.

The rise of social media and its prominence during the “Arab Spring” has radically changed the relationship between journalism and the public. Foreign correspondents are no longer the sole source of news; raw emotional images are being uploaded to screens without the filter of the news desk; armed with the little more than a mobile phone, members of the public have increasing power. This array of digital media is rapidly blurring traditional boundaries, fact and fiction, objectivity and subjectivity, professional and amateur. And yet mainstream news organizations show little sign of abandoning normative values based around objectivity and an ideal of rational discourse; in fact some appear to be fighting a rearguard action, attempting to colonize social media within their existing newsroom structures. But is it not time to recognize that the blurring of formats has made the journalistic norms look anachronistic? And is it not time to consider new practices which would allow a better appreciation of the often highly emotional forces attached to news reporting across today’s multiplicity of formats? Concentrating on the coverage of international news, this chapter will explore the uneasy relationship between journalism and social media and its implications for the practice of news reporting in the digital era

Crossing the line between news and the business of news - exploring journalists' use of Twitter as a tool for self-promotion

The normative practices and unwritten rules of Anglo-American journalism that emerged in the late 19th Century have typically drawn a firm dividing line between those who report the news and those who run the business of news. This boundary, often referred to in the West as a 'Chinese Wall', is designed to uphold the independence of journalists from commercial interests or the whims of news proprietors. In traditional mainstream news organisations, the dividing line has often been a physical separation, with newsrooms and advertising departments housed on different floors - never the twain shall meet. But does this separation still exist in today's age of social media and at a time when news revenues are under unprecedented pressure? This paper explores journalists' use of Twitter as a now ubiquitous tool in the newsroom and focuses specifically on the practice of promoting their own stories or 'personal brand'. Are they stepping over a forbidden line and blurring the lines between news and the business? Or is this now viewed as an acceptable practice to promote a news organisation and support its financial viability? This paper explores, through a series of interviews with prominent journalists who tweet on a daily basis, the fine dividing line between dissemination of news and promotion of brand. It draws on a conceptual framework of boundary work (Carlson & Lewis, 2015) to pose the question whether such practice has now become accepted and normalised in today's news ecology. The paper also investigates the attitudes of news managers and editorial policy makers in the United Kingdom. Do they expect their journalists to engage in promotion of their stories through Twitter and to actively promote the organisation's news brand? If so, is this now part of their job description and is their Twitter activity monitored or subject to targets? At a time of digital disruption when what it means to be a journalist is being redefined, is one of the core dividing lines of journalism about to be crossed? Or has it in fact already been crossed and nobody really noticed

Suppressing higher aims? Buried institutional logics resurface in public service broadcasting in Zimbabwe, 1970-2008

Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation operates in a complex institutional environment, with contestation over logics – some idealised, others cynical – about what it means to be a public service broadcaster. This paper draws upon the institutional logics perspective to analyse secondary data source for signs about how institutional logics might help to explain the curious, periodic resurfacing of ideals of independence, drawn in part from the legacy of its roots in the logics of public service broadcasting developed in the BBC and not always enacted the ideals would have it

Reporting Global While Being Local—Commentary for Special Issue of Journalism Studies: It is Time to Recognise the Work of Fixers

In the year 2000, Kurt Schork, a freelance journalist working for Reuters, was killed while on assignment in Sierra Leone. His death, along with that of Associated Press cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora, sent shockwaves through the news industry. But since the turn of the century, the death of journalists has become an all too familiar occurrence and while the targeting of high profile international correspondents such as Marie Colvin has rightly caused international outrage, the overwhelming majority of those killed have been local journalists and fixers whose work often goes unheralded. Since the deaths in 2000, a number of trusts and foundations have been set up to support local journalists and fixers, while academic scholarship has started to focus on their work. But this commentary argues that much more needs to be done to recognise the invaluable role they play in today’s newsgathering environment

Affective journalism – uncovering the affective dimension of practice in the coverage of traumatic news

This thesis is an exploration of the affective processes, behaviours and practices that lie at the heart of journalists’ work when covering traumatic news stories such as conflict, acts of terror and natural disasters. The starting point is one of the central tensions of Anglo-American journalism. On the one hand, the normative values of objectivity have become deeply ingrained as a mark of professional standing. On the other hand, the practice of journalism relies on emotion to engage the public. The apparent contradiction has often been the focus of academic analysis, sometimes from the perspective of audience reception and sometimes from that of professional and political economic tensions facing the industry. This thesis unpicks and examines in detail the component parts of the ‘objectivity paradigm’ and breaks new ground by uncovering the affective dimension of practice when covering traumatic news. Its analysis draws principally on affect theorists who have been influenced by a psychosocial tradition. Empirical research is based on interviews with 25 journalists who have covered traumatic news stories where the objectivity norm has been challenged or disrupted. These include the shooting of primary school children in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, in the pre-Internet era, and several contemporary stories dominated by social media ranging from the Syrian conflict to terror attacks in London and Paris. What emerges is a complex picture of journalists grappling with competing tensions – on the one hand a virtually hard-wired notion of what it is to be a professional journalist and, on the other hand, a visceral, empathic often instinctive affective dimension of practice. The research identifies two main affective behaviours of journalists covering difficult stories, that of ‘cool-detached’ and ‘autopilot.’ It also investigates the affective dimension of social media images, including potential mental health risks of working with user-generated content and the ‘herd instinct’ of journalists covering major breaking news. The research highlights the moral obligation on news organisations to maintain the mental well-being of their journalists whether on assignment in the field or in the newsroom handling graphic user-generated content. It also explores the tensions between the commercial attractions of such content as a means to reengage disaffected audiences and its impact in creating a more emotionally driven news file

Back to the Future: How UK-based news organisations are rediscovering objectivity

The emergence of 'fake news' during the tumultuous Brexit referendum and Trump election campaign has sent news organisations scurrying to set up special teams of journalists to debunk deliberately misleading stories and verify facts. This paper examines the steps being taken to counter the spate of false news stories being spread through social media and asks whether normative values of objectivity are about to enjoy a comeback. Typical markers of objectivity such as freedom from bias, detachment and fact-based reporting date back to the late 19th Century and, despite being deeply ingrained in the Anglo-American news culture, have always been subject to criticism and challenge. Most recently, the growth of openly partisan or populist media has illustrated a deep distrust in traditional news outlets and is overtly questioning whether it is time to jettison objectivity. The increasing use of emotive (and often unfiltered) user-generated content and the rise in citizen journalism appear to have undermined the concept even further. But are we now experiencing a backlash? Through a series of interviews with editorial policy makers at major UK and US news organisations, the paper explores how fake news and other concerns around the impact of social media are leading to fresh debate about objectivity and its potential to make quality journalism stand out

Treatment for Schistosoma japonicum, Reduction of Intestinal Parasite Load, and Cognitive Test Score Improvements in School-Aged Children

Parasitic worm infections are associated with cognitive impairment and lower academic achievement for infected relative to uninfected children. However, it is unclear whether curing or reducing worm infection intensity improves child cognitive function. We examined the independent associations between: (i) Schistosoma japonicum infection-free duration, (ii) declines in single helminth species, and (iii) joint declines of ≥2 soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections and improvements in four cognitive tests during18 months of follow-up. Enrolled were schistosome-infected school-aged children among whom coinfection with STH was common. All children were treated for schistosome infection only at enrolment with praziquantel. Children cured or schistosome-free for >12 months scored higher in memory and verbal fluency tests compared to persistently infected children. Likewise, declines of single and polyparasitic STH infections predicted higher scores in three of four tests. We conclude that reducing the intensity of certain helminth species and the frequency of multi-species STH infections may have long-term benefits for affected children's cognitive performance. The rapidity of schistosome re-infection and the ubiquity of concurrent multi-species infection highlight the importance of sustained deworming for both schistosome and STH infections to enhance the learning and educational attainment of children in helminth-endemic settings

Modes of Gene Duplication Contribute Differently to Genetic Novelty and Redundancy, but Show Parallels across Divergent Angiosperms

BACKGROUND: Both single gene and whole genome duplications (WGD) have recurred in angiosperm evolution. However, the evolutionary effects of different modes of gene duplication, especially regarding their contributions to genetic novelty or redundancy, have been inadequately explored. RESULTS: In Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa (rice), species that deeply sample botanical diversity and for which expression data are available from a wide range of tissues and physiological conditions, we have compared expression divergence between genes duplicated by six different mechanisms (WGD, tandem, proximal, DNA based transposed, retrotransposed and dispersed), and between positional orthologs. Both neo-functionalization and genetic redundancy appear to contribute to retention of duplicate genes. Genes resulting from WGD and tandem duplications diverge slowest in both coding sequences and gene expression, and contribute most to genetic redundancy, while other duplication modes contribute more to evolutionary novelty. WGD duplicates may more frequently be retained due to dosage amplification, while inferred transposon mediated gene duplications tend to reduce gene expression levels. The extent of expression divergence between duplicates is discernibly related to duplication modes, different WGD events, amino acid divergence, and putatively neutral divergence (time), but the contribution of each factor is heterogeneous among duplication modes. Gene loss may retard inter-species expression divergence. Members of different gene families may have non-random patterns of origin that are similar in Arabidopsis and rice, suggesting the action of pan-taxon principles of molecular evolution. CONCLUSION: Gene duplication modes differ in contribution to genetic novelty and redundancy, but show some parallels in taxa separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution

The Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel

A major challenge of biology is understanding the relationship between molecular genetic variation and variation in quantitative traits, including fitness. This relationship determines our ability to predict phenotypes from genotypes and to understand how evolutionary forces shape variation within and between species. Previous efforts to dissect the genotype–phenotype map were based on incomplete genotypic information. Here, we describe the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP), a community resource for analysis of population genomics and quantitative traits. The DGRP consists of fully sequenced inbred lines derived from a natural population. Population genomic analyses reveal reduced polymorphism in centromeric autosomal regions and the X chromosome, evidence for positive and negative selection, and rapid evolution of the X chromosome. Many variants in novel genes, most at low frequency, are associated with quantitative traits and explain a large fraction of the phenotypic variance. The DGRP facilitates genotype–phenotype mapping using the power of Drosophila genetics

News in the Digital Age - what does it mean for media literacy?

It is now more than 10 years since the deadly July 7 bombings in London. With hindsight, and setting aside the human tragedy, the attack represented a defining moment in modern journalism when mobile phone images taken by those trapped in the wreckage of underground railway carriages opened up a new perspective in news gathering. Today, as consumers of news, we would be surprised not to see such “user generated content”, whether it be from the Boston marathon bombing, the beheading of an off-duty soldier outside his barracks in south London or the propaganda machine of ISIS. But the digital revolution encompasses far more than the uploading of mobile phone images. This paper explores just how the practice of journalism has changed in those 10 years that have witnessed an explosion of social media, the tortured introspection of the Leveson Inquiry and the surveillance society revealed by Edward Snowden. What does this mean for our concepts of media literacy and emotional literacy