Newspaper journalism and the changing publics of multimedia cities

This document is a rendition of the poster that was presented at the ESF conference ‘Cities and Media: Cultural Perspectives on Urban Identities in a Mediatized World’, held 25-29 October 2006 in Vadstena, Sweden. It comprises a brief survey of one major theme of Scott Rodger' doctoral work: the future orientations of editors and managers – the attempts made to project the political (and economic) standing of the Toronto Star into the present and near future ‘multimedia city’

Foreign objects? Web content management systems, journalistic cultures and the ontology of software

Research on ‘digital’ journalism has focused largely on online news, with comparatively less interest in the longer-term implications of software and computational technologies. Drawing upon a six-year study of the Toronto Star, this paper provides an account of TOPS, an in-house web content management system (CMS) which served as the backbone of thestar.com for six years. For some, TOPS was a successful software innovation, while for others, a strategic digital ‘property’. But for most journalists, it was slow, deficient in functionality, aesthetically unappealing and cumbersome. Although several organizational factors can explain TOPS’ obstinacy, I argue for particular attention to the complex ontology of software. Based on an outline of this ontology, I suggest software be taken seriously as an object of journalism, which implies: acknowledging its partial autonomy from human use or authorization; accounting for its ability to mutate indefinitely; and analyzing its capacity to encourage forms of ‘computational thinking

Urban geography: urban growth machine

Urban growth machine is an influential thesis of urban politics that suggests the objective of growth unites otherwise pluralistic interests in relation to a city. The thesis is situated within a broader theory about the commodification of place, where place is understood to be socially and economically valued land. Its key premise is that coalitions of actors and organizations (i.e. growth machines), all sharing an interest in local growth and its effects on land values, compete with growth machines elsewhere for scarce mobile capital investment, while simultaneously attempting to gain the tacit support of local publics for such urban growth. Following an introductory overview, this entry discusses the urban growth machine in two main parts. The first part sets out the key concepts underlying the growth machine thesis: use value, exchange value and place; place entrepreneurs; growth machines and their allies; competing for mobile capital; and promoting growth as a public good. The second part identifies core issues and debates in relation to the thesis (particularly those made by human geographers), including critiques of: the property focus; the human agency focus; difficulties with international comparison; the conceptualization of local dependency and scale; and the relationship of political projects with local feeling

Mediapolis: an introduction

The organisation of this workshop has been prompted by concerns with the way media so often seem to get left out of writing on cities and urban politics (rather than vice-versa). We agree with Iveson’s (2007) argument that urban and media studies have much more in the way of shared concerns when it comes to politics than is conventionally thought to be the case. As a result, we are hoping this workshop will create an occasion for urban scholars to meet those studying media, to explore what difference it makes to explicitly consider the place of media practices in making a politics of cities, and conversely, to consider what is left out when such practices are relegated to the background. In certain ways, we are suggesting a contemporary return to something like Robert Park’s inclination in relation to cities and media. In his seminal essay on the natural history of the newspaper, for example (Park, 1925), Park exhibits a style which does not generally seem to distinguish between or oppose the urban and the media when studying politics and democracy. This surely has something to do with Park’s own intellectual period, and the absence of established disciplines in media or urban studies. Yet this is also precisely the point of the workshop: an opportunity for engagement and discussion through a similar sort of pre-disciplinary spirit

Roots and fields: excursions through place, space and local in hyperlocal media

In 2012, UK charity Nesta announced Destination Local, a program focused on future developments in ‘hyperlocal media’ based on location-based technologies. The program’s first round funded an experimental portfolio of 10 small projects. In this paper, I present vignettes drawn from walking interviews with four of the project leaders, putting these into dialogue with phenomenological and practice-centered media theory, as well as growing interests in the geographies of media. My argument is that practices of so-called hyperlocal media should be understood via a phenomenological duality. On the one hand, as activities rooted in place: conducting media work though situated environments. Yet on the other hand, as inhabitations of field spaces: geographically dispersed social and technical worlds. This analysis suggests we step back in order to consider the conceptualization of place, space and the local itself in studies of ‘hyperlocal’ as an emergent form of media production

Circulating cities of difference: assembling geographical imaginations of Toronto’s diversity in the newsroom

This paper concerns the relationship between media and the framing of ethnic diversity as a central condition of contemporary urban life. Rather than focusing on how media represent ethnic diversity, this paper relies on a conceptualisation of news media as cultural forms which become entangled in the various interpretive communities partaking in their circulation. Examining the practical milieus of news editors at the Toronto Star, the paper focuses on a case example of editors’ work on a special section related to Toronto’s projected ethnic diversity in 2017. The main argument of the paper is that the relationships between sites of mainstream media production and urban publics are more complex and contradictory – as well as more banal and everyday – than conventionally acknowledged. This suggests we take seriously the ongoing importance of increasingly fragile, unified mediated public forums through which different groups might encounter one another in and across contemporary cities

Understanding Personal Data in the World of Social Media

Personal data is behind many of the online interactions that people have through social media and other online sites and services. This data allows sites to understand their users, which in turn allows them to provide better content for their users. This data is also used to determine user interests, which these online services use to target more relevant advertising to their users, and share the information that they collect about their users with third parties. It is only recently that this personal data is being regulated by lawmakers, the businesses running these sites are held accountable for managing the data that they collect on users, and that the users of these sites are given a greater degree of control over how their data is used, however these regulations are not universal. Additionally, the data that online services have collected on their users has been used by third parties for malicious purposes, such as the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The collection of personal data allows for the development of new technologies such as facial recognition and genealogy through DNA, but without regulation, moral dilemmas surround the collection and use of such personal data. For my capstone I built a website structured like a social media application. On this site I have written a number of posts that communicate the findings of my research to the users of this site. Additionally, on this website visitors are able to see some of the type of personal data that social media sites can collect about them while they use the service

Celebration of Mind

Information about the second Martin Gardner Celebration of Mind

A Study of the Status of the Student Teachers at Prairie View Training School

The major purpose of this investigation is to determine whether the pupils of Prairie View Training School look upon their student teachers in a favorable or unfavorable manner; and state reasons for answers that were given. The solving of this problem is dependent upon findings to the following questions: 1. What are the pupils\u27 general reactions to instruction by the student teachers? 2. How do pupils evaluate the student teachers as to: teaching procedure, use of correct English, the handling of discipline problems, knowledge of subject matter, and personality traits. 3. Do the pupils feel their learning is hampered by the teaching of the student teacher? 4. Is the discipline of the pupils affected by by having student teachers? 5. Do student teachers make it possible for pupils to receive more individual help? 6. Do the student teachers understand and help the pupils with personal problems? The subordinate purposes are to find out: 1. What interpretation of the reactions of the pupils to the student teacher is made by the regular teacher? 2. What attitudes are evidenced by the principal and supervising teachers with respect to teaching by the student teacher. 3. What evaluation of the student teaching program at Prairie View Training School was made by the student teachers, themselves. 4. What suggestions could be offered by those persons now in supervisory positions in Prairie View Training School to improve the teacher training program. This study, as in all studies of opinion, is limited with respect to the time factor. It reflects the attitudes of pupils in the year of 1952-53. What the opinions of these pupils will be in 1953-54 is not known. What their opinions would be if they were called together and subjected to cross examination is not known. Undoubtedly their opinions will change as their experiences are widened or as their insight increases. Operating under the assumption that pupils\u27 opinions are valuable as a criterion of teaching efficiency, an attempt has been made in this study to apply this technique to the evaluation and the improvement of student teachers. This problem was limited to the pupils in the first through the twelfth grades of the elementary and secondary schools of Prairie View Training School. This is the laboratory school connected with Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College, located in Waller County, forty-six miles Northwest of Houston, Texas