Convergence calls: multimedia storytelling at British news websites

This article uses qualitative interviews with senior editors and managers from a selection of the UK's national online news providers to describe and analyse their current experimentation with multimedia and video storytelling. The results show that, in a period of declining newspaper readership and TV news viewing, editors are keen to embrace new technologies, which are seen as being part of the future of news. At the same time, text is still reported to be the cornerstone for news websites, leading to changes in the grammar and function of news video when used online. The economic rationale for convergence is examined and the article investigates the partnerships sites have entered into in order to be able to serve their audience with video content. In-house video is complementing syndicated content, and the authors examine the resulting developments in newsroom training and recruitment practices. The article provides journalism and interactive media scholars with case studies on the changes taking place in newsrooms as a result of the shift towards multimedia, multiplatform news consumption

Implicit theories of online trolling: evidence that attention-seeking conceptions are associated with increased psychological resilience.

Three studies were conducted to investigate people’s conceptions of online trolls, particularly conceptions associated with psychological resilience to trolling. In Study 1, factor analytic analysis of participants’ ratings of characteristics of online trolls found a replicable bifactor model of conceptions of online trolls, with both a general factor of general conceptions towards online trolls being identified, but five group factors (attention-conflict seeking, low selfconfidence, viciousness, uneducated, amusement) as most salient. In Study 2, participants evaluated hypothetical profiles of online trolling messages to establish the validity of the five factors. Three constructs (attention-conflict seeking, viciousness, and uneducated) were actively employed when people considered profiles of online trolling scenarios. Study 3 introduced a 20-item ‘Conceptions of Online Trolls scale’ to examine the extent to which the five group factors were associated with resilience to trolling. Results indicated that viewing online trolls as seeking conflict or attention was associated with a decrease in individuals' negative affect around previous trolling incidents. Overall, the findings suggest that adopting an implicit theories approach can further our understanding and measurement of conceptions towards trolling through the identification of five salient factors, of which at least one factor may act as a resilience strategy

The power of popular publicity: new social media and the affective dynamics of the sport racism scandal

Sociologists have tended to take insufficient account of the importance of emotions to the social power of the institution of media, particularly as altered by the emergence of social media in the current media ecology. This paper compensates for this neglect by means of a brief illustrative case study of the effect of social media on the public reception of the 2011 Sepp Blatter racism scandal and of other ‘race-related’ scandals in the UK. In proposing media scandals’ wider sociological significance regarding the dynamic, multi-accented relationships between emotions and power, it analyses how England’s prevailing climate of ‘postcolonial guilt’ was reinforced and conveyed through social media networks

Policy mixes for incumbency: the destructive recreation of renewable energy, shale gas 'fracking,' and nuclear power in the United Kingdom

The notion of a ‘policy mix’ can describe interactions across a wide range of innovation policies, including ‘motors for creation’ as well as for ‘destruction’. This paper focuses on the United Kingdom’s (UK) ‘new policy direction’ that has weakened support for renewables and energy efficiency schemes while strengthening promotion of nuclear power and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (‘fracking’). The paper argues that a ‘policy apparatus for incumbency’ is emerging which strengthens key regimebased technologies while arguably damaging emerging niche innovations. Basing the discussion around the three technology-based cases of renewable energy and efficiency, fracking, and nuclear power, this paper refers to this process as “destructive recreation”. Our study raises questions over the extent to which policymaking in the energy field is not so much driven by stated aims around sustainability transitions, as by other policy drivers. It investigates different ‘strategies of incumbency’ including ‘securitization’, ‘masking’, ‘reinvention’, and ‘capture.’ It suggests that analytical frameworks should extend beyond the particular sectors in focus, with notions of what counts as a relevant ‘policy maker’ correspondingly also expanded, in order to explore a wider range of nodes and critical junctures as entry points for understanding how relations of incumbency are forged and reproduced

Custom Unions and Common Markets as Economic Security Fault Lines. The Garlic Case.

It is not very often that something as common as the import and export of agricultural products – especially non-exotic fruits and vegetables – becomes the object of such a dispute across multiple states. This is what happened in the now infamous case of Chinese garlic exports, which have seen several instances of smuggling, conviction, and fraud all over Europe in the last 20 years. Most incidents have taken place in Northern Europe, particularly Sweden, Norway, the UK and Ireland. There's a reason for that, which will be explained below

Mobile TV

This article explores how mobile television is being constructed and understood, focusing on four concepts used in contemporary public debate to discuss the technology, namely 'TV in your pocket', 'TV anytime, anywhere', 'TV on the go', and 'Enhanced TV'. Drawing on an analysis of industry reports, conference proceedings, websites, academic studies, press coverage, results of trials, advertisements and expert interviews, we examine the ways in which experts involved in the production, marketing, delivery and analysis of mobile TV regard this emergent technology. It is argued that mobile TV is constructed by these experts as a novel technological and cultural experience and form, while at the same time the rhetoric of novelty is paralleled with a continuous emphasis on the new medium's relation to familiar technological worlds. The article concludes by offering an explanation for this new/old articulation of mobile TV