Nancy Baym of Microsoft Research kicked off the session on the transnational dimensions of spreadable media at MIT8. She gave an insight into her research on musicians and international audiences. Her research takes on the two dominant discourses about music audiences. Listeners are viewed as pirates who steal music or as customers who are not paying enough for music. Baym said both are economic metaphors that position musicians as manufacturers

This year’s Media in Transition (MIT8) conference at MIT addresses question of the shifting nature of the public and the private, kicking off with a panel on oversharing. The panel brings together Feona Attwood, Middlesex University (UK), David Rosen, author and Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard University, moderated by Nick Montfort. Montfort introduces oversharing by talking about how people are voluntarily divulging information online that makes other people uncomfortable. He asks why are people willing to share in this way, but also why

Social media has become “indispensable” for journalists, says the latest State of the Media report. The annual report by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism highlights the importance of social media to news organisations. At the time of publication, 184 news organisations had designated social media editors. “In 2012, social media continued to expand its role in the news ecosystem, establishing itself as an indispensable tool for distributing

The BBC College of Journalism is a treasure trove of advice, lessons and tips for any budding or experienced journalist. Outside of the UK, it is only available on a subscription basis. The College of Journalism tends to post videos from events on its Youtube channel. But I recently discovered that some of the lessons available through a dedicated website on the main BBC website. Among the videos are various

The UK journalism site, journalism.co.uk, has put together a list of 50 blogs on journalism. The list  covers “blogging reporters who share their tips and experiences of mobile journalism, blogging journalism educators, and blogging photojournalist.” It is required reading for anyone interested in gaining insight and perpectives on the changing  of journalism. I’m honoured that this blog, Reportr.net, is included on a list. Among the other blogs by journalism educators are Mindy

When data analysis and visualisation goes wrong: The problem with heatmaps, captured perfectly by xkcd.   (Via Danny Sanchez)

As a journalism professor, I spend quite a bit of time talking to students about building up their professional presence online. It is important for students to have an online portfolio that showcases their work and will pop up when a prospective employer searches for them online. WordPress, the choice for many students, has just made it that much easier to create an elegant portfolio site. It has launched WordPress.com/portfolios with 30 dedicated portfolio

This graphic on the top trends on Twitter in 2012 has been in the bookmarks for a few days. Among the key points: Twitter grew to 500 million users – 140 million are active users 150 million Tweets were posted during the London Olympic games Barack Obama’s “4 more years” photo is now the most retweeted in history A quarter of all top trends were hash tags. The others were

This blog has been somewhat neglected over the past few months. My writing energies have gone into working on my new book,  Tell Everyone: How the Stories We Share Shape What We Know and Why It Matters. Tell Everyone shows us how to thrive at a time when our vastly expanded ability to share has given individuals much greater power to influence what is published, changed the way people organize, challenged institutional

The fog of war is a phrase commonly used to capture the uncertainty and confusion that surrounds military conflicts. Facts, rumour and speculation swirl in the fog as journalists try to figure out what is going on. But on November 14, the Israeli Defense Forces blew away the fog of war when it live tweeted its assault on the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, in Gaza. Through its official Twitter account,