I’ll be presenting my paper on Twitter at journalism first thing on Thursday on day two of the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University.
In the paper, I suggest that Twitter can be described as ambient journalism, defined as an awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information.
Here a taste in the abstract of the paper:
This paper examines new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as “awareness systems” that provide journalists with more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication. Traditional journalism defines fact as information and quotes from official sources, which have been identified as forming the vast majority of news and information content. This model of news is in flux, however, as new social media technologies such as Twitter facilitate the instant, online dissemination of short fragments of information from a variety of official and unofficial sources. This paper draws from literature on new communications technologies in computer science to suggest that these broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on systems are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them, giving rise to awareness systems that paper describes as ambient journalism. The emergence of ambient journalism brought about by the use of these new digital delivery systems and evolving communications protocols raises significant research questions for journalism scholars and professionals. This research offers an initial exploration of the impact of awareness systems on journalism norms and practices. It suggests that one of the future directions for journalism may be to develop approaches and systems that help the public negotiate and regulate the flow of awareness information, facilitating the collection and transmission of news.
PDF
Hi, are you going to share the study on the web? I´m very interested in getting a copy if you may… Just to read and investigation purpose. Intelectual property WILL BE RESPECTED.
@DMehrad
I think you have picked an excellent topic to present at the conference. I am excited about how these new digital delivery systems help facilitate the spread of news and information. I feel that in some way, the journalistic playing field is “leveled” so that both established, and emerging journalists can share from same platform, and be judged solely on content, without a preceding reputation, (or lack of one) getting in the way.
[...] also what isn’t) journalism? Yes, I think he does. Seeking a more-nuanced take, I found this summation of a paper being delivered today by Alfred Hermida. Hermida refers to Twitter as a [...]
I second Daniel’s comment. I’d love to read the whole paper if make it available (or let us know where/if it will be published).
[...] Talking about Twitter as a system of journalism « Reportr.net reportr.net/2009/09/09/talking-about-twitter-as-a-system-of-journalism – view page – cached I’ll be presenting my paper on Twitter at journalism first thing on Thursday on day two of the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University. — From the page [...]
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