It’s almost time for the 11th International Symposium on Online Journalism at UT Austin, which kicks off on Friday 23 April.
The event brings together professionals, academics and students to share experiences, research and ideas on journalism and its future.
I’m honoured to be among those presenting a paper at the conference, Wikifying the CBC: Reimagining the remit of public service media (PDF), with one of my graduate students, Amanda Ash.
The paper discusses a collaboration between the Graduate School of Journalism at UBC and CBC Radio 3 to research and develop a Canadian music wiki, funded through the MITACS Accelerate program.
Here’s the abstract:
This paper describes the research and development of an online collaborative environment for Canadian music fans. The project to set up a music wiki at CBC Radio 3 balances the need to provide an open and creative space with the desire of a public broadcaster to publish high quality user-generated content that showcases Canadian music. It is an example of the adoption of a collaborative knowledge system within the context of public service broadcasting in the 21st century, exploring the application of social media technologies within established media organizations, and specifically within the role and remit of Canada’s public service broadcaster. A music wiki provides a particularly relevant topic given the digital evolution of the music industry and the increasing role of the fan in a participatory culture, which scholars argue is transforming the relationship between producer and consumer. Our findings indicate that user-generated digital technologies represent one way of reimagining radio for the web. We suggest that an innovative initiative such as a wiki can be undertaken within low-risk areas of a public broadcaster, particularly when they are in line with the strategic mandate of the organization. The funding model further minimizes the financial risk to the broadcaster, suggesting there is potential for publicly funded university partnerships to stimulate new media research and development at incumbent journalism organizations.
And the full paper itself (PDF) is on the symposium site, together with the other 2010 research papers.
I’ll post the slides from the talk on Friday. As for the wiki itself, it is almost ready for launch.
PDF