Bartosz Wojdynski and Jessica Smith from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looked at whether there are demographic predictors of online content creation in their presentation at the Convergence and Society conference. Using data from Pew from 2005, they tried to work out whether it is true that young people tend to create more content online than an older generation. They found that this was generally true –

Image by acaben via Flickr The false report about Steve Jobs that briefly surfaced on CNN’s iReport site has prompted a wave of discussion on the “failings” of citizen journalism. Apple swiftly dismissed the rumour, and CNN removed the item. Across the web, there are comments about “the dangers of citizen journalism” (BBC), “citizen journalism just failed” (Read/Write/Web) or the “perils of citizen journalism” (Computerworld). These reports suggesting the imminent

A piece on J-Source lays into NowPublic for reproducing content from mainstream media. Enticingly titled, The Revolution will be Plagarised, it argues that the citizens are failing us at NowPublic. As of 2 p.m., Sept. 11, nearly 60 per cent of the stories in the citizen-journalism site’s Canadian Election section consist of quoted material from other, largely traditional media outlets. The problem with this article is that it misunderstands what

I’m pleased to say that a journal article on professional attitudes to user-generated content by myself and Neil Thurman of City University, London, has been published. The research paper, called A Clash of Cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites, is published in October 2008 issue of Journalism Practice. The paper is available online, but it is behind a subscription wall.  Here is

Image via Wikipedia The theme at this year’s AEJMC annual conference is transformation, taking account of the changes taking place in the media. While many panels look at specific issues such as blogging and multimedia journalism, a paper by David Ryfe and Donica Mensing at the University of Nevada in Reno suggests that the purpose of journalism may be changing, with participation becoming increasingly important. They asked whether journalism is

Vancouver-based participatory news site NowPublic.com has bought up Truemors, a rumor site launched by Guy Kawasaki in May 2007. According to CEO Len Brody, NowPublic will mesh Truemors content into its website: Truemorists are digging in the four corners of the web for the status of the rumor mill at any moment. It will drive leads to our members for stories going on around the world and give our readers

The BBC’s new Statements of Programme Policy has a revealing snippet about the attitudes of TV to user-generated content. On page 57 of this lengthy document (PDF), the broadcaster says: We will augment our news coverage with video, still images and messages submitted by viewers, where appropriate, in order to offer first-hand accounts and a wide range of views. We aim to make it as simple as possible for audiences

Guy Berger, head of the School of Journalism & Media Studies at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, was awarded a $630,000 Knight News Challenge grant for the News is Coming project. As he explains, the aim is to have local news reports disseminated through cellphones to help connect an all-black township in South Africa with the white population living in the urban center. [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.587296&w=425&h=350&fv=] (Shot on a Nokia

The state of journalism in Canada is coming under scrutiny in an event on Thursday May 29 in Toronto organised by the Canadian Media Research Consortium. The one-day event, entitled The Future of News, aims to “bring together the best minds in industry and media studies to consider some of the challenges posed by today’s media landscape”. The event aims to examine how audiences are changing, the impact of citizen

Hold the front page – citizen journalists can produce original news! This came out of research by Zvi Reich of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel presented at the ICA annual conference in Montreal on Saturday. He looked at three mainstream news organisations in Israel and compared them to the Israeli citizen journalism site, Scoop. What he found was that 52% of the material on Scoop were original news