I had the honour of introducing the keynote speaker on social media, Sidneyeve Matrix, at the WorldViews conference on media and education. The session was packed, though some arrive after we started since an earlier session over-ran. So I am posting my introductory comments that were intended to seed the discussions. “Welcome to this afternoon’s stream on social media and new technology. The question on our agenda: Is this the
PDF Here’s something for a holiday Easter weekend. A wonderful cartoon by Rob Cottingham on how to explain the internet. Noise to Signal Cartoon Print
The state of the media in the US was the focus of one of the panels at the AEJMC annual conference. Bob Papper of Hofstra University reported on the state of TV news in the US from a survey of local TV stations. His message was that things aren’t as bad as they seem. TV news was still making money, though there has been a slight decline in revenue, coupled with
This presentation by Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, highlights how media habits in the US have changed in the past 10 years. It highlights how internet use has changed from being based around a stationary and slow computer to mobile connections built around storage and services in the cloud. The presentation was delivered at the Newhouse Monetising Online Business conference How Media Consumption Has
The BBC has revised its guidelines (PDF) on the use of Twitter and other micro-blogging sites by staff. The updated guidance take account of the spread of services like Twitter which were not widespread when the advice was first published in 2008. As well as offering specific advice on friending and retweeting, the guidelines set out the BBC’s social media principles: With conversations, participate online; don’t “broadcast” messages to users
Image via CrunchBase The launch of Apple’s iPad sparked off discussion as to whether the device could save the news industry. Indeed, many of the first iPad apps came from established media outfits, such as the New York Times, AP News and BBC News. But in an initial study of the usability of several media apps, Jakob Nielsen concluded that: iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with
The opening speaker for 11th International Online Journalism Symposium was Steven Kydd, executive vice-president & head of content, Demand Media. Kydd starting off by pointing out how his company has not been embraced by the leading lights of new media. But he suggested that attitudes would change if people listened to Demand Media’s approach to combine art of traditional media and the science of the internet. He argued that the
The research papers for this year’s International Online Journalism Symposium are now available online. The papers cover a wide range of topics, from blogging at US broadcast networks (PDF) to models for micropayments (PDF) to a study of the New York Times interactive technology desk (PDF). Together with one of my graduating journalism students, I will be presenting a paper on a project to research and development a Canadian music
The press watchdog in the UK has ruled that journalistic blogs have to meet the same standards as content appearing in print. The Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against a 92-word blog post by Rod Liddle published on The Spectator’s website. In the entry, Liddle claimed that “the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by
On Friday, I gave a presentation to science and health researchers at UBC about blogging. The purpose was to discuss how blogs could help them share their research and engage with others interested in the same areas. Among the examples I cited as different approaches to blogging were Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science, BBC environment correspondent Richard Black’s Earthwatch, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, and the Neuroethics at the Core group