PBS Mediashift is running a special series called Beyond J-School, taking an in-depth look at journalism education in the digital age. The series was kicked off by a piece I wrote on how to teach social media at journalism schools: Teaching social media is more than showing students the mechanics of Twitter. Rather, they should [...]
At the AEJMC conference, Serena Carpenter of Arizona State talked about her experiences in teaching social media. She only spends between 6 to 8 hours teaching social media but tries to weave it into other parts of the course. Her main areas of focus are blogging, Twitter and reputation management. Carpenter said students tend to [...]
US researchers at Northeastern University, Boston, have shown the potential value of the millions of messages on Twitter. They created a Twitter Mood Map to measure the mood in the country. The research highlights how information can be derived by aggregating and analysing the millions of tweets. Researcher Sume Lehmann explains: Even though individual tweets are [...]
The World Journalism Education Congress is taking place in South Africa with the theme of “Journalism education in an age of radical change.” Unfortunately I could not attend but I am following the sessions on the conference’s site and through the Twitter hashtag #WJEC2. One of the areas of discussion is the place of social [...]
The report by Fleishman-Hillard into the Internet’s influence in seven countries reveals a paradox when it comes to social media. While more users are embracing social media, they are also concerned about sharing too much information. The 2010 Digital Influence Index Study found that more than half (53%) of the study’s respondents thought they were [...]
News of the 5.5 earthquake that hit the Ontario-Quebec border broke on Twitter. The snapshot from Trendsmap, taken shortly after the quake, highlights the stream of messages. People were tweeting about what had happened and searching for more information about the scale of the tremor. Within minutes, there were dozens of reports of a quake [...]
Image by Balakov via Flickr In an op-ed for The Globe and Mail, I explore what privacy means in an age of Facebook and Twitter. It was prompted by Monday’s Quit Facebook Day. While I understand the reasons why users are upset with Facebook’s attitude to privacy, I argue that deleting your Facebook profile is [...]
In April 2009, the well respected New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asked the founders of Twitter: “Did you know you were designing a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls?” Her dismissive approach towards the micro-blogging service captures the attitude of many journalists to Twitter. This negative reaction to a new communication technology is [...]
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 [...]
My paper, “From TV to Twitter: How Ambient News Became Ambient Journalism“, has been published in the May 2010 edition of M/C Journal on the theme of ambient. In the paper, I argue that: Journalism, which was once difficult and expensive to produce, today surrounds us like the air we breathe. Much of it is, [...]