The wealth of multimedia or social media storytelling tools available can be bewildering for journalists. Often seasoned pros asked me, what is the one thing I should learn and add to my reporting toolkit? To my mind, that’s the right attitude but the wrong question. Journalists need to be open to new ways of telling stories and engaging with audiences. But it is not about adding a new tool to
PDF The latest survey of Canadian online habits offers some interesting reading for the news industry. The Stats Canada survey found that more than two-thirds of Internet users (68%), read or watch the news online. Keeping up with events is one of the top online activities, following e-mail (93%), browsing for goods or services (74%) and electronic banking (68%). The figures also point to rapid uptake of social media in Canada,
The brutal killing of Macias Castaneda in Mexico reportedly in retribution for her social media posts about drug cartels is shocking. Castaneda was a newsroom manager for the Nuevo Laredo daily newspaper, Primera Hora, rather than a journalist. Police are investigating whether she was targeted by a drug cartel for her posts on Nuevo Laredo en Vivo. Two weeks ago, a young man and woman were also killed, reportedly as
A Pew Research into trust in the US media offers some insights into the impact of social media in the news diet of Americans. Pew found that just over a quarter (27%) of adults say they regularly or sometimes get news or news headlines through Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites. This rises to 38% for younger adults. These figures applies to all the 1,501 people surveyed. Digging deeper into the
On Friday 9 September, I am presenting a second paper at the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff on how social media is changing the way we get our news and information. Here is the abstract and slides from the paper, Your friend as editor: The shift to a personalized social news stream This study examines the impact of social media spaces on news consumption, based on an online survey
On Thursday 8 September, I’ll be presenting my paper, Tweets and truth: Journalism as a discipline of collaborative verification, at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff. For those who can’t make it, here is the abstract from the paper and the slides from my presentation. This paper examines how social media is influencing the core journalistic value of verification. Through the discipline of verification, the journalist establishes jurisdiction over
This week I’m off to the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University, September 8-9. The conference brings together the latest research into what is happening in journalism. The keynote speakers this year are Robert W. McChesney and Emily Bell, formerly of the Guardian and now Director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism. The research to be presented at the conference ranges from studies on Twitter to Wikileaks, from foreign
David Cameron’s statement on social media and the riots in England risks stirring a moral panic about social networking. Speaking in parliament, Cameron said: Everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop
BBC News political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg built up a large following on Twitter with her mix of news, commentary and colour. Her move to ITV News in September has raised questions over who “owns” the almost 60,000 people who follow @BBCLauraK. The Guardian suggests that “rather than handing her old account login back to the BBC to start from scratch with a new ITV account, the sensible thing to do is to
Patric Lane, health and science editor at UNC Chapel Hill drew on Mark Twain to frame social media in his presentation at the WorldViews Conference on media and higher education in Toronto on Thursday. Lane skilfully drew from Twain’s comments on the benefits of travel to highlight the appeal of social media. In the original quote, Twain said (emphasis added): Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of