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

With social recommendation becoming an increasingly important way that people get the news, the final research paper at ISOJ looked at how news travels on social networks. The research paper (PDF) by Brian Baresch, Dustin Harp, Lewis Knight and Carolyn Yaschur from the University of Texas at Austin surveyed 78 US Facebook users and the links they shared. The team suggested we are moving from an ink economy to a

Much of the discussion about the role of social media in the unrest in Egypt and in Tunisia has been polarised. But arguing over whether something was a Twitter, Facebook or Wikileaks revolution is a dead end. Instead there is a need to understand how digital networked technologies have affected political protests and flows of information. As Mathew Ingram has highlighted, “the real weapon is the power of networked communication itself.

The Latin American journalism blog, Clasesdeperiodismo.com, recently asked me for my views on journalism education and more. The e-mail interview is available on the site in Spanish. But if you don’t speak Spanish or are not sure Google Translate will be able to figure out what I mean, here’s the English version: Q: What do you think about the education of today’s journalists? A: Journalism education is in a process

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 learn how to build a network of relevant followers and how to interact with them

Valuable social networking presentation for the News21 Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education. It’s by Jeremy Rue, multimedia training instructor for the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. (Via Graphicdesignr)

A study by the Bivings Group on newspapers and the Internet in the US shows how cautiously legacy media are approaching the web. The study (PDF) quantified the online features of the top 100 newspapers in the USA in 2008. Some features, such as blogs and RSS feeds are commonplace. But there is less uptake of features such as social networking or user-generated content, or let alone reinventing themselves online.

Image via WikipediaThe UK’s newspaper watchdog, the PCC, has released the findings of its research into attitudes towards social networking. It found that 78% would change information they publish about themselves online if they thought the material would later be reproduced in the mainstream media. This is a new ethical issue for journalists, as Facebook and other social networking sites become sources for journalists. Social networking sites are used by

Have you ever switched your instant messaging status to ‘away’, even if you are at your computer? Then you are not alone. According to a paper presented at the ICA annual conference, the use of this white cyberlie is common among older teens. The findings came in a paper by Mariek Vanden Abeele of the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Beligum and Keith Roe, of the Catholic University, also at Leuven,

The new guidelines from the BBC on social media are now available online. There are two parts to this, the first dealing with how the BBC should approach social networking sites and the second on how the use by BBC staff of social networking sites. The guidelines on the use of social media by the BBC reflects concerns about protecting the brand. But they also recognises that the corporation should