She gave an insight into her research on musicians and international audiences.

Her research takes on the two dominant discourses about music audiences. Listeners are viewed as pirates who steal music or as customers who are not paying enough for music.

Baym said both are economic metaphors that position musicians as manufacturers and distributors, rather than artists.

For her research, Baym wanted to find out how social media has affected the relationship of a musician with their audience. She interviewed musicians who had an audience before social media from the US, Canada, UK, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Australia and Germany.

In her brief presentation, Baym focused on the importance of travel and touring. Her research found that musicians view travel as part of their identity. It helps them discover followers in countries they didn’t know about. People who pirate music will pay to go and see an artist perform.

Social media has made international touring easier by helping bands connect with each other. But there are limitations, said Baym. Sometimes musicians find they do not have enough fans in one location to justify the costs of touring there

She concluded by arguing that the international distribution of content should not just framed within commercial concerns.

Instead, the international flow of music is an important social reward for musicians to connect with global audiences.

The panel brings together Feona Attwood, Middlesex University (UK), David Rosen, author and Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard University, moderated by Nick Montfort.

Montfort introduces oversharing by talking about how people are voluntarily divulging information online that makes other people uncomfortable.

He asks why are people willing to share in this way, but also why we usually don’t think that we are the ones doing the oversharing.

One of the main threads of discussion is about the term, oversharing, itself, and whether it is an appropriate way to think about what people do.

David Rosen starts the discussion by suggesting a different approach. He argues that young people don’t experience it as oversharing.

For him, it is about considering what is personal privacy in the 21st century, especially for young people. Technology is a form of empowerment, particularly for young people.

Feona Attwood adds to the debate by stressing the historical factors that surround the issue. She frames it as thinking about who do people believe they are talking to at any moment, when a conversation can become a broadcast.

She adds that young people are under a tremendous weight of expectation that they should be able to cope with these things.

Oversharing, argues Jonathan Zittrain, may not be the right question to talk about oversharing

Instead we are at a point of inflection. We are seeing the mainstreaming of cheap processors and sensors so that we can stream everything we are doing all the time.

He notes how the uproar over Google Streetview and surveillance from a few years back seems so quaint.

“Everything is now a press conference,” says Zittrain. If you do anything unusual, it will be somewhere.

Rather than talking about the end of privacy, he wants to prompt a discussion on how to manage privacy when anything and everything can be recorded and shared by anyone.

Zittrain suggests that technologies that could control how far others can record and share our existence. Say, he argues, wearing a button that signals we do not want to be recorded.

‘We should be made more aware of the matrix of surveillance,” says Zittrain, and allow technology to negotiate and converse with the watchers.

Zittrain also raises the consequences of a surveillance society, where people don’t ethically calculate what they do, but instead only act ethically when they are on camera.

“People are flawed and we shouldn’t expect them not to be,” says Zittrain.

The annual report by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism highlights the importance of social media to news organisations. At the time of publication, 184 news organisations had designated social media editors.

“In 2012, social media continued to expand its role in the news ecosystem, establishing itself as an indispensable tool for distributing content and attracting new readers, as well as for building deeper engagement with current ones,” said the 2013 State of the Media report.

About a fifth of Americans saw news on social media, with the number rising to 34 per cent for 18-24 year olds.

Mobile is partly behind the growth of social media. Just under half of smartphone users and around 40 per cent of 39% of tablet users get some of their news through a social network.

Traffic in absolute numbers remains modest, at an average of 9 per cent. But the numbers vary greatly on the publication. 

The Huffington Post is by far the most successful at social media engagement, with more than 2,500 stories with at least 100 Facebook interactions. The number is almost double that of its closest competitor, the Daily Mail.

The Pew report identified another growing trend – social media as a second screen experience for TV viewing. CNN lead the mentions on social media, followed by Fox News, MSNBC and NBC.

But it also found points out how some social media initiatives have stumbled, such as Facebook social readers. But Pew goes on to suggest that new Facebook features “could nevertheless increase the site’s importance for news organizations.”

While Facebook and Twitter remain key services for the media, the report warns that “concentrating on those two sites alone may no longer be enough.”

It points out how news organisations have used platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram to visuals, from mug shots of police wanted by the police to pictures from the presidential campaign.

At a time of newsroom cutbacks and dwindling resources, social media offers both opportunities and challenges.

“In an era of limited resources, however, the seemingly endless array of new platforms raises a challenge for news organizations: Just how much time should they devote to social media – and where should their resources be concentrated?” asks the Pew Report.

Outside of the UK, it is only available on a subscription basis.

The College of Journalism tends to post videos from events on its Youtube channel.

But I recently discovered that some of the lessons available through a dedicated website on the main BBC website.

Among the videos are various of the use of social media by journalists. The one below provides a good introduction into how BBC journalists are incorporating social media, changing how they report the news.

The list  covers “blogging reporters who share their tips and experiences of mobile journalism, blogging journalism educators, and blogging photojournalist.”

It is required reading for anyone interested in gaining insight and perpectives on the changing  of journalism.

I’m honoured that this blog, Reportr.net, is included on a list. Among the other blogs by journalism educators are Mindy McAdams’ Teaching Online Journalism, Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog, Jay Rosen’s PressThink and Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine.

The list is loosely grouped thematically and journalism.co.uk is inviting readers to add their favourite blog as a comment.

(Via Danny Sanchez)

It is important for students to have an online portfolio that showcases their work and will pop up when a prospective employer searches for them online.

WordPress, the choice for many students, has just made it that much easier to create an elegant portfolio site.

It has launched WordPress.com/portfolios with 30 dedicated portfolio themes to choose from.

I’ve written in the past about why students should develop their personal brand. Having a well designed site that showcases your professional abilities is essential and should be a top priority for journalism students.

There have been several new services launched recently that tap into the need for portfolio sites, such as About.me.

Among the key points:

• Twitter grew to 500 million users – 140 million are active users
• 150 million Tweets were posted during the London Olympic games
• Barack Obama’s “4 more years” photo is now the most retweeted in history
• A quarter of all top trends were hash tags. The others were words, events or place names
• Revenue rose to $350 million

by shootingstarmedia. Learn about business intelligence tools.

 

Tell Everyone shows us how to thrive at a time when our vastly expanded ability to share has given individuals much greater power to influence what is published, changed the way people organize, challenged institutional control of information and transformed how companies connect with customers.

The draft manuscript is almost done, so I am hoping to be able to return to more regular posting in the new year.

I appreciate the time you devote to reading my posts. Here is the most read posts of 2012:

1. 10 best practices for Twitter for journalists
2. Social media grows in importance for finding the news
3. Twitter changes should concern journalists
4. Why journalists should break news on Twitter
5. Mark Deuze on rethinking the journalist as a DJ when we are all media
6. What Kodak teaches us about disruptive innovation
7. Rethinking journalism, tackling data, Twitter reporting and more from #ISOJ12
8. Study points to prominence of activists in Andy Carvin coverage of Arab Spring
9. How the newspaper was made in 1942
10. Talking Andy Carvin, Twitter and the Arab Spring at ISOJ 2012

Twitter and social media dominate the top ten. It is unsurprising given that I have spent the year writing a book on the topic, as well as a couple of research papers and a book chapter.

Wishing you all happy holidays and a fabulous 2013.

Facts, rumour and speculation swirl in the fog as journalists try to figure out what is going on.

But on November 14, the Israeli Defense Forces blew away the fog of war when it live tweeted its assault on the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, in Gaza.

Through its official Twitter account, the IDF announced the start of its campaign and documented it in real time.

The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets.

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

Through its Twitter feed and other social media sites, the IDF has been providing a blow by blow account of the conflict.

Twenty years ago, it was CNN who brought the first Gulf War live into our living rooms. Now the military is bypassing the media to reach out directly to the audience.

Through its sophisticated social media campaign, Israel is seeking not just to control the message, but also frame how the assault is covered through tweets such as:

VIDEO: IDF Pinpoint Strike on Ahmed Jabri, Head of #Hamas Military Wing youtu.be/P6U2ZQ0EhN4 #Gaza #PillarOfDefense

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

Infographic: #Hamas‘ rockets are threatening more than one million citizens in #Israel. twitter.com/IDFSpokesperso…

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 15, 2012

Framing matters in journalism as it affects how a story is told. Through social media, the IDF is trying to shape reporting so that the story is told from Israeli military perspective.

Hamas has also turned to Twitter to spread its message:

@idfspokesperson Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves)

— Alqassam Brigades (@AlqassamBrigade) November 14, 2012

Governments have always tried to control how a conflict is reported by limiting access to journalists or imposing reporting restrictions. In this case, both sides have become the media. Both sides are using Twitter and other social media platforms as instruments of warfare.

Shaping the conversation

Aside from providing real-time information on its operations, the IDF is also using Twitter as a way of asserting its military might and striking terror into the hearts of its foes:

We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

The IDF also used hashtags to insert its tweets into topical conversations. In one instance, its referred to the latest version of the video game, Call of Duty, released earlier this week.

Playing war games on Call of Duty last night? Over 1 million Israelis are still under REAL fire #BlackOps2

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 13, 2012

And another tapped into the conversation about the latest James Bond’s movie, Skyfall:

James Bond has some neat gadgets, but they don’t measure up to ours. ow.ly/f7O2L #Skyfall

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 9, 2012

(Photo courtesy of IDF).