My keynote at the Neo-journalism conference in Brussel was called “The Ambient News Network: Twitter and the reconfiguration of journalism.” It looked at how Twitter has developed as a network for real-time news and information, influencing how news organisations respond to breaking news, how journalists go about their reporting and whose voices are heard. Twitter facilitates the instant, online dissemination and reception of short fragments of information from sources outside

At the Neo-Journalism conference in Brussels, Anders Olof Larsson of Uppsala University presented his research into the journalists’ use of Twitter in a talk show context in Sweden. In a brief presentation, he explained how he examined the use of Twitter by a new current events talk show called Hubinette, shown on public service TV in Sweden. He collected 2,314 tweets with the hashtag #Hubinette. His analysis showed that messages spiking

Here are the slides from the presentation by Jan-Hinrik Schmidt of the Hans Bedrow Institut at the Neo-journalism conference in Brussels. The research highlights how journalists and the public consider participation. It shows that in many aspects, both share the same views. But there are also some areas of incongruence. Journalists and participatory media from jpub

At the Neo-journalism conference, Nathalie Pignard-Cheynel of Université Stendhal, Grenoble, presented a study in live coverage conducted with Brigitte Sebbah of the Université de’Metz. The researchers were looking at whether live coverage, or live blogs, can be considered a new form of reporting. For the study, they examined live coverage by Le Monde of the DSK case, which offered an explosive cocktail of sex, politics and power. They looked at 40 hours of continuous

At the Neo-journalism conference, Manuela Farinosi a post-doc at the Università di Udine presented her research into the motivations behind citizens who gathered and shared news following the 2009 quake in L’Aquila close to Rome. For the study, there were 20 in-depth interviews with the most active citizen contributors. The most common motivation was related to mainstream media coverage in Italy. The citizens said they felt media reporting was incomplete and pro-government.

In the second keynote of the Neo-Journalism conference, Judith Donath from Harvard examined signals of  reliability in networked news. She started off by talking about how online and social media provided detailed information about the recent fires in southern California. It was a community of people who knew each other and turned to each other for reliable information. Donath also cited Mexico as an example of how sites like Twitter

I am at the Neo-Journalism conference in Brussels, where academics will debate where journalism is at and where it is going. I am giving a keynote on Thursday 4 October. But the conference kicked off with a keynote by Mark Deuze, Associate Professor at the Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications. He started off by laying the groundwork about the purpose of journalism. He points out how early humans needed individuals who

For the third year in a row, Reportr.net has been nominated for Best Blog in the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. The blog is a finalist in the blue division, which is the business-to-business, professional association, farm and scholarly category. I am honoured to be among the nominations. Reportr.net won the award in 2010. The work of my students at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism has received four nominations, including best online-online

George Entwistle, the new director general of the BBC, should recall the recent past as he refashions the corporation for what he calls “the digital revolution.” In his quest for an organisation that can create “genuinely new forms of digital content”, he would do well to look back at the pioneering work of the BBC News website. It has been creating these new forms of digital content since its launch

I’m delighted to announce that Doubleday Canada will be publishing my new book, Tell Everyone: How the Stories We Share Shape What We Know and Why It Matters. The book charts how our enhanced capacity to share information via social media is transforming what we know and how we know it. It examines at how sharing is shaping our notions of an informed and engaged public, a media ecology of competing