In my latest piece for PBS Mediashift, I discuss how the mainstream media is incorporating user-generated content, drawing on research presented at the recent Future of Journalism conference.  Here’s an excerpt: The ability of anyone to play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and sharing news and information is seen as one of the big shifts in journalism over the past 10 years. But a growing

Here are the slides and the text of my presentation on ambient journalism at the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University: Twittering the News View more presentations from Alfred Hermida. Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism My paper looks at new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as “awareness systems”. For this I have drawn from literature on new communications technologies in computer science to suggest that these

Maria Grafstrom and Karolina Windell of Uppsala University in Sweden analysed how business journalists were using blogs. Presenting at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff, they found that the number of business articles that talked about blogs. By 2006, more than 1,000 articles about blogs from none in 2002. More than 20% cited a blog as a source. But when journalists were asked if they used blogs, 63% said

Deborah Wenger of the University of Mississippi looked at what the top US news companies were looking for in new hires. In her presentation at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff, she outlined what skills and attributes were mentioned in job listings. They found 715 job postings. In newspapers, a third of them for reporters and just 12% for web writers/multimedia producers. In postings for reporter positions, the most

At the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff, one of the papers lookedat how are news media in the US adopting Twitter to communicate the news and engage with readers. Marcus Messner presented the paper, co-authored with Asriel Eford.  They looked at almost 200 newspapers and TV stations with Twitter accounts, analysing the number of tweets, the news value and the use of links The study found that only a

I’ll be presenting my paper on Twitter at journalism first thing on Thursday on day two of the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University. In the paper, I suggest that Twitter can be described as ambient journalism, defined as an awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information. Here a taste in the abstract of the paper: This paper examines new para-journalism

A study of UGC at the BBC has found that audience contributions have consolidated, rather than changed, journalistic norms and practices. The study by Claire Wardle, Andrew Williams and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen was presented at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff. They found that the BBC mainly views UGC as part of its newsgathering operations, in essence as a way of obtaining photos and video, eyewitness accounts or story tipoffs.

In a keynote at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff, Bettina Peters tackles the idea of what we mean by media development. This is pertinent to Peters, who is the director of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), a network of some 500 media assistance organisations from around the globe. Peters explains that in a traditional media US-based model, you would promote media development by encouraging the established

The Future of Journalism conference started in Cardiff with a welcome from Bob Franklin. The conference received 370 abstracts, with more than 100 research papers being presented in 30 panels over two days. In his welcoming address, Franklin notes that the future of journalism looks different from different countries and cultures. The meat of the conference begins with a keynote by James Curran, Director of the Goldsmith’s Media Research Centre

I’m in Cardiff for the Future of Journalism conference, hosted by School of Journalism at Cardiff University. Over the next two days, academics from around the world will present research on topics as diverse as user-generated content, Twitter, journalism education and new business models. There are close to hundred presentations after a plenary session with speakers James Curran and Bettina Peters, which will be streamed live. There is also a