
Alfred HermidaUniversity of British Columbia | UBC · School of Journalism
Alfred Hermida
Doctor of Philosophy (Journalism)
About
76
Publications
44,790
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Introduction
I am an award-winning online news pioneer, digital media scholar & journalism educator. My research on the intersection of communication technologies, journalism and the networked society has been published in Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice and the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. I am the author of the award-winning Tell Everyone: Why We Share and Why It Matters (DoubleDay Canada, 2014) and co-author of Participatory Journalism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
Additional affiliations
July 2020 - September 2020
June 2015 - present
July 2011 - June 2020
Education
September 1988 - July 1989
September 1987 - August 1988
Publications
Publications (76)
Massive datasets of communication are challenging traditional, human-driven approaches to content analysis. Computational methods present enticing solutions to these problems but in many cases are insufficient on their own. We argue that an approach blending computational and manual methods throughout the content analysis process may yield more fru...
This paper examines how social media are influencing the core journalistic value of verification. Through the discipline of verification, the journalist establishes jurisdiction over the ability to objectively parse reality to claim a special kind of authority and status. Social media question the individualistic, top-down ideology of traditional j...
News sourcing practices are critical as they shape from whom journalists get their information and what information they obtain, mostly from elite sources. This study evaluates whether social media platforms expand the range of actors involved in the news through a quantitative content analysis of the sources cited by NPR's Andy Carvin on Twitter d...
This paper examines new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as “awareness systems” that provide journalists with more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication. Traditional journalism defines fact as information and quotes from official sources, which have been identified as forming the vast majo...
This paper examines a five-year initiative by the UK's public service broadcaster, the BBC, to reinvigorate civic engagement at a time of declining public participation in politics. The Action Network project, originally called iCan, ran from 2003 to 2008 and was one of the most high profile and ambitious attempts by a public service broadcast...
Esta exploración del impacto de la inteligencia artificial (IA) en el periodismo establece paralelismos con los autómatas del siglo XVIII, rastreando una fascinación histórica por la vida artificial hasta las tecnologías de IA generativa actuales. Se discute cómo la IA está transformando las prácticas periodísticas, desafiando las nociones tradicio...
Los sistemas de recomendación juegan un papel crucial en el éxito de las empresas periodísticas en un mercado mediático cada vez más competitivo. Este capítulo está dedicado a Sophi, un conjunto de herramientas de inteligencia artificial que permite a un periódico mejorar su relación con las audiencias. Se describen el origen, el diseño, las utilid...
El discurso sobre el papel y el impacto de la inteligencia artificial (IA) en el periodismo tiende a oscilar entre el temor a que los robots sustituyan a los periodistas y la esperanza de que las máquinas puedan ayudar a impulsar el periodismo de calidad.Como muestran los capítulos de este libro, la IA periodística es mucho más que la redacción aut...
Developing successful innovations in journalism, whether to improve the quality and reach of news or to strengthen business models, remains an elusive problem. The challenge is an existential concern for many news enterprises, particularly for smaller news outlets with limited resources. By and large, media innovation has been driven by never‐endin...
This study investigates how Google is shaping journalism innovation, particularly in business models, through an analysis of one of its global funding competitions, the Innovation Challenge. It adds to an understanding of the impact of platforms on journalism through a descriptive analysis of 354 projects funded between 2018 and 2022 in 78 countrie...
This study takes an empirical approach to analyze how journalists perform the roles of promoter, celebrity, and joker on social media. These roles already play out in print and broadcast, but much less is known about how they are performed outside of traditional media contexts. This study addresses this gap in the literature through a content analy...
In traditional news media, professional journalists are expected to follow the norms and practices created and perpetuated in the field to maintain autonomy and authority. Social media spaces lay outside these institutional boundaries, serving as public, semi-public, and private spaces for connection, interaction, publication, and amplification, as...
This chapter draws on journalism research from Canada, which, similar to other countries with a liberal, largely commercial media system, is showing signs of market failure. It seeks to reposition media innovation beyond a narrow economic or technological frame, where initiatives are the product of a defensive strategy by newsrooms, driven by an im...
One of the main challenges of studying journalistic roles in social media practice is that the profession’s conceptual boundaries have become increasingly blurred. Social media has developed as a space used by audiences to consume, share, and discuss news and information, offering novel locations for journalists to intervene at professional and per...
More than a decade of research in journalism studies on social media has examined how journalists and news organizations have adopted and/or adapted to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more, surfacing tensions over professional control and normalization. This article advances a conceptual framework for analyzing forms of journalistic norms and pra...
In light of concerns about decreasing news use, a decline in interest in political news or even active avoidance or resistance of news in general, the idea of ‘incidental news’ has been seen as a possible remedy. Generally, ‘incidental news’ refers to the ways in which people encounter information about current events through media when they were n...
The factors that shape the news that citizens are exposed to and act upon are a growing area of research. This article advances a framework to examine how issues and topics rise to prominence and gain attention following publication in a digital hybrid media ecosystem. The four elements (publics, platforms, paraphernalia, and practices) extend prev...
This article explores the role of peripheral actors in the production and circulation of journalism through the case study of a North American not-for-profit digital-born journalism organization, The Conversation Canada . Much of the research on peripheral actors has examined individual actors, focusing on questions of identity such as who is a jou...
In this article, we discuss the rise and use of the concept of hybridity in journalism studies. Hybridity afforded a meaningful intervention in a discipline that had the tendency to focus on a stabilized and homogeneous understanding of the field. Nonetheless, we now need to reconsider its deployment, as it only partially allows us to address and u...
This study examines the quality of winners and finalists in major national and international data journalism awards. We completed a content analysis of data projects submitted by Canadian media to three journalism associations—the Online News Association, the Global Editors Network and the Canadian Association of Journalists—as far back as the firs...
This study analyzed journalist Andy Carvin’s live coverage on Twitter along with his discourse on journalism and social reporting. Carvin was chosen as the subject for study as he is perhaps the most prominent example of the practice of journalism based on emerging techniques of collaborative verification, transparency and co-creation. A textual an...
The production and consumption of news in the digital era is blurring the boundaries between professionals, citizens and activists. Actors producing information are multiplying, but still media companies hold central position. Journalism research faces important challenges to capture, examine, and understand the current news environment. The SAGE H...
Understanding how data and computational journalism are affecting news norms, practices and organizations is essential for journalists and researchers. We explore the development of data journalism in Canada through interviews with 17 data journalists and freelancers at six of the country’s largest legacy news organizations. Our central question is...
A growing body of research points to how social media, and specifically Twitter, is emerging as a hybrid space where citizens are involved in the flow, framing, and interpretation of news. Our study analyzes 743,365 tweets at the height of the Idle No More movement, from December 2012 to January 2013. Our analysis indicates a significant presence o...
Twitter is a free service that combines elements of blogging and social networking (→ Blogger; Facebook; Social Networks) and is considered as a form of → social media. Commonly described as a micro‐blogging service, it is one of a class of communication and information platforms defined as social awareness streams that allow for the rapid and imme...
Web 2.0 is a term → Internet entrepreneur Tim O'Reilly popularized to describe a stage in the development of the World Wide Web as a platform. It refers to a set of technical changes that allow technically unskilled users to have dynamic interactions on the Web, facilitating a broad range of activities in the creation, dissemination, and sharing of...
Authority and influence are negotiated through the interactions taking place in the sociotechnical architectures of social media. Established elites transfer their institutional power to social media. But they operate alongside emergent, networked-sourced nodes of influence as ad hoc publics elevate certain actors on specific issues at specific tim...
This study examines the impact of computational journalism on the creation and dissemination of crime news. Computational journalism refers to forms of algorithmic, social scientific, and mathematical processes and systems for the production of news. It is one of a series of technological developments that have shaped journalistic work and builds o...
The interplay between Twitter and media organizations has been an increasing area of research. This article examines how talk radio stations have adopted Twitter at an institutional level, based on a comparative study of the official accounts of three prominent talk radio stations in Canada in 2010 and 2011. While talk radio is considered an interp...
Scholarship about social media in general, and Twitter in particular, has increased dramatically in recent years as adoption by individuals and institutions has burgeoned; especially by journalists and media organisations. Much of the journalism research on Twitter has focused on the dynamics of professional news practices on the social media platf...
This study examines the impact of social media spaces on news consumption, based on an online survey of 1600 Canadians. News organizations are rushing into social media, viewing services like Facebook and Twitter as opportunities to market and distribute content. There has been limited research outside the United States into the effects of social m...
Twitter is a free service that combines elements of blogging and social networking (→ Blogger; Facebook; Social Networks) and is considered as a form of → social media. Commonly described as a micro‐blogging service, it is one of a class of communication and information platforms defined as social awareness streams that allow for the rapid and imme...
A Participatory Culture“Active Recipients”New Relationships, New RolesWorking with the AudienceGuarding Open GatesConclusion
Participate!References
Who makes the news in a digital age? Participatory Journalism offers fascinating insights into how journalists in Western democracies are thinking about, and dealing with, the inclusion of content produced and published by the public.
The Emergence of Participatory JournalismAnalyzing Audience ParticipationPerceptions of Participatory JournalismConclusion
Participate!References
Web 2.0 is a term → Internet entrepreneur Tim O'Reilly popularized to describe a stage in the development of the world wide web as a platform. It refers to a set of technical changes that allow technically unskilled users to have dynamic interactions on the web, facilitating a broad range of activities in the creation, dissemination, and sharing of...
News outlets are providing more opportunities than ever before for the public to contribute to professionally edited publications. Online news websites routinely provide tools to facilitate user participation in the news, from enabling citizens to submit story ideas to posting comments on stories. This study on participatory journalism draws on the...
Based on a comparative study of user-generated content in ten countries, this article explored the developmental features of citizen participation in online media with special emphasis on political economic issues regarding the phenomena. We dealt with the emerging practices for audience participation management and their relationship to news produ...
This comparative study of user-generated content (UGC) in 10 Western democracies examines the political economic aspects of citizen participation in online media, as assessed by journalists who work with this content. Drawing on interviews with more than 60 journalists, we explore their perceived economic motivations for an ongoing redefinition of...
This paper examines new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as "awareness systems" that provide journalists with more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication. Traditional journalism defines fact as information and quotes from official sources, which have been identified as forming the vast majo...
Scholars have applied the term "ambient" to journalism to describe the omnipresent nature of news in society through the proliferation of one-way media into public spaces. This approach is based on a one-directional model of mass media where the audience is framed as the receptor of communication. However this paper suggests that we need to reasses...
Journalism has always been concerned with reporting on, and making sense of, important public conversations, with the purpose of providing citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing. Journalistic methods have been largely based on the gathering of information through observation, interviewing and research. Recent progress...
Blogging has shifted from an activity largely taking place outside established media to a practice appropriated by professional journalists. This study explores how BBC News has incorporated blogging in its journalism, looking at the internal debates that led to the adoption of blogs and charting how they became a core part of the corporation's new...
This study examines how national UK newspaper websites are integrating user-generated content (UGC). A survey quantifying the adoption of UGC by mainstream news organisations showed a dramatic increase in the opportunities for contributions from readers. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed this expansion is taking place despite...
This study examines how national UK newspaper websites are integrating user-generated content (UGC). A survey quantifying the adoption of UGC by mainstream news organisations showed a dramatic increase in the opportunities for contributions from readers. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed this expansion is taking place despite...
This study examines how the world's largest news organization, the BBC, has sought to incorporate blogging in its journalism, both as a format for new journalistic thinking and as a platform for greater accountability and transparency. The research covers a period of seven years, from 2001 to 2008, when the BBC came under intense scrutiny over its...
This study examines the impact of social media spaces on news consumption, based on an online survey of 1,600 Canadians. News organizations are rushing into social media, viewing services like Facebook and Twitter as opportunities to market and distribute content. But there has been little research outside of the US into the effect of social media...