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The intimate turn of mobile news
... In today's digital mediascape, the many forms of news mobility are intertwined with the emergence of various portable interactive devices, predominantly smartphones. Such devices have been used by major newspaper companies as part of their online news strategies, for example, for quite some time (Goggin 2011. See also Cawley 2008. ...
... Although on social network sites, such as Facebook, there is no shared physical space, the shared online space could still promote a sense of actuality by the inclusion of live footage and nonprofessional, unedited images. Especially unedited live reporting by citizen journalists on the scene can help in inciting a stronger sense of actuality as such personal and unedited content on one's timeline can lead to a more intimate and authentic experience or imagining of what is happening (Ahva and Hellman 2015;Crawford 2010;Goggin 2010;Houston et al. 2015). The continuous and intense contact between the sufferers and the audience could foster a sense of directness, authenticity, and actuality that broadcast media alone are less capable of. ...
In a postbroadcast society with both online and offline news media widely available, there are many ways for an audience to (actively) consume news about distant suffering. This focus group study looks into the combined use of broadcast media (television) and a postbroadcast platform (Facebook) for watching disaster news. It is considered that the interactive possibilities offered online to watch and experience the news, combined with watching news on television, could possibly help in fostering a closer relation between a Western audience and the distant suffering. Informed by concepts from social and moral psychology, the findings show not only that personal narratives on social media have the potential to incite a more personal connection between the audience and the distant sufferer but also that this potential was not to be overestimated.
... The legacy news media are increasingly focused on distributing their content across mobile platforms, such as smartphones and tablet computers. The formative developments of mobile news publishing have been described in, for example, Westlund (2013) and Goggin (2011). The shift in directing news content toward the mobile Internet platforms is evident, and smartphones are beginning to play a significant role in the crossmedia consumption of news (Chan, 2015;Newman & Levy, 2014;Schrøder, 2014;Westlund & Färdigh, 2015) and as a platform for which news outlets orient their content production (Nel & Westlund, 2012;Westlund, 2012). ...
This paper examines the significance of user-distributed content (UDC) for news consumption, thereby offering an innovative take on mass communication and the participatory audience. From the viewpoint of media organizations, UDC is a process by which the mass media converge with online social networks through the intentional use of social media and other platforms and services in an effort to expand the distribution of media content. In order to focus specifically on mobile news consumption, this paper sheds light on the novel phenomenon of mobile user-distributed content (mobile UDC). Mobile UDC is manifested in mobile users’ ability to share online media content on a perpetual and ubiquitous basis. The study utilizes the results from a survey carried out with Finnish Internet users. The main finding is that mobile Internet users are more active in UDC than those who do not use the Internet with mobile devices. It is thus argued that mobile UDC, as a developing concept, can be used to explain the practices that are characteristic of mobile online news consumption.
... In the late 1990s, some legacy news media experimented with publishing news for the pager. In the twenty-first millennium, the mobile device started to be used for news publishing, and this has certainly gained in popularity in recent years (Cawley 2008;Goggin 2010;Westlund 2011). From Sydney to San Francisco and Salamanca, legacy news media are currently offering news for mobile devices. ...
The technological convergence of mobile “phones” and multimedia has been taking place since the 1990s, but it was not until the commercial birth of touchscreen-enabled mobile devices, offered with flat-rate subscriptions for mobile internet, that widespread production and use of news-related content and services began to flourish. Accessing mobile news has gained traction in the everyday life of the public. In parallel, legacy news media have in recent years developed news provision, by repurposing or customising journalistic content published for mobile sites and/or applications. This article explores the production of mobile news, by discussing and synthesising the findings of the contemporary literature found in the nexus of journalism and mobile media. It posits a model of journalism focusing on the roles of humans and technology in activities characterised by customising or repurposing. The article also presents a research agenda focusing on the production of mobile news.
... The ongoing shift towards the utilisation of mobile computing devices to access social media may have implications for how social media is used during a disaster and how individuals are affected by such use. For example, citizen journalist coverage of disasters that is captured by mobile computing devices and shared through social media may be more 'intimate' (Goggin, 2011) than traditional news coverage of these events and thus have different effects on individuals and communities. Finally, moving forward, the results of new research on disaster social media can be incorporated in the proposed framework, thereby increasing the synthesis and usability of the insights gained through ongoing disaster social media scholarship. ...
A comprehensive review of online, official, and scientific literature was carried out in 2012–13 to develop a framework of disaster social media. This framework can be used to facilitate the creation of disaster social media tools, the formulation of disaster social media implementation processes, and the scientific study of disaster social media effects. Disaster social media users in the framework include communities, government, individuals, organisations, and media outlets. Fifteen distinct disaster social media uses were identified, ranging from preparing and receiving disaster preparedness information and warnings and signalling and detecting disasters prior to an event to (re)connecting community members following a disaster. The framework illustrates that a variety of entities may utilise and produce disaster social media content. Consequently, disaster social media use can be conceptualised as occurring at a number of levels, even within the same disaster. Suggestions are provided on how the proposed framework can inform future disaster social media development and research.
... It is ironic to note that the ways in which journalists report the news-and their uses of technology for that matter-are becoming increasingly murky. The successors of the old-style Hollywood legmen are variously described by current scholars: "deskbound," "screen-bound" or "computer-bound" "mouse monkeys," 8 "mojos" (mobile journalists) who collect and disseminate information via mobile technologies, 9 heavy users of e-mail or social networks and microblogging 10 moderators of citizen copy, 11 old-fashioned telephone addicts, 12 or dedicated legworkers and moral eyewitnesses. 13 Obviously, all the above may be valid, as the same story may involve different technologies. ...
Based on measurements across the past decade, this paper challenges common wisdom about new technologies’ transformative impact on news reporting. The telephone still reigns as queen of the news production battlefield, while use of the Internet and social media as news sources remains marginal. In face-to-face reconstruction interviews, news reporters at three leading national Israeli dailies detailed reporting of recently published items. Findings conform to the Compulsion to Proximity theory, in which technological impact on professional and lay actors is restrained by the need to maintain richer interactions based on copresence.
... Various forms of journalistic practices are emerging in the networked and converged digital environment that expand the range of producers and sources, and enable greater interaction than before. One is mobile journalism (Mojo) or mobile news (Goggin, 2011). Like the convergence concept, one definition puts more emphasis on conventional rather than alternative journalism. ...
Before the US crackdown on the WikiLeaks website in 2010, the narrative of freedom dominating discourses on uneasy deployment of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in journalism was more prevalent in Africa – and developing regions – than in advanced democracies. Little wonder WikiLeaks did not, at least initially, include African media partners in their potent 2010 ‘cablegate’ exposés. From the 1996 Zambian government ban of the Post online to the recent onslaughts on bloggers in parts of the continent, ICT uses in journalism have reflected national contexts, with restrictions often resulting in self-censorship, as well as innovations that borrow from and build on global developments. This ‘glocal’ context perspective defines the review here of the new media use in journalism in Africa with an examination of Kenyan media coverage – mainly between the 2005 and 2010 constitutional referenda. The focus is on coverage by two leading newspapers as they strive to keep up with emerging alternative spaces of networked online expression. The aim here is to determine the extent to which the coverage reflects immediacy and openness in a networked and converged environment, with implications for democracy. The article employs a comparative approach and qualitative content-genre analysis.
This chapter proposes a framework for analyzing the credibility of online news sites, allowing diaspora populations to evaluate the credibility of online news about their home countries. A definition of credibility is established as a theoretical framework for analysis, and a framework of seven elements is developed based on the following elements: accuracy, authority, believability, quality of message construction, peer review, comparison, and corroboration. Later, those elements are applied to a variety of online news sources available to the Zimbabwean diaspora that serves as a case study for explaining the framework. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the framework in relation to some contextual circumstances of diaspora populations and presents some limitations of the framework as diaspora populations might actually apply the different elements.
Over two decades ago, Barbie Zelizer argued that journalists should be approached as an “interpretive community” in order to understand the processes through which journalists generate shared meanings around major political events. This article refocuses Zelizer’s concept in order to analyse the consequences of rapid technological transformation, fraught industry conditions, and disparate audience formations in the context of contemporary news media and journalism. Focusing on the challenges faced by professional sport journalists, we invoke the concept of “community of practice” to make sense of this fluid and commercially volatile context, using it to analyse empirically the experiences of journalists in Australia and Scotland. Informed by the interrelationship that exists between formats of news and the practices that produce it, this paper presents evidence drawn from in-depth semi-structured interviews with journalists, editors, news presenters and commentators who specialise in and/or work across newspapers, radio, television, online and mobile media. Understood as a community of practice, sport journalists are shown to be under pressure because of mutually reinforcing changes in mobile and digital media technologies, journalistic routines and institutional relations.
‘The most comprehensive book I've read on the issues facing online journalism in the UK. Digital Journalism manages to combine an understanding of technological and cultural developments with a commercial and political awareness that prevents it falling into the trap of technological determinism. Essential reading for journalism students’ - Paul Bradshaw, visiting professor, City University, London and course leader, MA Online Journalism, Birmingham City University; Publisher, Online Journalism Blog How can we make sense of the ongoing technological changes affecting journalism and journalists today? Will the new digital generation break down barriers for journalism or will things just stay the same? These and other pertinent questions will be asked and explored throughout this exciting new book that looks at the changing dynamics of journalism in a digital era. Examining issues and debates through cultural, social, political and economic frameworks, the book gets a grip on today's new journalism by understanding its historical threats and remembering its continuing resilience and ability to change with the times. In considering new forms of journalistic practice the book covers important topics such as: truth in the new journalism; the changing identity of the journalist; the economic implications for the industry; the impact on the relationship between the journalist and their audience; the legal framework of doing journalism online. Vibrant in style and accessible to all, Digital Journalism is a captivating read for anyone looking to understand the advent of a new journalism that has been altered by the latest digital technologies.
This chapter proposes a framework for analyzing the credibility of online news sites, allowing diaspora populations to evaluate the credibility of online news about their home countries. A definition of credibility is established as a theoretical framework for analysis, and a framework of seven elements is developed based on the following elements: accuracy, authority, believability, quality of message construction, peer review, comparison, and corroboration. Later, those elements are applied to a variety of online news sources available to the Zimbabwean diaspora that serves as a case study for explaining the framework. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the framework in relation to some contextual circumstances of diaspora populations and presents some limitations of the framework as diaspora populations might actually apply the different elements.
This article presents a series of thematic tables concerning the French academic research on digital journalism, complemented by parallels with foreigner works. It first discusses the issues of editorial reorganization, evolution of new activities and skills and identity redefinition of the profession. After, are discussed research related to the territorial extension of journalism with new collaborations that imposes. The presentation is followed by a discussion of the literature on named participatory or citizen journalism. It continues with a presentation of the most contemporary works on issues related to the integration of social media in the chain of production and consumption of information. The article concludes with a reflection on the issues of training for journalists.
The Internet brings about ‘new media power’, which transforms the power dynamics associated with traditional mainstream media. This form of power has largely been associated with a (co)producer perspective, which stresses that ordinary Internet users are able to participate in news production. In many cases, however, Internet users merely read news online and may leave comments. Instead of contributing to news production, these comments are likely to reflect how news is consumed. Does online news consumption also have power implications? Using a case study from China, this paper examines newsreaders' consumption of online news in a network consisting of news websites, discussion forums and blogs. It argues that this networked consumption gives active readers a strong voice and thus power.
Video is increasingly utilized by human rights groups as a component in their advocacy strategies. This article looks at how video is used for a range of local, national, and transnational human rights audiences—both traditional and alternative. Drawing on a case study from the Philippines, it considers the challenges and issues faced by WITNESS (www.witness.org), its locally based human rights partners, and other similar organizations as they create and use video as visual evidence, testimony, and moral story before local, international, and transnational human rights audiences. These challenges include the contextualization of stories and sight bites, dilemmas of moving testimony between advocacy and media arenas, and the difficulties of establishing an ethical relationship, a community of witness, at a distance. This article is written in a personal capacity, although it draws on my experiences working as Program Manager at WITNESS.
In this study of how daily newspapers in America have developed electronic publishing ventures, Pablo Boczkowski shows that new media emerge not just in a burst of revolutionary technological change but by merging the structures and practices of existing media with newly available technical capabilities. His multi-disciplinary perspectives of science and technology, communication, and organization studies allow him to address the connections between technical, editorial, and work facets of new media. This approach yields analytical insights into the material culture of online newsrooms, the production processes of new media products, and the relationships between offline and online dynamics.
Boczkowski traces daily newspapers' early consumer-oriented non-print publishing initiatives, from the now-forgotten videotex efforts of the 1980s to the rise of the World Wide Web in the mid- 1990s. He then examines the formative years of news on the Web during the second half of the 1990s, when the content of online newspapers varied from simple reproduction of the print edition to new material with interactive and multimedia features. With this picture of the recent history of non-print publishing as background, Boczkowski provides ethnographic, fly-on-the-wall accounts of three innovations in content creation: the Technology section of the New York Times on the Web, which was initially intended as the newspaper's space for experimentation with online news; the Virtual Voyager project of the HoustonChronicle.com, in which reporters pushed the envelope of multimedia journalism; and the Community Connection initiative of New Jersey Online, in which users became content producers. His analyses of these ventures reveal how innovation in online newspapers became an ongoing process in which different combinations of initial conditions and local contingencies led publishers along divergent paths of content creation.
This article seeks to explore the influence of the mobile phone on the public sphere, in particular with regard to its effect on news agendas, gatekeepers and primary definers. Using the examples of the Chinese SARS outbreak (2003), the south-east Asian tsunami (December 2004) and the London bombings (July 2005), the author questions the extent to which the mobile phone is challenging conventional and official sources of information. At times of national and personal calamity, the mobile phone is used to document and report events from eyewitnesses and those closely involved. Using multimedia messages (MMS) or text messages (SMS) to communities of friends and families, as well as audio phone calls, mobile phone users may precede and scoop official sources and thwart censorship and news blackouts. They can also provide valuable evidence of what actually occurred. Users are able to take pictures and short films and transmit these rapidly to others along with reports of what is happening where they are; they are also able to access other media broadcasts and the internet. They are what have become known as `citizen journalists'. The evidence suggests that mobile phone usage is contributing to the public sphere and in some instances is circumventing official repression or inadequate information. There is also an indication that the `mobcam' is capturing images that would otherwise be lost. However, the mainstream media has been quick to take advantage of this citizen journalism and mediate it within its own parameters.
Mobile phones have already been used widely around the world for activism, social and economic development, and new cultural and communicative forms. Despite this widespread use of mobile phones, they remain a relatively un-theorised and un-discussed phenomenon in community and citizen's media. This paper considers how mobile phones have been taken up by citizens to create new forms of expression and power. The specific focus is the use of mobile phones in community development, with examples including the Grameenphone, agriculture and markets, the Filipino diasporic community, HIV/AIDS healthcare, and mobile phones in activism and as media. It is argued that mobile phones form a contact zone between traditional concepts of community and citizen media, on the one hand, and emerging movements in citizenship, democracy, governance, and development, on the other hand.
Drawing from normative journalism theory, this textual analysis argues that mainstream journalism weblogs are now occupying a role serving to reify traditional norms even as the j-bloggers shift those standard values. When journalists blog, they engage in postmodern reporting and writing even as they are attempting to reclaim journalism authority online. The j-blog has already begun to evolve traditional notions of the mainstream press. Readers and other non-journalists help craft the story. News format changes. Ultimately, this evolution will affect what we know as the ‘truth’ about our society and ourselves, what we mean by ‘community’, and how we understand reality.
This report was published at the Value of Networked Journalism conference at the LSE on 11 June 2010 The conference was hosted by Polis in partnership with the BBC College of Journalism. The full text can be downloaded from the Polis website. It is designed to stimulate discussion about the state of journalism and to encourage investment in the future of new forms of news production. Above all, it is an attempt to get journalists, citizens and policy-makers to think about what journalism is for. What is its use to society, the economy and the individual? What is its value?
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