Blog

I'm afraid my blogging app decided to delete my notes on the next presentation at ECREA 2016, so we're moving on directly to the paper by Mireille Lalancette, whose interest is in the role of social media in Canadian politics. Québec experienced a major student strike during the first half of 2012, protesting against an increase in tuition fees but also linking with a number of other social issues.

The present research focusses on the protest repertoires used by these protesters, combining both online and offline components. Twitter serves the purpose of ambient political engagement in this context, connecting …

The second morning at ECREA 2016 starts with Laura Pérez-Altable, whose focus is on the Arab Spring in Tunisia. She begins by pointing out the double articulation of social media as a material object as well as as symbolic and discursive; this also goes for the social networks that are encoded in social media environments.

The present study focusses on Nawaat, an independent collective blog; Laura examined the site's ego-network during both the latent and visible phases of the Tunisian social movement. This combines both quantitative and qualitative methods of social network analysis and direct interviews with Tunisian activists.

The …

The final presentation at ECREA 2016 today is by Tobias Eberwein and Colin Porlezza, whose focus is on the ethics of citizen journalism. They begin by noting the current crisis in professional journalism, and highlight the emergence of citizen journalism in response to that crisis. This is capitalising on the advantages of access, diversity, and authenticity that such citizen journalism can draw on, but there is also considerably criticism of citizen journalists for their lack of conventional journalistic training and adherence to traditional journalistic ideals.

Are the problems of citizen journalism reflected in professional ethics, then? Do the norms and …

The next speaker at ECREA 2016 is Stefan Stieglitz, whose focus is on the tweeting activities of German journalists. The study understands the public sphere as defined by a triadic influence structure involving official spokespeople, journalists, and ordinary citizens; in a traditional model the information from spokespeople would be filtered and gatekept by journalists before it reaches the general public, but this is no longer necessarily the case in a social media context. Participation, interaction, and – through this – also transparency may be considerably enhanced by these changes. The question then becomes how journalistic norms continue to operate in …

I missed the first paper in the next ECREA 2016 session because it was too crowded already to find a seat, so we're on to the second paper, by Frank Harbers. He begins by noting that traditional news media are struggling both economically and in terms of their societal role; the period of high modernism in journalism is over. There is a second critique that suggests that conventional journalistic practice is no longer suited to current environments – including especially the adherence to traditional ideals such as objectivity.

New journalistic initiatives have emerged into this environment to explore some new …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2016 session is Radim Hladík, who shifts our focus to the Twitterisation of Czech news. He begins by noting the fact that journalism now exists in a hybrid media system where old and new media meet and interact in a variety of ways; just how these interactions take place is not necessarily clear or predictable, however. In particular, there are questions about intermedia agenda-setting dynamics between conventional and social media, exploring how online sources are used to complement or supplant conventional sources.

Longitudinal studies that examine changes in sourcing practices, in particular, remain largely …

The next speaker at ECREA 2016 is Svenja Ottovordemgentschenfelde, whose focus is on journalists' activities on Twitter. The platform has now been widely adopted by news organisations, and journalists are under considerable pressure to use it to break news, disseminate content, and engage with peers and audiences. None of these pressures are inherently new, but Twitter enables new approaches to engaging in these practices.

Svenja interviewed some 26 journalists in the United States, with a majority aged 44 or below. These reported that there are now often explicit social media policies that mandate the use of social media, and …

Up next at ECREA 2016 are Oliver Hahn and Isabelle Brodeßer, whose interest is in the emergence of social media editors in German TV newsrooms. Such editors do not generate content, but are tasked with identifying user-generated content on social media that can be introduced into the broadcast news coverage. But there are problems here with verification, as well as with the identification of the original authors of such content, both of which are very important in news contexts.

Right now there is no adequate definition of this role, however; the job title itself may also vary considerably. What characterises …

The afternoon session at ECREA 2016 starts with a paper by Gunilla Hultén. She presents Storylab, a collaborative project with Svenska Dagbladet, one of the major daily newspapers in Sweden. This brought together journalism and computer science students and their educators with journalists and editors at the newspaper.

The media industry in Sweden is experiencing rapid changes, much as such industries are doing around the world. In addition to many challenges, new technologies are also creating new opportunities for journalistic storytelling; to realise these, it is necessary to bring together journalists and developers even while they are still in …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2016 session is Darren Lilleker, whose focus is also on Instagram. On the platform, politics has become part of a suite of everyday uses, and this also points to the everyday dimension of political discussion. Some of this may be part of narcissistic self-promotion, but much is also about the social mediation of everyday life.

The focus of the present study is on the Romanian election in 2014: the election has two rounds of voting, and the Romanian diaspora around Europe felt that it was restricted from participating in the election by the …