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 next speaker in this AoIR 2016 session is Anders Løvlie, whose interest is in the repercussions of commenting on online newspaper sites for the commenters themselves. This is in the context of the 2011 terror attacks in Norway, which were inspired in part by a number of right-wing extremist Websites. In the aftermath, online commenting on news sites became seen as a form of bigotry, and Norwegian news sites tightened their comment moderation approaches.

Commenters on these sites were asked whether they had ever experienced negative repercussions from commenting – 11% said that they had. Those who participated more …

The next presenter at AoIR 2016 is Adrian Rauchfleisch, whose interest is in digital astroturfing in politics. There have been a number of documented cases of political candidates suddenly picking up substantial numbers of Twitter followers overnight, presumably both because they bought followers themselves and because their opponents created fake followers to embarrass them. There is also a Russian outfit called The Agency, posting pro-Putin comments on international news Websites that purport to be from ordinary users in the west, and similar pro-China astroturfing has also been observed. Such astroturfing is not the same as trolling: trolls are self-motivated, rather …

The second paper in this news session at AoIR 2016 starts with Lena Knaudt and Renske Siebe, who begin by highlighting the transformation of journalism in the context of participatory and social media. How does journalism redefine itself as an institution in this environment; how do we understand news beyond the industrial paradigm?

There are three levels of de-industrialisation of journalism: the business model, the production process, and the journalistic paradigm; in terms of production, in particular, there is an opportunity to move away from deadline-driven, high-throughput journalism and towards 'slow journalism' that engages in considered news production and also …

The first proper day of AoIR 2016 begins with a paper that I'm involved in, along with a host of colleagues from Australia, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. We cover patterns in newssharing across these countries, and I'll add the slides for our presentation below as soon as I can the slides for our presentation are below now.

The next session at Social Media and Society starts with Sílvia Majó-Vázquez, whose interest is in the role and positioning of legacy news media in social media spaces, for the particular context of Spain's media ecology. Some legacy news media have recognised their own difficulties in engaging with the online space; some are significantly decreasing their offline activities and therefore need to improve their online services by comparison.

To what extent are new outlets recognised as prominent sources of information by other news providers, then; to what extend do they act as information brokers, even? This addresses two dimensions of …

Next up at Social Media and Society is Jacob Groshek, whose interest is in new modes of journalism on social media. Journalism has traditionally been operating through gatekeeping, deciding what news is being published to their audiences and what news do not. This is still a key mechanism in digital networks, but increasingly redesigned to adjust to the multitude of senders and receivers that are now present in online spaces. All of us are now potential gatekeepers, making our own decisions about what to publish and what to ignore.

How does this situate the traditional media gatekeepers in this new …

Next up at Web Science 2016 is Claudia Orellana-Rodriguez, whose interest is in how journalists spread the news on Twitter. Journalists now regularly engage on social media platforms, but there still is only a very limited understanding of how platforms like Twitter can be used most effectively.

Optimal activities and user engagement may also differ considerably across different news categories: different types of news will have different audiences, and audience members may engage very differently with such news; this may also be affected by the time of day or week.

This project focussed on 200 Irish journalists and captured …