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 …