Transcript Facing down facebook

Facing down Facebook
Guy Berger
Conference on Journalism Education
and Training: The Challenges
16 October 2008, Stellenbosch.
In a nutshell
1. Introduction – the issues
2. New generation students
3. New media world
4. Convergence & the curriculum
5. Problematising pedagogy
6. Conclusion
Take a test… who is:
• Jimmy Wales?
Tip: Volunteers create free content.
• Mark Zuckerberg?
Tip: Friends make him money.
• Craig Newmark?
Tip: Free service killing a class!
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Tip: Sidewinders.
• Ann Droid? Tip: get mobilised.
1. Introduction – the issues
• Facing up to change; Facing down hype.
• Not forgetting African contexts.
• Being upfront that we are teaching history:
journalism as it has been.
• Future-focused … for an uncertain future!
(Just 5 years ago, mp3s were seen as geeky).
• An age of j-educational uncertainties…
2. New generation students
• Rupert Murdoch (2005): digital natives and
digital immigrants.
• (Journ educators: digital refugees?)
• Young people take to digital social networks
like Facebook and Mxit. Africa too!
• How many j-educators efface themselves?
• Do we know the social capital circulating
there – bonding versus bridging?
The “challenge”?
• How do educators teach the next
generation of media leaders about an
environment that many of us do not
understand, but that is second nature to
students? (Jude Mathurine, 2008a).
• In South Africa, we have the “born-frees” –
should we also talk about “born digitals”?
And new aspirations
• “I hate journalism schools they just send cattle to the
slaughter house.”
http://angryjournalist.com/
Angry Journalist #5911:
BUT: here’s the irony:
• “College students in America are not as
‘digital’ as we might wish to pretend.”
(Vaidhyanathan 2008)
• “Despite the ubiquitous presence of the Web,
many j-students think traditionally,
identifying themselves as magazine writers or
broadcast journalists. They are also frustrated
with a multimedia approach that stresses
flexibility over competence in a single
medium.” Dave Boeyink, Indiana University
+ More irony
• “Students were not as enthusiastic
about new media instruction as we had
thought. Print students complained about
being forced to take broadcast production and
both print and broadcast students said they
resented being forced to study online
topics.” (Larry Pryor, USC, 2005)
Even more irony!
• “Everyone is on Facebook or MySpace, but
only five or so of the approximately 400
students that I've taught over the last five
years had their own website, which featured
their writing samples, articles, or other work.”
(Larry Atkins, Temple University, Arcadia
University)
• “They use wikipedia, not knowing what’s a
wiki.” (Rebecca McKinnon, Hong Kong).
Summing up
• There’s a gap between perception & reality.
• It doesn’t mean students are not different to
us … but how much are they different?
• To what extent are we all in the same boat?
(albeit in different positions).
• What value-add proposition do we bring?
3. New (?) media*
• “Journalism is changing from a lecture to
a conversation” (Dan Gillmor). (And
education?)
• “The people formerly known as the
audience” (Is it now also ‘former’
students & teachers?)
• The business model is in crisis (jobs?)
* “New Media Matters”, 2001: ‘interactive, m-media’
Journalism is separated from media
• And there is no longer or everywhere a clear
distinction between those who gathered
content, and those who delivered it.
• Input and output are no longer necessarily
discrete operations by discrete people.
• Media houses are moving to multiple media
plus to include multi-media within the mix.
• Can’t dodge the tech, but it also becomes
anachronistic. Example: SMS is doomed.
Conversation, not content, is king
PRODUCTION:
• OSS & Internet-isation & media-tisation
• From public/private to private=public
CONSUMPTION:
• Success = enable users to take control of
information (eg. Google)
• From info to comms… passive choice to
… customising, personalising, interacting.
Web 2.0
“Social networking has already moved
from a trend to create a virtual teenage
bedroom wall to something far more
functional – a rich, personalised and
multipurpose hub for communication
and organisation.” (NUJ, 2007)
Social networking
• “Journalists, probably even more than
most other workers, are beginning to use
such sites as Myspace, Facebook and Bebo,
as a source of material as well as social
networking. The NUJ has one of the biggest
union groups on Facebook in the world, with
well over 1,000 members.”
• USA: www.newmediadons.org
Work’s changing
• Amateurs & organisations are also
reporters and commentators.
• Readers are editing – voting the most
popular content.
• Aggregators are packaging & disseminating.
• “Distribution has become part of a journalist’s
job description, whether they realise it or
not.” (Paul Bradshaw)
• Fast emerging: mapping and geotagging
Flux
• “Fundamental implications for one’s
professional identity…. and careers (where
the vast majority of new media reporters and
editors … constantly switch employers, jobs,
are employed through part-time so-called
‘flexible’ contracts…). (Mark Deuze, 2006).
Employment
• New jobs: taggers, community gardeners,
mash-up editor.
• “A course I am teaching … is designed to
help students invent their own jobs,
which is not only a good idea, but
probably an essential skill for
journalists …” (Dan Gillmor).
New genres & behaviours
• “Online video is not TV news, Broadband
has mean flash animation, panoramic video
and 3-D imagery, leading to experiments
around ‘gaming the news’. There are also
immersive environments and relational
databases, and 24 hour news cycles.” (Larry
Pryor, 2006)
• Less gates for quality control, more space
for plagiarism and fakery.
Convergence & confusion
• Newsrooms have begun to treat convergence
differently, to see it as a solar system of
loosely connected functions, rather than a
hard-wired fusion of media. (Pryor, 2006).
• Clashing cultures (Hermida & Thurman)…
• What does industry expect of our grads?
• Does j-ed follow or lead?
• And what about servicing working
journos as per UNESCO criterion area B?
4. Curriculum implications
• 71 US J-schools: Of the seven convergence
skills surveyed, most important are seen as
collaboration skills, the ability to write
across platforms, and multiplatform story
planning (Wenger and VanSlyke Turk, 2005)
• African j-schools – still wrestling with other
skills: language, HIV-Aids, peace journalism.
The squeeze is on
• “How to make room for convergence in an
already-crowded curriculum. Where does it
fit? What has to be dropped? What will it
cost? Is it worth it?” (Larry Pryor, 2005).
• Too much to teach, too little time. And that
leads to student anxiety. The new multimedia
course only allows three or four weeks on
each kind of writing. That frustrates students
looking for an early dose of competence.
(Dave Boeyink, Indiana University, 2005)
71 US J-schools
• If a “converged curriculum” means all students
learning how to generate news content for
print, broadcast, and online, then on that
definition:
• 12.7 % schools said highly converged, and
• 22.2 % not converged at all.
• 65.1 % fall within the category of somewhat to
moderately converged.
And the staff?
• 81% said that a significant or very
significant challenge is that faculty lack
the skills needed to teach across
platforms.
• 35 % said that a lack of funding for
training faculty is a very significant
challenge.
And when to do it?
• “Converge at the beginning,
converge at the end, converge
throughout, or don’t converge at all!
If you can say one thing about
convergence in the college
curriculum, it is that one size does
not fit all.” (Wenger and VanSlyke Turk,
2005)
WJEC wisdom on theory needed:
• Digital history, open source software,
community theory, censorship, privacy,
strategy, audience consumption and
production, business models, identity,
Information Society and Knowledge Economy
theories plus knowledge management,
globalisation issues (ICANN, WSIS,
development, democracy, digital divides,
hyperlocalism).
More WJEC
• Law and ethics - intellectual property
(copyright and creative commons),
defamation.
• Research issues really NB – building the
knowledge base. eg. audience
measurement, eye-track, ethnographics,
online tools and resources, changing news
consumption habits, revenue issues.
What else?
• Creative Destruction in the media industry
• Cultural & Geographic Variations
• How do the Economics of and Laws about
New Media Differ from Traditional?
• Alphabet Soup, Metadata, and Web 3.0
• Paid Content, Permission, & Personalization.
(Vin Crosbie, Syracuse University)
More:
• Social Media & Virtual Worlds
• Streaming Media, Metrics & RSS
• Search Engines & Optimization
(Vin Crosbie)
• (SEO is especially relevant to Africa! – GB)
• Reading, 'riting... and revenue? Online
publishing changes the 'three Rs' for college
students (Larry Atkins, OJR)
mindymcadams.com/tojou
• Create a 2-minute audio clip with clear nat
sound, narration and interview material,
edited digitally and compressed for the Web.
• Shoot, edit & compress a video of 2 min
• Create and maintain a single-subject blog for
at least eight weeks (minimum 16 posts), with
at least two posts per week.
• Create a 1:30 to 2 min Soundslides
presentation that tells a journalistic story.
Ethics
• Advertising interference in editorial
• Hidden bias or manipulation by the journalist
• Image and audio manipulation
• Staged or posed events (video, audio, photo)
(Mindy McAdams)
• Relations to bottom line – be critical,
independent.
• Help to grow alternative media.
On the up-side
• The criticism that many journalism
teachers haven’t set foot in a newsroom
for years begins to fade. The change
levels out the relevance of fresh
experience vs archives – because so
much is new and unfolding.
• That’s terrifically exciting!
What’s the j-educators’ value-add?
• Jude Mathurine: Assessment – looking for, and
judging, the journalism (2008c).
• To this extent, the journalistic basics remain:
research, writing, accuracy, presentation,
public interest…
• “Convergence demands a rethink of what we
mean by media, the role of journalism in our
society, and how we teach our courses and
specialisations.” (Mathurine 2008a).
5. Pedagogy problematised
• Teaching changes
• So does journalism
WJEC advice
Pedagogy itself needs to take account of:
• Access to online resources and training
opportunities
• Delivering education with the aid of
online courses and tools
• Building creative learning and exercises
• Treating students as teachers.
Dan Gillmor
• People teaching journalism today are well
advised to learn from their students.
Freshmen arriving at university today are far
ahead of senior students when it comes to
understanding the techniques, although not
the art, of creating media. That means a lot of
skills to teach to students, but also a lot for
the teachers to learn from their students.
(cited by Goldstuck 2008)
Formerly known as lecturers
• Classes become “not information
transfer, but facilitation” (Jonathan
Charles Hewett, City University, cited in
Hume, 2007:23)
• BUT: teachers have to be custodians of
journalism – even as its meaning also
mutates, merges, moves on… (eg. Nonlinear, mixing attitude, “random acts”)
Rich Gordon: Medill
• Graduate students majoring in new media,
do an “innovation project” where they have
to create a new digital or cross-media
product.
• “I've challenged the team to look at
improving ‘conversations around news’ -- to
use digital community-building tools to
enhance people's connections to their local
communities and to news and information
about those communities.”
http://crunchberry.org/
• And Medill is also doing locative journalism.
Paul Bradshaw
Maps, mashups and multimedia: online
journalism students tackle interactivity:
• Kasper Sorensen created a map of water
issues stories in Europe
• Ashley Snape created a map of
Environmental Activity in Australasia
• Natalie Chillington created a slideshow of
the top 10 endangered animals
More of what they did:
Alice Fanning not only created a map of
UK environmental protests but also a
Yahoo! Pipe mashup of eco news.
Emma Foster created an audio
slideshow - ‘Tescopoly’ - and a map of
eco-businesses in the UK.
Hayley Smith created a Yahoo! Pipes
mashup of environmental technology
news, alerts and photos.
More:
• Stephanie Grant created an audio
slideshow to mark African Liberation
Day
• Tuuli Platner stole the show with her
YouTube video song promoting the site
and her reporter blog. Journalists are
becoming brands, and Tuuli has
understood that brilliantly.
Being in Bradshaw’s class
• In addition the class submitted stories
from their blogs and from the
Environmental News Online website;
their Twitter tweets and their
bookmarks; their rss reader subscriptions
and their comments on other blogs.
• You could say I’m quite demanding like
that.
6. Conclusion
• “Allow for convergence to be
contested by students, educators,
industry partners, and other
stakeholders within their school,
program, or course—because it will
be in practice, and this will give
people a sense of agency in the
process.” (Mark Deuze)
Summing up
OLD
NEW
Curriculum
Silos, institutionally
oriented
Medium oriented
Pedagogy
Transfer
Explore
Technology
Analogue, linear, elite
means of production
Digital, interactive, more
accessible
Face it – we’ve got a lot to learn!