Mediastudiesblog

It may be Media Monitoring Week here in South Africa,  but in 12 host cities across the world, it is Social Media Week. 

Social Media Week was launched by Crowdcentric in 2009 as the world's first truly global conference designed to help increase understanding of the complex and integrated role social media plays in society. Unlike other conferences, Social Media Week is free to anyone, and those unable to attend in person can participate online to in many of the more than 450 events around the world.

The organisers have released a list of their top ten Social Media events:-

1.  Arab Spring and the uprisings in the Middle East

• The "Arab Spring" uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, have proven that social media can transform society and politics on a global scale. Throughout the past several months, social media has been used to organize protests, highlight injustices and government crackdowns, and sway public opinion. Whether democracy will flourish remains to be seen, but social media's impact in the movement so far is indisputable.

2.  Japanese earthquake and tsunami

• Millions of people from around the world watched the aftermath of a 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan in real-time via social media. Tweets and videos from Japan were posted within minutes, and viewers across the globe witnessed what would have been impossible to document before the widespread use of social media and handheld devices.

3.  Wikileaks scandal

• Is Julian Assange a champion of transparency in democracy and freedom of speech? Or is he just a criminal? Wikileaks continues to spur controversy, but the fact is Wikileaks would not have been possible without the rapid advances in digital and social media.

4.  Charlie Sheen's meltdown/use of Twitter

• Charlie Sheen's public meltdown spawned the hashtag "#winning," which quickly became America's favorite new catch phrase. Sheen subsequently amassed one million Twitter followers, faster than anyone else in history, and proved that our cultural obsession with celebrity is only growing now that we have more ways to interact online.

5.  Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal

• This was America's first political scandal that unfolded – and then broke -- over social media, putting a spotlight on the way social media tools are utilized both publicly and privately and will undoubtedly impact the way politicians communicate with their constituents and the public for years to come.

6.  Rebecca Black's viral YouTube hit and subsequent backlash

• How is celebrity defined in the age of social media? Does Black's music video "Friday," which racked up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube earlier this year, count as a 'hit'? The answers are up for debate, but it's a fact that the traditional business models used by the entertainment and music industries are being upended by advances in new technology.

7.  Social media coverage of British royal wedding

• The royal wedding stole the social media show with upwards of nearly one million related Tweets in the month leading up to the nuptials. In the days leading up to the wedding, this single event accounted for more than 70% of all social media mentions.

8.  UK Riots

• After three nights of rioting in London, politicians blamed the violence on text and instant messaging on mobile devices. British police broke into smart phones to thwart planned attacks on local establishments, and even considered blocking access to social networking sites altogether.

9.  Hurricane Irene

• Storm chasers didn't need to leave their home to follow the path of Hurricane Irene, as it made its way up the East Coast in August, conjuring tweets on par with the traffic after the Japan earthquake.

10.  Social Media IPO's

• Successful startups like Pandora and LinkedIn have gone public and there is growing speculation Groupon, Xanga and Facebook will soon follow suit.

 

The Internet is now the main national and international news source for people ages 18 to 29, a study from the Pew Research Center reports.

The internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news. Currently, 41% say they get most of their news about national and international news from the internet, which is little changed over the past two years but up 17 points since 2007. Television remains the most widely used source for national and international news – 66% of Americans say it is their main source of news – but that is down from 74% three years ago and 82% as recently as 2002.

 

Spotted on Mashable.

Here's the draft programme for the Power Reporting 2010: The African Investigative Journalism Conference which started on Monday 1 November 2010 and ends today 3 November 2010.    

Mozilla, Hacks/Hackers, Medill School at Northwestern University, and The Media Consortium are collaborating to run a free online course for journalists and programmers on the Peer-to-peer University platform. This is an experimental six-week course exploring the ways that technology is changing news production and how professional journalists & programmers can work together to innovate around these changes.

 The topics that are currently in development are:

1. The fundamentals of journalism and coding: to help hacks and hackers understand each others' principles, processes, lexicons, etc. From your first "Hello, World" program to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests -- participants will work together, to learn together. 
2. Project management: How do you take an idea from the concept to launch? What are the processes that teams use to meet deadlines & project goals? Learn about project management from real-world examples of it in action.
3. Edit it. Fork it. The art of collaboration and journalism: What does collaboration mean in the context of digital journalism? What are the tools that can support collaboration online, i.e., programming collaboratively, collaborative video editing, collaborative funding, etc.
4. Big Ugly Datasets For Thumb-Fingered Journalists:  Somewhere out there is a file that ends in three letters: CSV. It will probably be so big, in fact, that it will be nearly impossible to navigate in Excel and not much easier in Access. But it has all kinds of useful information that will help you cover your beat -- if only you could load the file, get the data you want from it, and do analysis. (Or, you know what a CSV is and you can rock a database -- but where's the story in this data?). This course will try to answer these questions and more with hands-on assignments.
5. Maps. Maps. Everywhere: From Google Maps to Grassroots Mapping and back again. What are the different ways that maps are being used to provide context and information, etc. 
6. Data journalism and government: Exploring open sources: how to find them, how to work with them, etc. Timely topic given the recent release of data by Wikileaks.  

Spotted on BoingBoing.

A presentation for students doing the "Online Media Production course" was created by Travis Noakes,  aimed at the importance of students using their practical internet work to improve their online reputation.    He has amended the presentation for a wider audience.   This is not only important for those students, but all of us who have an online presence. 

 

New Media, Old Media is a new report from the Pew Research Center's Excellence in Journalism.

<snip from the overview>

While most original reporting still comes from traditional journalists, technology makes it increasingly possible for the actions of citizens to influence a story’s total impact.

What types of news stories do consumers share and discuss the most? What issues do they have less interest in? What is the interplay of the various new media platforms? And how do their agendas compare with that of the mainstream press?

To answer these questions, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has gathered a year of data on the top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages and seven months’ worth on Twitter. We also have analyzed a year of the most viewed news-related videos on YouTube. Several clear trends emerge.

To read more about those trends, here's a link to the fulltext pdf. 

 <snip>

Across all three social platforms, though, attention spans are brief. Just as news consumers don’t stay long on any website, social media doesn’t stay long on any one story. On blogs, 53% of the lead stories in a given week stay on the list no more than three days. On Twitter that is true of 72% of lead stories, and more than half (52%) are on the list for just 24 hours.

 

 

Spotted on Memeburn, six examples of how the social media took the starring role in the news.

Until Twitter came along and blew the lid off news coverage of the Iranian elections last year, many of us were scratching our heads wondering just how social media could help journalism be more interesting, writes columnist Gill Moodie.

 

From the Pew Internet Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism comes the "State of the News Media 2010"  [in USA]  

 

From the Introduction: 

Inside news companies, the most immediate concern is how much revenue lost in recession the industry will regain as the economy improves.

Whatever the answers, the future of news ultimately rests on more long-term concerns: What are the prospects for alternative journalism organizations that are forming around the country? Will traditional media adapt and innovate amid continuing pressures to thin their ranks?

And with growing evidence that conventional advertising online will never sustain the industry, what progress is being made to find new revenue for financing the gathering and reporting of news?

 

Reporters Without Borders celebrates World Day Against Cyber Censorship on 12 March. This event is intended to rally everyone in support of a single Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all. It is also meant to draw attention to the fact that, by creating new spaces for exchanging ideas and information, the Internet is a force for freedom. However, more and more governments have realised this and are reacting by trying to control the Internet.

Reporters Without Borders will mark the occasion by issuing its latest list of “Enemies of the Internet.” This list points the finger at countries such as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Tunisia that restrict online access and harass their netizens. A list of countries that have been placed “under surveillance” for displaying a disturbing attitude towards the Internet will also be released.

 

(1) Broadcast media consisting of Radio and Television;
(2) Print Media consisting of Newspapers and Magazines; and
(3) New Media consisting of online media (Internet) and mobile media.

Radio is the most accessible medium of communication, with 94.1% of the adult population having access to radio. According to AMPs 2008 Television has a population reach of over 83.8%¹. Whereas, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation 2008 (ABC), newspapers and magazines have a population reach of 48% and 40% respectively.

Of interest, is the fact that South Africa's mobile penetration exceedsthat of PC (computer) and internet penetration, and mobile internet penetration is still in its growth phase. South Africa is Africa's highest mobile website page impressions as measured by AdMob².

Spotted on various websites, blogs and in print.

A teenage intern, Matthew Robson,  at Morgan Stanley was asked how teenagers consume media.  His report so impressed the European Media Team at Morgan Stanley as "one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen. So we published it."  

Here's the full report. 

 <snip>

Most teenagers nowadays are not regular listeners to radio. They may occasionally tune in, but they do not try to listen to a program specifically. The main reason teenagers listen to the radio is for music, but now with online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free, and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses.

 <snip>

No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV. The only newspapers that are read are tabloids and freesheets (Metro, London Lite…) mainly because of cost; teenagers are very reluctant to pay for a newspaper (hence the popularity of freesheets such as the Metro).

 <snip>

 What is Hot?

•Anything with a touch screen is desirable.

•Mobile phones with large capacities for music.

•Portable devices that can connect to the internet (iPhones)

•Really big tellies

What Is Not?

•Anything with wires

•Phones with black and white screens

•Clunky ‘brick’ phones

•Devices with less than ten-hour battery life

 

 

Spotted on ResourceShelf.

From the Nielsen company  -   How Teens Use Media : A Nielsen Report on the myths and realities of teen media trends  which "argues once you look past the hype - American teens are not as alien in their media usage as you might expect. Sure, it might sound hip and trendy to suggest they’re too busy texting, Twittering or LOL-ing to be engaged with traditional media, but ultimately, the research proves otherwise" .

ANC held a debate on Twitter yesterday.  

Here's the story   as covered by Global Voices Online, highlighting some of the questions that were asked and answered.    A full transcript of the questions and answers are available from here.  

Spotted on Mail & Guardian

Guy Berger comments on a study "Freedom on the net: A global assessment of internet and digital media" released by Freedom House in which South Africa is rated as having a high level of  digital media freedom. 

 Quoting from the report:

" There is a high level of digital media freedom in South Africa. Political content is not censored, and bloggers are not prosecuted for online activities. The country is in the exceptional position of having more people accessing the internet from their mobile telephones than from their computers. Nevertheless, the majority of the population is unable to benefit from internet access due to high costs and the fact that most content is in English, an obstacle for those who speak only local dialects. Despite several positive court rulings, there are also increasing concerns that precedents established by defamation cases involving traditional media may be used to limit free speech online, especially in forums like the social-networking site Facebook."

 

Spotted on allAfrica.com

Quoting:   VARIOUS organisations that depend on the internet for their communications are compiling a strategy for boosting SA's bandwidth that they hope the new communications minister will adopt.

Although no firm contender has emerged to replace Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri as minister after the elections, the industry is optimistic that the newcomer will have a more liberal attitude to telecoms legislation. To encourage that, they are compiling a national broadband strategy suggesting ways of giving all South Africans affordable high-speed internet access.

....

The strategy will call for a commitment to building more fibre and wireless infrastructure, forcing operators to share their facilities, allocating spectrum quickly and cheaply, and encouraging local governments to build municipal networks and sell excess capacity to the public.

Another policy is that every school and university student should have high-speed connectivity.