Mediastudiesblog

Daily Maverick has set up launched Free Africa Media,  a dedicated website to track media and freedom of speech issues and "provide journalists – and citizens – of Africa with the analysis, insight and opinion that they need."

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" Whether you're a journalist on the front line in protecting freedom of expression, or a layperson who believes in your right to know what's happening in your country, we'll provide the tools"

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With free, quality media and freedom of expression under attack from just about every corner of African reality, it becomes more and more obvious that a concentrated, Africa-wide effort is needed to help the fight. Free African Media aims to be just that. The publication will function as a platform dedicated to freedom of expression throughout the continent, as well to helping improve the overall quality of reporting, analysis and opinion Africa-wide. We are anticipating that Free African Media's month-long trial will prove so successful that we'll be able to make it a permanent project.

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.

It seems that Grahamstown was the place to be this past week with two journalism conferences on the go, plus the National Arts Festival.    

Highway Africa 2010  took place 4 - 7 July, while the Second World Journalism Education Congress ran from 5 - 7 July 2010.

The WJEC website carries blog postings on the proceedings.   There are also links to Google presentations made at a number of workshops. 

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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. 

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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.

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?

A study in Australia found that more than half of stories in mainstream newspapers were fed to them by PR entities. 

Spinning the Media, in conjunction with the University of Technology Sydney, investigated the role PR plays in making the media and found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were PR-driven.

Students had to analyse a five-day working week in the media across 10 newspapers. 

 Spotted on boingboing.net

The Ujima Project website "offers African journalists, nongovernmental organizations and others seeking factual data access to information that is not readily available in many African countries."     This information comes via documents, databases and other sources from donor countries, using "reverse transparency."  

According to the Ujima Project website, information on the site comes from governmental or international NGO sources, by trawling governement websites and using open records laws to obtain information.

The Ujima Project was unveiled at the recent Highway Africa Conference.

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" .

From Intute.ac.uk 

This site provides free access to the full text of the 28 page report published by Social Media Affairs in May 2009. It provides an overview of the state of online political communication in Britain in 2008/9. It includes chapters on usage by political parties (Conservative Party, Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats); assessments of party political websites, blogs and Twitter activity. Also provided are overviews of influential Uk political bloggers by stance, topic and region; comparisons of online political activity by MPs; MEPs; councillors and local government organisations and discussion of the use of Twitter by politicians. Access to the full text requires free registration.

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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 intute.ac.uk

Global Media Journal  is a full-text scholarly ejournal published by the Global Communication Association, and support by Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, Indiana.

There are a number of geographic-specific editions - Australian, Polish, Canadian, and Mediterranean.

Intute has this to say about the Australian version:   This Australian version of the journal has an extensive Australian Advisory Board, and its own content. Articles are freely provided in PDF form. At April 2009 there are three issues online, offering articles, interviews, book reviews and some postgraduate papers. Example articles titles include: 'Source credibility and attitude change in readers of foreign news'; 'Handsome Devils: Mobile Imaginings of Youth Culture'; and 'Citizen Journalism and the Rise of Mass Self-Communication: Reporting the London Bombings', among others. The website has details of the many editors, the large Editorial Board, and the submissions process. Also available at the website is the publication 'Australian Media Monitor'. This is an elegantly designed and useful website and ejournal for researchers in media and communication studies.

Research commissioned by UK based Women in Journalism shows the impact of media demonisation on teenage boys.  

The research was carried out in January 2009, surveying a representative sample of 1000 teenage boys aged 13 - 19, as well as tracking regional and national press coverage of teenage boys over the last year. 

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Research findings include:

* 85% of teen boys said newspapers portray them in a bad light
* Reality TV was seen as portraying teen boys most fairly
* Media stories about yobs and hoodies are the main reason why teen
boys are wary of other teenagers
* 80% of teen boys think adults are more wary of them now than they were a year ago.

* Terms used in newspaper stories about teen boys included thugs, yobs, hoodies, feral, evil, lout, monsters, brutes, scum, menace, heartless, sick, menacing and inhuman

* Over the past year, there were more newspaper stories about teens and crime (as victims or offenders) than about teens and all other subjects put together

* Even on subjects other than crime, few newspaper stories show teen boys in a good light: only 24% of stories about teens and sport were positive about teenage boys; only 16% of stories about teens and entertainment were positive.