MediaShift

Public MediaShift

How Social Media, Collaboration Fueled Reports on Australia's Refugees

by Julie Posetti

An innovative Australian public journalism project has partnered student reporters and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with a refugee support agency and a social media startup. The aim of the project, #ReportingRefugees, was to tackle problematic media coverage of asylum seekers and refugees in a volatile political climate in parallel with educating students to connect with a "citizens' agenda." The result...

• January 19, 2012
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Social Media

BBC Social Media Summit Fixates on Creating 'Open Media'

by Julie Posetti

Journalists need to shift their mindset to talking with -- instead of at -- the "people formerly known as the audience." That was a take-home message from the recent BBC Social Media Summit in London. It's a notion others (including me) have written about in academic research regarding media representation of minorities. But it was The Guardian's Meg Pickard who...

• June 7, 2011
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Social Media

BBC Social Media Summit: Crowdsourcing a Research Agenda

by Julie Posetti

The BBC College of Journalism is staging a Social Media Summit (hashtag #BBCSMS) in London this week, which will bring together industry leaders, practitioners and academics from around the world, with a view to collaboratively mapping the future of social journalism. Social media is having a transformative impact on professional journalism. And the speed of the real-time revolution raises significant...

• May 18, 2011
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EducationShift

Aussie Academic Journal to Publish Peer-Reviewed Journalism

by Julie Posetti

An Australian journalism professor has started an online academic journal with a twist: It publishes journalism, rather than just studies of journalists and their work. The fledgling journal -- believed to be the first of its kind in the world -- is called Research Journalism and it's the initiative of Edith Cowan University journalism lecturer Dr. Kayt Davies.

• January 20, 2011
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PoliticalShift

5 Moments When Digital Media Transformed Australian Politics

by Julie Posetti

The Digital Age has seen significant change in the way Australian politicians, political journalists and the public interact and communicate with each other. As a result, MediaShift asked me to identify the top five events in Australia's recent history where politics and new media intersected. My shortlist, compiled with crowdsourcing assistance from my politically engaged Twitter and Facebook communities,...

• November 4, 2010
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EducationShift

Revamping J-Schools in Australia to Bring in 'Citizens Agenda'

by Julie Posetti

As Australian democracy hangs in the balance, and with the outcome of the August 21 national election unlikely to be resolved for weeks, I'm considering the implications for journalism education -- and how we can invent new models for political reporting.

• September 1, 2010
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EducationShift

Journalism Education 2.0: Training in an Age of Radical Change

by Julie Posetti

Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com. "We are not going to make it with uninspired and uninspiring teachers!" Archbishop Desmond Tutu challenged delegates in his closing address to the second...

• August 5, 2010
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PoliticalShift

Aussie #Spill Breaks Down Wall Between Journalists, Audience

by Julie Posetti

The spectacular demise of the Australian conservative party's leadership in November 2009 was a turning point for political journalism in the country. This is the third and final installment in a special MediaShift series (read part one here and part two here) about the transformative impact of the biggest Australian political story of 2009, which became known simply by its...

• May 24, 2010
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PoliticalShift

How #Spill Effect Brought Color, Collaboration to Media Tweets

by Julie Posetti

Twitter distinguished itself as an important new platform for breaking political news in Australia during the Great #Spill of 2009. This is the second installment in a MediaShift series on the "#spill effect." (You can read the first part here.) It draws on a case study of the event and includes online interviews with eight tweeting journalists who are prominent...

• April 13, 2010
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PoliticalShift

The #Spill Effect: Twitter Hashtag Upends Australian Political Journalism

by Julie Posetti

Australia is gearing up for a national election in 2010 and a core group of influential political journalists in the elite Canberra Press Gallery are tweeting their way along the campaign trail -- and bringing an engaged public along for the ride. Press Gallery journalists are among the most active Australian reporters on Twitter, which entrenched itself Down Under as...

• March 2, 2010
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Social Networking

Media140 Brings Old and New Media Together, With Explosive Results

by Julie Posetti

Over 300 people gathered under the Media140 banner in a concert hall at Australia's national public broadcaster ABC in Sydney last week to consider the future of journalism in the social media age. Media140 is a newly formed global collaboration of journalists, academics and social media practitioners that is staging conferences around the world. The goal is to examine the...

• November 13, 2009
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Social Media

Rules of Engagement for Journalists on Twitter

by Julie Posetti

Twitter's role in the Iranian election aftermath leaves no doubt about its power as a global, real time, citizen-journalism style news wire service, along with a tool for facilitating dissent, while countering the view of Twitter as simply a zone for egotistical banality. But it also highlighted Twitter's role as a platform and content generator for traditional media outlets,...

• June 19, 2009
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Social Media

How Journalists Balance Work, Personal Lives on Twitter

by Julie Posetti

Twitter is continuing to make headlines around the world as it amasses followers. But it's also making an impact on the newsmakers themselves. Journalists are invading the space at a rapid pace and learning to report live, crowdsource stories and engage with a whole new audience...in 140 characters or less. It may not be revolutionary -- many journalists view the...

• June 8, 2009
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Social Media

How Journalists Are Using Twitter in Australia

by Julie Posetti

Twitter became big news once journalists realized its power as a tool for breaking stories during the Mumbai Massacre in 2008. In the aftermath of the micro-blogging platform hitting the headlines, there was an explosion of professional journalists in the Twittersphere. This growth has been fueled by increasing mainstream awareness of the importance of social media to the future of...

• May 27, 2009
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EducationShift

How Journalism Students Used Twitter to Report on Australian Elections

by Julie Posetti

The micro-blogging platform Twitter was the breakthrough social media tool for journalists in 2008. It became a pipeline for breaking news for both professional reporters and citizen journalists, with the massacre in Mumbai, the Hudson River plane crash and Obama's inauguration highlighting its effectiveness as a source of live, user-generated online content. Journalists increasingly used it to cross-promote their own...

• February 3, 2009
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Education

Experimentation (Not Stagnation) Should Flourish at J-Schools

by Julie Posetti

Some journalism academics may be even more scared of new technology and more resistant to change than the worst print "dinosaurs" working in media today. But Web 2.0 has made getting online so simple that there are no more excuses for being disconnected. While some reporters see journalism education as a potential refuge from the rapid pace of change in...

• January 16, 2009
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