PANEL: QUALITY AND CREDIBILTY part 2

Marju Himma-Kadakas, University of Tartu, Estonia

Impact of time acceleration on online journalists’ skill performance

Marju Himma-Kadakas elaborate results of her study (interviews and observations of newsrooms) which describe differences between theory and practice about skills needed by Estonian journalists.

Features of modern journalists are:

• Hypeactivity
• Multimediality
• Technological acceleration

Decreasing number of person needed to create information should create opportunity for personal development - be more and more skillful in different aspects of journalism work. In theory journalist should be both content and technology skilled.

Author found that it is not true.  Noways creating content is not as important as researching and linguistic skills that give opportunity to quickly find information translate it and send to audience. Marju Himma-Kadakas think that now in Estonia is no much time for personal development. Skills that are still needed are: 

• communication in the mother and in foreign language
• digital competence
• cultural awareness and expression

dr. Lisbeth Morlandstø and dr. Birgit Røe Mathisen, University of Nordland, Norway

Commentary journalism online – a way to capture the youth?

Dr. Lisbeth Morlandstø and dr. Birgit Røe Mathisen focused on approach of young people to new media and on opportunities that sharing opinion via Internet gives to society. Speakers found that young people are the most active participants on the new digitalized arenas, by producing contents and express their opinion, both in blogs and in digital debates Young people in Norway think that because of online discussions they is more opinions and points of view in public debate – it is possible to hear voice of miniorities or common people.  Digital commentary’s creates more immediate contact and better dialogue with the readers. From that reason it has good influence on democratization process. 

Authors think that important role in this debate should have young professional debate moderators. Future shows does young people want to be and can be good coordinators and if media company also see the importance of their role.

Signe Ivask, Marju Himma-Kadakas, University of Tartu, Estonia

Burnout fostering young reporters to resign journalism

In their speech authors share not only their theoretical knowledge but also experience as journalists.

Topic of burnout is not new but because of today media market in Estonia and technological changes young journalists are especially vulnerable for it. The main reason of burnout are:

• working all the time under time pressure. Situation when journalists live in stress all the time is especially harmful because they have no support from their coworkers (who also have non stop dead line so have no time for others).
• Unnatural rhythm of living. Journalists have no time for their private time or for their family, in their free time they are too exhausted or have free time when all other people are working.

In that situation it is no surprise that statistic in Estonia shows there are increasing number of burnout young journalists who  no longer want to work in media system.

Authors think that the only long time solution of this situation is changing the culture of media market  from inside.

PANEL: QUALITY AND CREDIBILTY part 1

In this panel moderated by dr. Inoslav Bešker there were speeches of:

Kay Muehlmann, Danube University in Krems, Austria
Propaganda and Trust: On RESILIENCE in Social Systems a complex adaptive system perspective

Kay Muehlmann see mass media as a part of larger complex social system.

To let the audience understand it he used metaphors from biological world. In complex system parts of the system cooperate without central control (or one group controlling others) to achive more than all of them can do alone (as neurons in brain or ants).

Important aspects of Social System are:

- Synchronization – structure create social action and vice versa

- Adaptive cycle - dynamic process that left space for innovations but also is stable

Three important elements that are most important for good Social System are leadership, social network and trust. In Kay Muehlmann's opinion role of journalism in system is to communicate information, construct of sense of meaning, synchronize social actions and legitimation of roles and actions. Purpose of all this activities should be the benefit of all system. To do it journalists should be ethic and ready to engage and participate in social life. Journalism discourse should be multi-dimensional but also on the same level with audience.

Sean Dodson, Leeds Beckett University, UK
Improving online integrity: Towards a code of conduct for journalists on the internet

In his speech Sean Dodson defended a thesis that all journalism change a lot in case of new media and new technology expect of ethic codes. Sean Dodson analyze about 50 Press Council University codes in Europe. The codes should describe minimal ethic standards to uphold the reputation of journalism. Problem is that codes are often  not updated. For example French code is from 80'. That is one of the reason why codes seem not to notice technological turn, online and multimedia journalism and ethic problems that are connected with that.

Only a few of codes have mention online journalism problems. 

Sean Dodson found Dutch code especially interesting in aspect of online journalism. More detail about analyze Dutch code we will manage to read in near future publication. At the end of his speech Sean Dodson showed most important ethic rules which should be in memory of every online journalists.

And the last rule:
Conduct yourself on the same level of ethics standards online as in the traditional journalist.

Fernando Zamith, University of Porto, PortugalMeasuring quality on online journalism: An index proposal

Fernando Zamith was talking about need of new tool to measure quality of online journalism and compare professional media to citizen media. For first topic Mr. Zamith show the reasons why cyber-journalism should be considered as different than traditional and mention few of the tools that may be useful to measure the quantity.

For second part he describe his study showing that professional journalism is still more important (most common part of citizen activity is intervention: sharing and liking). He found that professional media are still more reliable than citizen.

Panel 2: Current state and the transformation of audience

Saturday morning at Dubrovnik media days was dedicated to broad scale of speakers from mostly balkanic countries, including Croatia and Albania, but also Bulgaria, Sweden, Slovakia and Turkey.

Panel 2 was opened by presentation from dr.Inoslav Besker, profesor at University of Bologna,Italy and University of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Mr.Bešker was sharing his research about crisis of the newspapers’ business model, focused on the case of Croatia.

Followed by croatian journalist Iva Nenadič from University of Osijek who talked about content analysis and online editions output in croatian newspapers.

Both PR professionals and journalists from University of Osijek,Croatia, Francesca Vlašić and Sandra Brautović presented their research with question whether there’s a symbiosis or conflict between these two profesions. Since both of these ladies work in both of those profesions, their result comes from first hand – both the PR professionals and the journalist realize that there’s a certain conflict in their profesions, but that there’s also a huge space for the opportunity to benefit from their differences.

Dr.Mark Marku from Tirana University in Albania talked about how social media changes public opinion and is challenging the traditional system of news making.

Britt-Marie Ringfjord from Linneaus University in Sweden shared her study about How media frame innovation and gender. Mrs.Ringfjord is currently guest teacher at University of Dubrovnik in Croatia as well.

Dr.Rastislav Kazanský from Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia shared his recent study about the role of media in diplomacy concept. He pointed out very clearly that media is for great use in the world of diplomacy and has power to help to solve certain problems.

All the speakers shared their studies about current state of journalism and its impact on the audience.

To sum it up, it is clear that journalism is facing changes due to the growth of online media, but these changes are for sure beneficial for the future of journalism.

                                                                 

 

University Of Dubrovnik Conference

UNIVERSITY OF DUBROVNIK CONFERENCE: THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

The future of journalism is changing due to the arrival of the New Media Technologies. This is the mainly topic of the conference.

First, we are introducing the principal speakers today.

-dr. Piet Bakke: teacher of mass Communications and journalism Studies from Netherlands. His proffesional career includes workshops in several magazines, newspapers and radui stations.

Speach: New Complexities in Digital Journalism: commercial challenges, technical skills & personal branding

-dr. Marko Milosavljevič: head of department of journalism at faculty of social sciences at university of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

He is a member of different national and international committees,

Speach: Digital Journalism in 3D - Disruption, Deprofessionalisation, Dehumanization

-Nataša Ban Palunčić, M.A.: professor of Sociology associate at University of Dubrovnik, PhD Candidate on Communication Sci, Mass Media and Public Relations.
Speach: Citizen journalism: A future fair reporting of socially disadvantaged minorities such as the homeless.

-dr. Tena Perišin: She  teaches television journalism at the Journalism Program at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb. Furthemore, She is a member of the EBU News Committee and a member of the EBU File Transfer group. She is also active member of the EBU News Assembly.

Speach: Future of Journalist: Digital skills in search for 5W and H

-dr. Dorde Obradović: head of the international science journal MEDIANALI and leader "of the Media Research Center," Department of Communication at the University of Dubrovnik. He works as a professor in the University of Dubrovnik in the Mass Communication Department.
Speach: The future of journalism between news aggregators and PR(opaganda)

                                                             

-dr. Domagoj Bebić: senior Research Scientist at Google, Inc. His researches are related to verification, testing, synthesis and security on software systems, automated reasoning, grammatical inference and applied formal methods in general.

Speach: Viral journalism: the rise of the new form

-Jaana Hujanen: She works at Swedish School of Social Science. Her last activity was “Assessment of candidates for professorhip in communication”.

Speach: Reinventing the relationship between journalists and audience: The case of Finnish news media.

To continue, we are going to sum up the different lectures.

New Complexities in Digital Journalism: commercial challenges, technical skills & personal branding.

The digitalization has changed society and media, so, as consequence of this, Journalism has changed as well.

The future of journalism is on the Internet.

Advertising is more profitable in New Media than in old methods. How does it affect to journalism career? As he said, if New Media grows up, journalism will be affected negatively. In this context the bloggers appear, being more popular than real journalist. It makes that everyone believe that they can be a professional journalist and think that they can find news for free everywhere. It´s a mistake.

On the other hand, in the newsroom, there are not as much professional as it uses to have. Nowadays, there are a lot of freelancers. Therefore, the workers are multitasked people. As consequence, they have more autonomy participation and resources, so they are more efficient and they are able to create content.

The aim is not to protect newspaper but to do it more important.

Today, the professionals use new technologies as smartphones instead of the tradicional tools.

As conclusion, if you want to work in this career you have several options like freelance, trainer and social media.

Digital Journalism in 3D - Disruption, Deprofessionalisation, Dehumanization

New media ecosystem is more dinamic and changes quite fast

People want fresh ideas, it doesn’t have to come from professionl journalists, so it means that this information doesn’t have to come from a newsletter, although that actually comes from there. So, bring punk to journalism!

As he claims,technologie is not the enemy, it is a big help.

Disruption.

The difference between Internet 2.0 and Internet 3.0 is that last one is Internet of things where you can create your own content.

Deporfessionalisation

People want creators, people who makes differently and much better. That’s why there are so many famous people who becomes a source of news and they are not actually journalists.

Dehumanization

Machines or humans? We would study this answer with advantages and disadvantages, so as he said it needs regulations as soon as possible. This is very difficult because it changes so fast.

As consequence of the text mentioned before, technologie is rising and it is making that there are fewer proffesionals working in this career.

For instance, the most profitable companies are those ones that use more machines. However, they don’t produce content.

Discusion:  Is there any future for journalists? Will people want to study that? We have to make students flexible, entepreuners. You have to be able to fight for yourself, you have to be creative. But how do you teach creativity? I feel like the biggest chalanges are here for schools, nof for the students themselves.

Citizen journalism: A future fair reporting of socially disadvantaged minorities such as the homeless.

In Croatia, there are over 20.000 homeless. Before coming to the U.E it wasn’t a specific regulation, but now they have to include the social welfare at.

The objective is to know what attitudes the media has about homelessand what is the incidence in them.

Hypothesis:

-Citizen journalism is available to everyone.

-Citizen journalism deals with topics that public journalism bypasse.

-Citizen journalism is dealing with minorities.

-Homelessness is topic which we most learned from the public media.

-The men movement and socially concious permisssible actiones come from the public media.

 

Future of Journalist: Digital skills in search for 5W and H

Nowadays the media companies are becoming new model of business. That can means that the quality of news can be corrupted. Newespaper is more worried about business than good information.

Television can show us news and make them appear more visible. Therefore if something appears in TV it happens for people, if not it does not happen.

Breaking news or black hole? Sometimes you do not know about the quality of information, and you can be missinformated.

To conclude it is necessary to suggest the audience and give more content than contexts.

The future of journalism between news aggregators and PR(opaganda)

A public relations is a person who speaks with public companies, so he is between both. It is like a connector.

News agregator: He helps to give more importance and to improve.

News editor: He does not  care about good news, just produce it.

On the other hand, most of  news on the Internet are propaganda instead of journalism, it decreases. Even, we do not distinguish between them.

Framing. It is the most important tool, you can not avoid it. It is like a dicctionay of handling.

Guidance. It is a tool to keep journalists in the frame.

The future of the journalism is the propaganda.

Viral journalism: the rise of the new form

There are some many changes in technical things but also in communication. The creation of contents and distribution has been changed too.

Brands have become created of content, but, in the other hand, people who are creators of contents must do branding to themselves.

Creating content is a hard task because you do not know which way to do it is the best. Also, in tradicional media is important because it involves everybody. But this content has to be shared.

Is it necessary a new regulation for the journalism? Yes, it is. A new ethic in journalism is necessary because of the changes in media ecosystem.

Furthermore, journalism should be more interactive and not just informative. In this way, the news become viral due to they can be shared and allow to participate.