Valérie Bélair-Gagnon

"Reality exists in the empirical world and not in the methods used to study that world; it is to be..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 02:44:45 -0500

“Reality exists in the empirical world and not in the methods used to study that world; it is to be discovered in the examination of that world. … Methods are mere instruments designed to identify and analyse the obdurate character of the empirical world, and as such their value exists only in their suitability in enabling this task to be done. In this fundamental sense the procedures employed in each part of the act of scientific enquiry should and must be assessed in terms of whether they respect the nature of the empirical world under study – whether what they signify or imply to be the nature of the empirical world is actually the case””

- Herbert J. Blumer (1969) Symbolic Interactionism, pp.27-8.

Too Long For Twitter, too Short for Nieman: Why Law and Economics Became the Dominant Intellectual Framework For Thinking About the Internet

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:46:15 -0500

Too Long For Twitter, too Short for Nieman: Why Law and Economics Became the Dominant Intellectual Framework For Thinking About the Internet:

chanders:

(or, why Yochai Benkler and Lawrence Lessig still rule our world.)

They got there first: the material conditions for publishing and rewarding legal scholarship are totally different than those in other fields. It moves faster, for one thing. For another thing, it rewards a-empirical claims.

…

Deletion, the future of privacy?

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:43:05 -0500

Deletion, the future of privacy?

"A British newspaper reporter moves from the politics to the business desk. She resolves to start..."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:36:08 -0500

“A British newspaper reporter moves from the politics to the business desk. She resolves to start digging into the background of Russian oligarchs who have set up home in London. She believes she can connect them to the kleptomaniac dictators the revolutionaries in the Middle East are challenging. She has criticized the Brit politicians without fear of the consequence for years, but her editor turns pale when she talks about using the same tactic against plutocrats. The smallest factual mistake or unsupportable innuendo could lead to a libel action that could cost the paper a million pounds, ‘and we don’t have a million pound.’ She ploughs on, and produces an article that is so heavily cut and rewritten by the in-house lawyers no one can understand it. ‘I want a thousand words on the trends in fashion retailing by lunchtime,’ the editor says when she starts working the next day.”

- You Can’t Read This Book, Nick Cohen (2012).

Social Media and Journalism in the Delhi Gang Rape Case

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:08:49 -0500

Smeeta Mishra (Centre for Culture, Media & Governance at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi), Colin Agur (Columbia University) and I wrote a piece on emerging spaces of storytelling: journalistic lessons from social media in the Delhi gang rape case in Nieman Journalism Lab. Looking forward for more discussion on the topic! Let us know your thoughts.

Paper Tiger

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:46:00 -0500

Sparksheet just published a abbreviated version of the piece on social media and Indian journalism that Colin Agur and I originally wrote for Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. We looked at the role social media can play at India’s The Hindu.

It would be good to see more pieces and research on the topic. While in the West the press is struggling, what can we learn from thriving’s India’s newspaper industry?

New Blog Post (with Colin Agur) on Nieman Lab on India, Journalism & Social Media

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:17:05 -0600

New Blog Post (with Colin Agur) on Nieman Lab on India, Journalism & Social Media

Digitalization and the “Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present” Report

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 05:32:00 -0600

I just read a fresh report entitled Post-Industrial Journalism written by C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky and published by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Those who are engaged in journalism studies in the US would know the authors: Anderson is an ethnographer who teaches at CUNY, Bell used to work for The Guardian and is now at Tow, and Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody where he praised the rise of social media and its impact of mobilization. Here are my first theoretical and empirical thoughts on the report.

The report concludes that the “news has to become cheaper to produce, and cost reduction must be accompanied by a restructuration of organizational models and processes.” They add that “journalism is no longer organized around the norms of proximity to the machinery of production.” I have to admit that I like these conclusions. But here’s a thought… many news organization still rely on the machinery of production and this is important to raise this point.

Journalism as a network

I am not going to accuse a US-focused report of overlooking other journalisms. The culture, practice, norms and political economy of journalism vary worldwide. But, just for fun, lets look at journalism in a country like India. Indian newspapers still rely on strong readerships and, incidentally, turn a nice profit from newspapers sales. Should they be going more digital? I’m sure that my friends at The Hindu would have a lot to contribute to the debate, since they are striving to innovate in an industry/society that generates lots of barriers. Since we live in a world where the flow of information is networked, this is a valuable question to raise in light of the American experience. The way other countries use social media influences the information that publics get. U.S. journalism should be understood not in isolation from other journalisms, at least not in social media contexts.

That being said, it is true that American and European journalists are interacting in new spaces of communication online. In my research on the BBC, I found that journalists engage more and more with their audiences online, which creates a new narrative around news production and content.

Here are more interesting points of discussion from the report:

— The authors of the reports talk about the problematic of the word “audience” and what it means in social media contexts.

— p.61 “A failure to rethink workflow under conditions of digitization can often lead news organizations to suffering all the drawback of digital processes while achieving none of the benefits”

— p.62 Some news organization fear that transparency will help the competition. Nevertheless “there is no reason that organizations cannot continue to make money and get scoops in this new era, even when they show their work”

— p.70 What news institutions will look like!

— p.117 “news isn’t a coherent or ontologically robust category; it is a constantly negotiated set of public utterances by a shifting set of actors, one that happened to go through a period of relative stability in 20th-century America.”

News ecosystem

My favorite part of the report discusses the “news ecosystem”, a term I have come to cherish over the past few years. This section is also one of the main reason that I was inspired to write this blog post. Ethnographers and researchers would benefit greatly from understanding news as an ecosystem (or an ecology) rather than an isolated “newsroom”. My comment above on Indian journalism is a reflection of this. US journalism cannot be understood without taking it out of the context of the global news ecosystem. The authors of the report add: “the only reason to talk about something as abstract as a news ecosystem is as a way of understanding what’s changed” (p.77). I could not agree more. Rather than focussing on the process of innovation implementation in newsroom, an ecosystem helps researchers (and practitioners) to understand the interactions that foster changes in journalism.

Continuity in change

Of course, there are continuities and changes too in changes in journalism. Check out how the New York Times deals with social media, such as by editing social media:

“Why the NYT is wrong to put a social-media muzzle on its journalists” here
“NYT’s Jerusalem bureau chief: Problematic social media usage in a highly politicized setting” the other side here

(something that the BBC and Sky have similarly been accused of about a year ago)

Not everything that we are noticing in journalism right now is new. For example, citizen journalism existed before we decided in the 1990s to coin it as such. Take the example of the popular radical press in England in the late 18th century and mid-19th century that took activist stances and whose audience would report for the press. One of the most used example of citizen journalism before the advent of the term occurred on November 22 1963 when Abraham Zapruder documented the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy though his Bell & Howell camera. Zaprunder sold the print and film rights to Life magazine for $200,000.

Towards a journalism of interactions

I am starting to believe that: it is within the study of interactions and “joint actions” across new technologies as technological structure, system and platform; acting individuals; and single news organizational systems in a new media ecosystem that we can consider the extent of changes (and continuities) in journalism. But that’s another story that hopefully will see light soon :) For now, in the report, the authors wrote:

The arrival of the internet did not herald a new entrant in the news ecosystem. It heralded a new ecosystem, full stop. Advertisers could reach consumers directly without paying a tool, and it turned our many consumers preferred it that way. Amateurs could be reporters in the most literal sense of the word—story from Szechuan quake to Sullenberger’s Hudson River landing to Syrian massacres were broken by firsthand account… And so on. (p.83)

In sum, change is not small nor localized.

The bright side of the future of journalism

I’m happy to see more and more studies like this that see the bright side of the future of journalism. But lets not forget the darker side. Yet, on the bright side, researchers and practitioners are grasping changes that are happening in journalism. At the very least, these researchers ask important theoretical and “real life” questions. These questions raise even more questions — that are going to give us more information about the web of information we surround ourselves with.

To read the full report, follow the link: http://towcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/TOWCenter-Post_Industrial_Journalism.pdf

Copyright: Image by shawncampbell on Flickr. Creative commons licence. Some rights reserved.

New Media and Truth in Journalism

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:53:00 -0500

Recently I have been thinking a lot about objectivity and journalism in a new digital environment, since I am writing an article on impartiality at the BBC. Yesterday, I came across a fascinating piece on journalism and truth written by Mathew Ingram from GigaOM. Ingram claims that truth is more difficult to achieve in journalism today. He cites Clay Shirky from a recent Poynter conference:

Shirky noted in an essay that was published as a companion piece to the Poynter forum, the fact that anyone can make themselves heard about virtually any topic — something that was never possible before the web and social media came along — makes it a much more complicated task to arrive at any kind of actual consensus about the truth.

When we talk about objectivity, we need to be careful. It’s not that objectivity or truth is dying… it is simply transforming. To quote Nicholas Lemann from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism:

The nostalgics can take comfort that the opinion media complex isn’t a recent invention: “Journalism was opinion journalism from about 1700 to 1900.”

Arriving at the truth may be complicated because there are more sources available and more “moving parts” in our narratives. But is it really more complicated to achieve objectivity or truth? This remains a question for debate.

How to survive your (my) PhD?

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 02:26:31 -0500

On the way somewhere on a train, David Gauntlett has made a wonderful list of things to do to survive a PhD…

Do you have any other suggestions?

Table of Media Law and Defamation Cases - via Inforrm blog

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:36:33 -0500

I came across a wonderful tool that would help anyone who is interested in media law and want to make sense of the vast array of cases of the past couple of years.

Inforrm blog has just published an update for Table of Media Law Cases which provides a comprehensive coverage of the English cases –- and some international ones from the past three years. Judith Townend added a table of Defamation Cases.

Have a good read!

Communication in India

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:53:00 -0500

A month and a half ago, I landed in India. This country is very interesting communication-wise! While countries like the UK, the US and Canada embrace the Internet and journalists seem to have accepted the importance of social media in their daily work, Indians have their mind elsewhere. They are highly invested in the telecom industry. Although Internet is less integrated in the life of the people here, that doesn’t mean that social media is not a concern for some people.

Two interesting stories have been discussed publicly since I moved here. First:

Weeks after government imposed a limited period ban on bulk SMSes and MMSes and blocked certain “inflammatory” web pages, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday cautioned that efforts to curb the misuse of new means of communication and social media networks should not be at the cost of freedom of expression … On how to regulate social media, the PM said: “Any measure to control the use of such media must be carefully weighed against the need for the freedom to express and communicate” … Though the government had imposed a limited ban for two weeks on bulk SMSes and MMSes and blocked certain web pages and threatened to launch a crackdown on social media like Facebook and Twitter, the response of authorities was criticized for both heavy-handedness and impracticality of enforcing the regulation. (Source: Economic Times)

This case raises important questions on freedom of speech and media independence and transparency.

Second, the Indian governement has proposed a ‘cellphone in everyhand’ plan. The government is considering to give millions of mobile phones to its poorest citizens living below the poverty line. The project would be funded by the Indian Telecommunications Ministry’s Universal Service Obligation (USO). It raises many questions: many citizen do not have identity cards, how can this project be implanted properly? who in the household will own the cellphone? should the governement give a phone prior to providing electricity or food? So far, the PM said:

Personally, I think the scheme has not yet been fully articulated. It is not sure whether they are going to implement it in phases, in one go; target some segments of the population or start it as a pilot scheme. The full plan has not been spelt out as yet.

Right now, a lot of interesting things are happening in India. It’s a country to watch if you’re interested in communication!

‘Justice Wide Open’

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:21:00 -0500

Justice requires a rethinking in a digital age and this is what the 14 authors who contributed to a publication entitled ‘Justice Wide Open’ aimed to do. The publication is produced by the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism (CLJJ), City University London.

You can find out more information on the Law, Justice and Journalism blog here. Individual chapters can be accessed here.

Verification to bolster journalism

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:22:17 -0500

“User-generated content and verification are no longer a side operation,” said BBC Social Media Editor Chris Hamilton. “They have become part of the journalistic toolbox, alongside agency pictures, field reporters, background interviews. It’s critical for any big newsroom that wants credibility in storytelling.”

Check out how, concretely (and empirically!), forensic verification processes have become a strategy to bolster journalism in a sea of information:

David Turner at Neiman Report on BBC UGC Hub
Alex Murray at BBC Academy - College of Journalism blog on verification tactics
Advices from journalism.co.uk (and here) more on Columbia Journalism Review here!

User-gen content, social media and overcoming censorship - a BBC experience

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 08:29:52 -0500

Check out this interesting panel on overcoming censorship with social media at the BBC.

Impartiality and social media

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 13:38:14 -0500

Check out this ‘old’ (2009) BBC Newswatch debate between the deputy director of BBC News, Stephen Mitchell, and commentator Stephen Glover, on blogging and BBC - how does blogging relates to the organization’s ethos? Informality of blogging v. BBC journalism?

Academics talking about 10 good social media practices

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:35:00 -0500

Susana Herrera and José Luis Requejo published a useful and an interesting article on 10 good practices for news organizations using Twitter - in the 2012 March issue of the new Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies.

Are you thinking about any other good ones?

Here are the 10 best practices they identified:

Have a human voice
Retweets and credit others
Link to external content and enrich self contribution
Listen and respond to others. Talk with them
Provide information. Add value
Conduct surveys among users
Promote the most attractive and useful content for audiences
Use hashtags in your Twitter updates!
Add multimedia value with tweets
Link to other social media networks

'Historicising the UK phone hacking scandal: the origins of wiretapping and early cases in the United States and Britain'

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:03:00 -0500

“The ongoing revelations of widespread phone hacking by NewsCorp raise questions about journalistic ethics and how effectively governments can protect privacy in a world of mass mobile phone usage. To understand the significance of the current scandal, we can look to the origins of wiretapping: the relationship between the telephone and recording technology dates back to their nearly simultaneous releases in the 1870s. Since then, as technologies have improved, wiretapping has became a favored tool in police investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and the subject for several scandals. This talk explores the roles different parties (bootleggers, bookies, police, journalists) have played in the growth and sophistication of telephone surveillance. It contextualises the current UK scandal, showing how a tactic developed by and for police has been put to use by powerful corporate actors.”

Colin Agur (Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism) will talk about this on Tuesday 3 July, 2012 at 16:00PM.

This event is co-organized by the City Media Network and Sociology Department PhD students seminar series.

If you wish to attend, please RSVP at belairgagnon.v (at) gmail.com.

More here and here.

Reconstruction of International Journalism Panel

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:01:33 -0500

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism is hosting an evening panel discussion at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Come and join us in the conversation!

More details on the website of the Tow Center and below:

“Tuesday, May 22 from 5-7pm

Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Stabile Student Center — main level, turn left as you enter the building.

Chair: C.W. Anderson (CUNY)

Panelists:

Caitlin B Petre (New York University): “Interviewing the Interviewer: The Challenges and Opportunities of Questioning Journalists”

Nikki Usher (George Washington University): “Ethnography in a Time of Big Newsroom Uncertainty”

Valerie Belair-Gagnon (City University, London): “Beyond the Physicality of the BBC Newsroom(s)”

Respondent: Michael Schudson (Columbia)”

'Hacking Away at the Truth' by Alan Rusbridger

Fri, 04 May 2012 06:53:00 -0500

'Hacking Away at the Truth' by Alan Rusbridger:

An interesting lecture on what the revelations of the phone hacking scandal means for regulation of the media industry… in Britain!