Starting in 2020, students at the University of Alberta will be able to study media in all its forms in a new arts program.

The proposed 36-credit program will require students to complete six media studies courses focusing on theoretical aspects such as the historical and cultural study of print and electronic media. The program aims to equip students with the skills to critically analyze media and work in the field.

Students in 300-level media studies courses will be able to complete a community service-learning component, which will give them the opportunity to work with companies like Bioware to develop projects that can help them enter the field. of their choice.

The new program will also require students to complete a “media portfolio” at the 400 level, which builds on what they have learned from previous courses. Additionally, students will be required to complete six additional media-related courses in other artistic disciplines.

Michael O’Driscoll, acting vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts, said the degree offered will differ from programs at MacEwan or Carleton University because it will focus less on training in professional journalism and more on study. media as a whole.

A survey conducted by the faculty earlier this year to see what students thought of the proposed program was completed by 172 of the 6,000 undergraduate arts students at the University of Alberta, 72% of them having replied that they or someone they knew were likely to pursue studies in media studies if made available.

Astrid Ensslin, an art teacher involved in the media studies program, said it was increasingly important to have a way for students to learn about media with the prevalence of media social media like Facebook.

“There’s a whole revolution going on right now where every social media provider is sending out an email about revising their privacy policies to give you more agency as a user,” she said. declared. “People are able to say no if they don’t want to share their data…and that used to be a flaw, but that’s all changing now.”

The Organization for Arts Students and Interdisciplinary Studies (OASIS) was also involved, with the organization’s 2017-18 president, Ben Angus, writing a letter in support of the proposal.

Robert Bilak, vice president (academic) of OASIS, said he was a fan of the proposed program, but was concerned that faculty communication with students was inadequate. He also said that the faculty’s previous efforts to communicate Bachelor of Arts changes to the students was a “gong show”.

“The most important thing for students to know is that it’s here,” Bilak said. “I want students in the Faculty of Arts to know that if it’s something they’re interested in, I don’t want them to be afraid to try something new.

The proposal has been sent to the Government of Alberta and is awaiting approval.

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Researchers in the field of digital media and journalism have focused a lot of attention on Twitter in recent months, examining how the busy platform influences people’s behavior, including the judgment of journalists. Below, we’ve collected five peer-reviewed articles we thought you might want to know about, three of which examine journalists’ relationships with social media. We’ve also included new research from researchers at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford that has implications for news branding and efforts to build public trust. in journalism.

Good reading! And remember, if you come across a good study that you think we should highlight, let us know at @JournoResource.

This article has been first published at Nieman Laboratory. It has been slightly edited to reflect Journalist’s Resourceeditorial style.

A common criticism of social media platforms is that they encourage like-minded people to form social networks that limit their exposure to different viewpoints and sources of information. There are growing concerns that these so-called “echo chambers” are fueling political polarization in the United States

This study, however, demonstrates that the opposite is true — at least for Republicans on Twitter. Researchers find that Republicans become more conservative when their Twitter feeds fill with posts reflecting opposing political ideologies.

For this study, researchers asked regular Twitter users who identified as Republicans or Democrats to follow a Twitter account that retweeted 24 posts every day for a month. Some people have been unknowingly assigned to Twitter accounts that retweet messages from elected officials, opinion leaders and others promoting opposing views.

The researchers found that Republicans’ attitudes became more conservative after following a Twitter account that retweeted liberal messages. Democrats who followed an account that shared conservative messages became slightly more liberal, although this change was not statistically significant.

“Our study indicates that attempts to present people with a wide range of opposing political views on a social media site such as Twitter could not only be ineffective but counterproductive – particularly if such interventions are initiated by liberals” , write the authors.

This study also examines how Twitter posts affect behavior – namely, the judgment of news. The key takeaway: Inexperienced reporters and reporters who regularly use Twitter at work considered anonymous, context-free tweets more newsworthy than Associated Press headlines.

In March 2016, 212 American journalists were asked to rate the timeliness of two sets of news. Some have seen two sets of headline spin-offs on the AP newswire. Other reporters received a series of anonymous tweets along with headlines that appeared to come from AP. Journalists rated the stories for their timeliness and importance and how strongly they possessed news values ​​such as timeliness and impact. Each reporter’s ratings were combined into a composite “media value” score.

The authors analyzed the responses of journalists taking into account their use of Twitter. Journalists labeled as “high frequency users” said they were on Twitter several times a day or logged in all day while “low frequency users” said they used it less often.

Both groups gave similar ratings to titles written in the AP format. However, high frequency Twitter users rated the tweets as more newsworthy than low frequency users.

The findings, according to the study’s authors, “suggest a profound disconnect between the concept of media interest and other important news values ​​such as credibility, objectivity and context.” They also note that if journalist interest “is a strong predictor of a story” going through “journalists to the public… then Twitter can be a channel through which citizen journalists or other members of the public can influence the mainstream news agenda”.

This study examines the link between who follows a journalist on Twitter and the partisanship of their work. Researchers find that political journalists who follow many Twitter users with conservative views tend to use more “right-wing” terms — “illegal immigrants,” “Obamacare,” and “tight regulations” are examples. Meanwhile, the more a journalist follows liberal-leaning reporting, the more likely they are to use left-leaning terms such as “equal work,” “marriage equality,” and “suffrage law.”

The researchers analyzed more than 300,000 news articles written by 644 journalists across 25 news outlets, looking for 114 terms that they believe represent strong right-wing or left-wing ideology. The research team, led by John Wihbey, assistant professor at Northeastern University and former editor of Journalist’s Resource, combined this data with information about journalists’ Twitter networks to assign ideological ratings to journalists and their agencies. Press.

The authors point out that they find no evidence that following certain Twitter accounts causes a journalist to write with bias. “There is no simple pipeline between social media and news media in terms of partisanship,” they write. “Yet the two are increasingly entangled, and studying their relationship is vital if researchers are to better understand the mechanisms of the emerging ecosystem.”

Most of the 25 publications studied demonstrated a liberal bias. But three of the largest mainstream media organizations — the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal — publish “fairly ideologically neutral or even fairly conservative content,” despite “widely left-leaning Twitter networks,” the authors note. .

Do people remember where they get their news from? And why is it important? Researchers at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism examine both questions.

Twenty years ago, the public generally received their news directly from newspapers, magazines, television and radio programs or by visiting the websites of news organizations. Today, people can search and access news in many ways, including through search engines, news aggregators, social networks, and mobile messaging apps.

Kalogeropoulos, Fletcher and Nielsen wanted to see how well people remember the name of the news outlet that produced a story they found through a search engine or social media. In early 2017, for a month, they tracked the browsing histories of 6,811 adults in the UK who agreed to install tracking software on their laptops or desktops. Researchers also interviewed participants 10 to 48 hours after viewing a news report.

Here’s what they found: When people went directly to a news website to access a story, they remembered the name of the outlet 81% of the time. But when they found a story through a search engine, they could only correctly identify the media 37% of the time. When they come across a news article on social media, they remember the name of the news agency that produced it 47% of the time.

The researchers also found that young people were more likely to remember news brands from news stories they accessed directly and found through social media. People with a higher level of education were more likely to recall outlets that produced information they found through a search engine.

These findings have implications for public trust in news and for the news industry, the researchers say. “We know that people use news branding (among other things) to instill trust in particular stories,” they write. “It seems entirely plausible that if the bond between brand and user is weakened, people’s overall level of trust in information may begin to decline.”

It is often assumed that there are differences in how journalists of different age groups think about using social media to promote their work and interact with the public. Wu’s findings indicate that “the digital divide in social media use among journalists is not whether young and old use social media; the divide is more between the types of social media they prefer to use,” he explains.

Wu, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Toledo, conducted an online survey of American journalists and editors from a range of paces between March 18, 2016 and April 30, 2016. He posed questions about how journalists use social media and how they plan to integrate these platforms into their work.

The researcher divided the 1,063 journalists who participated into three age groups. The “younger” journalists were 29 years old or younger. People between the ages of 30 and 49 were categorized as “middle-aged” while journalists aged 50 and over were categorized as “older” journalists.

Wu found that younger reporters preferred Twitter while older reporters preferred Facebook, and middle-aged reporters said they used both. He also found that, across all age groups, journalists tended to have a more negative view of social media if they engaged more on Facebook.

“The more middle-aged journalists interacted on Twitter, the more they tended to have a positive attitude toward social media,” Wu writes. a negative attitude towards social media.”

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Veteran BBC Radio presenter John Humphrys has spent decades exposing the flaws inherent in the rhetorical pronouncements made by Britain’s political ‘elite’. All the evasions, crushing shifts and outright lies that appear when the executive branch presents its secret decisions as public debate – something Tony Blair loved to do – served as grist for Humphrys’ mill.

At one point during the Iraq War, his clinical interrogation of government ministers seemed to represent the rational, humane attitudes that exemplified the beliefs of all who marched against this disastrous enterprise.

But in recent years, as the adversarial mode of interview has fallen out of favor, Humphrys’ continued adherence to a provocative style has produced some unfortunate gaffes. One of the most notable was perhaps a comment he made in 2017, when he asked Mark Rowley, a senior police officer, if Thomas Mair (who murdered MP Jo Cox) should really be called a “terrorist” since he was “mentally ill”. This argument (known as the use of “mutually exclusive” categories) seemed to suggest that Humphrys was downplaying the political motives behind the attack.

August 13, Humphrys tendency to go “off-road” sparked another controversy. On this occasion, the subject was the awarding of university degrees, and its guest was the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Angela Rayner. Discussing the prospect of two-year undergraduate courses, Humphrys questioned the value of a media studies qualification. While, he thought, the medical profession might well need a three-year training period, media students might need a little less time to complete their studies.

How much time, then, might media students really need? According to Humphrys, “about five minutes” – no doubt suggesting that all discipline is utterly worthless. While it might not be his most outrageous intervention, it struck me as the kind of easy statement that his profession is supposed to challenge.

His whole attitude harkens back to an earlier era, when questioning the value of media studies was a simple way to defend the supposed integrity of traditional subjects.

My purpose, however, is not to argue that we “leave the kids alone”, nor to replicate the usual point about the high employability of media students, but to wonder why some commentators continue to denigrate the subject. Is it because, from its inception in the 1970s and 1980s, it launched a serious critique of power, which included those elements of the media industry that remained closed to many potential entrants?

A “watchdog” for democracy?

To understand how outdated and controversial Humphrys’ remark has become, we might consider for a moment the role that “the media” (in their various guises) play in maintaining the exalted commodity of democracy.

When, for example, a prime minister may be nominated by a tiny fraction of the population, or when a government may decide to save an economy by using austerity to reduce a much larger proportion of the electorate to abject poverty , then the existence of an independent public watchdog is essential.

I’m not talking here just about the BBC, but all forms of media and all media that have the potential to contribute to a healthy public culture.

If the media in general can provide the space and opportunity for informed debate, then the critical distance provided by academic research (produced over several decades and devoted to the relationship between our notions of democracy and media activity ) helps distinguish between reliable information and the endless fantasies generated by state and corporate power.

Media and communication courses encompass studies of propaganda, electoral allegiance, political party communication, the news industry, representations of gender and identity, advertising, public relations , new media, public discourse, popular music, protest movements, social media exchanges and a host of other topics.

Academic media research has produced a cohesive body of knowledge and practical skills that are useful to journalists, activists, academics, politicians – and people in general. Ultimately, all forms of public activity must be studied and evaluated, and it would be unrealistic to expect the media to be shielded from scrutiny.

Why the contempt?

The question must be: what does an experienced practitioner such as Humphrys find objectionable about this type of survey, and the fact that it has been made available to students across the UK? If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that he doesn’t really want to understand the subject, because that would undermine his belief in the absolute separation between genuine, hard-won experience (his own, presumably) and what he considers to be a privileged mode of existence devoted to the study of trivialities.

If so, judging by Humphrys’ recent form, some elements of the Today program would also fall into the category of frivolous and inconsequential, making them eminently suitable for critical analysis. In the meantime, Media and Communication students should pursue their studies knowing that they are making an essential contribution to public debate.

German and British scholars, as well as many American universities, will visit the campus from November 7 to 9 for the first media studies conference sponsored by CIVIC (Critical inquiry into values, imagination and culture), the provost Radical collaboration initiative focused on the humanities and the arts.

“Siren Echoes: Sound, Image and Media of Antiquityis organized by Verity Platt, Professor of Classics and Art History; Athena Kirk, assistant professor of classics; and Erik Born, Assistant Professor of German Studies.

The conference theme highlights one of Cornell’s strengths in media studies, Platt said.

“We pay attention to the long historical span of media, going all the way back to the ancient world,” Platt said. “Often, media studies departments tend to focus on emerging and new media, or tend not to look back beyond the 19th century.”

Many media theorists, she said, have been interested in the early history of writing and how ancient philosophy uses models of media transmission.

“There is already a rich media discourse in the ancient world,” she said, referring to disciplines including classical, Near Eastern and medieval studies.

The title of the conference captures the diversity of approaches within media studies, Born said. “Mermaids” can refer to mythological sea creatures, sirens, early acoustic devices, or modern electronic sirens, while the word “echo” also has many meanings, named after a mythological mountain creature described in the Metamorphoses” by Ovid to a form of early modern verse with modern electronic echoes.

The conference will begin Nov. 7 with a welcome keynote and performance from The World According to Sound co-creators Chris Hoff ’02 and Sam Harnett, who are on campus this semester as artists-in-residence with the Interdisciplinary Initiative in Media Studies from Cornell.

Friday’s panels include Antiquity in the Media; Sounds of the Anthropocene; and sacred resonances. Saturday panels focus on Image, Medium and Light; media pathologies; and Genealogies of the Image.

Although media scholars have diverse interests, Born said, one common interest is the rich material culture of antiquity. “Another shared interest is to engage in cutting-edge work on media theory currently emerging from Europe. It is partly for this reason that we have invited so many visiting scholars, especially from Germany,” he said.

A second conference is planned for the spring, Platt said, with a greater focus on contemporary media studies.

Kathy Hovis is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Michele Prettyman teaches Mercer students how to find their voice as storytellers and appreciate the stories that others have to tell.

This is the fourth year that dr. Prettyman, an assistant professor of media studies and Africana studies, has taught digital storytelling, but this is the first time the course has included a trip to the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

The course focuses on the art of storytelling and shows the tools that can be used to create meaningful stories about the world around us. Students learn to create compelling non-fiction stories with modern digital technologies, including audio, photography, video, and interactive graphics.

“It’s not just about the technology,” said Dr Prettyman. “It’s about yourself as part of a larger community. As storytellers, our job is to rewrite stories about people and communities that have been marginalized from storytelling, or whose stories have not been told in a more complete and thoughtful way.

Class members gain proficiency in smartphone technologies as well as computer/software resources, including Adobe Premiere editing software; analyze stories presented in different media forms, such as short films, feature films, documentaries and podcasts; discover the basic elements of cinema; and develop an understanding of media literacy and the ethical obligations of storytellers.

This general Education courses attract students from a variety of disciplines and with varying technological experience, Dr. Prettyman said. This is an interactive and collaborative course that includes lectures, group work, fieldwork as students practice their skills, and lots of discussion.

“To be able to tell stories, you have to understand how people digest stories and what methods are used to tell them in the best way,” said Yasmeen Hill, a junior dual specialization in journalism and Media studies. “I really feel like I’m learning all of these things by taking this course.”

During class on September 16, Dr. Prettyman and his students looked at still images they took around campus to depict certain themes. They interpreted and commented on the photos and asked questions about them. A student took a photo of the fountain at Tattnall Square Park at 3 a.m. Another showed a photo of a Mercer football fan hugging a player after a game.

“I think what I enjoy the most is seeing different people’s perspectives on a lot of different things.” says sophomore Devin Dickinson, a specialist in global development. “I loved seeing how different people tell stories and how to dissect them.”

Dr. Prettyman usually invites a few guests to speak with his digital storytelling class. Dr. Matt Harper, Assistant Professor of History and African Studies, spoke with students about local historical projects he is involved in, and Hannah Vann nabiassociate director of Mercer’s Quality Improvement Plan (QEP), spoke about the growth and challenges of the Macon and Mercer communities.

On September 26, about 70 people in two chartered buses traveled to the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Attendees included Dr. Prettyman’s digital storytelling students, Dr. Laura Simon’s students ssociology of rhave and andethnic class, other Mercer faculty and staff, and members of the community. The trip was supported by a Research That Reaches Out/QEP grant.

“The design is unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” said Dr Prettyman. “It just floods you with information and experiences that help us understand the fullness of how racial terrorism has operated in this country for many years. decades.”

The multi-sensory museum uses interactive media, sculptures, videos and exhibits to detail the history of racial injustice in America. The memorial features hanging headstones that symbolize the thousands of lynching victims in the United States.

“I was definitely going through a lot of emotions when I was there,” Hill said. “Having everything set up in chronological order, it really documented what it was like. I was just confronted with a physical representation of black suffering.

Dickinson said it was overwhelming and shocking to see the country’s black history portrayed in this way. The museum is a “story of how slavery still affects the world” and shows things that have gone unseen for far too long.

“With the travel component, you definitely want students to be exposed to a kind of living history that they might not have experienced otherwise,” Dr. Prettyman said. “I want them to be able to bond. I want them to have a more tangible sense of how these things are actively shaping our own social lives. The museum does a good job of making these things very tangible.

Students in sociology and digital storytelling courses apply their museum experiences to projects. In Dr. Prettyman’s class, students work on group projects related to an issue they were exposed to at the museum it is also connected to middle Georgia. They will incorporate interviews, stills, moving images, stock footage and other elements into creative stories lasting five to seven minutes. They are not journalistic pieces but non-fiction stories, similar to short documentary films.

Hill’s group was considering a project that focused on either medical discrimination or prison sentences for young black people. Dickinson’s group was investigating unequal medical care for women in prison.

One of the things the course has addressed is the danger of telling only one story and not giving people enough context. TailinHis son said he learned “how to tell a story as fully as possible, while still leaving room for people to want to investigate further.” They will be able to apply this knowledge and perspective to future lessons and assignments.