An Ugly but Needed Food Source

As part of an emerging news ecosystem, I see WikiLeaks as being equivalent to that which is being fed and fed off of or the middleman that Ingram details in “Is WikiLeaks the Beginning of a New Form of Media?”

Although much has been tossed around for the last year about whether Julian Assange is a journalist or if WikiLeaks is journalism, or the fact that if WikiLeaks is under such scrutiny then so should be The New York Times, it seems quite clear that it is most certainly a component to the news as we now know it.

As Kevin Zeese notes in a guest essay, “If there were ever a doubt about whether the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is “a real journalist,” recent events should erase all those doubts. Indeed, they should put him at the forefront of a movement to democratize journalism and empower people.”

Looking at it simply, WikiLeaks serves as the modern-day replacement for transactions that were taking place in the past within journalism. The articles by Ingram refer to the brown envelope of information that used to be delivered anonymously to newsgathering organizations.  Informants have always been part of the process, so now that the rest of news and the world network and function digitally and interactively, why is not surprising that this too has gone online? It is a way to distribute leaked information quickly and equally.

To be journalistic I don’t think inherently means the act of being a journalist or reporting the news. There are many facets to making and distributing the news and in the case of investigating, obtaining information, and exposing government or business corruption, I think there is most definitely a journalistic aspect to all of these things — They are all necessary to reporting the news. And therefore, WikiLeaks and its endeavors can be defined as journalistic.

Going back to the concept of an ecosystem, not just one animal or plant exists there or it would not be called a system. I agree with PhD student Aaron Bady, who said in the Ingram essays that asked why Assange couldn’t be both a hacker and a journalistic and that society need to protect all acts of journalism, regardless of who is practicing them.  An ecosystem needs many parts to make it work, and WikiLeaks is providing a necessary food source to the emerging news forum, albeit a kind of ugly food source at times, but a source all the same.

Pushing Beyond

The shifting citizen patterns described by Bennett, Lewis and Herms definitely have significance beyond the conventional notion of citizenship. All three look at how the changing face of the citizenry and the ever-changing digital world are redefining how citizens matter and how they are shaping the democracies they exist within.

In Hermes’ essay, he discusses how the internet is not necessarily shooting a hole through the old notion of citizenship, but rather adding to it and changing how citizens interact in their community. Hermes actually discusses how these new practices don’t necessary always fit with the old citizenship notion, but people are still being informed. The difference is now that citizens are engaging in discussion and looking for community by participating blogs and other mediated discussions online.

For Lewis, he reports that the notion of citizenship is still “robust,” in theory and that it is being maintained by the ideal that journalists remain objective and strive to inform the public in a transparent way. He feels that journalists must push themselves in this era to re-conceive news and deliver it in a very transparent way. By aiming to tell stories in this way, it allows the community to “be in the know,” and empowers them as vital members of their community.

Finally, Bennett focuses on young citizens and challenges all facets of a community – educators, the media, government, politicians, scholars and the actual young people to challenge themselves to continually learn and reinvent themselves so they are accessible and welcoming for young people to engage in the community. Challenging them to be authentic in their approach and appeal to the young people on their level and through the mediums and platforms in which they connect.

For the future of news, these shifting citizen patterns area issue a continually mounting challenge, and “up the ante,” so to speak, for news to fit within this ever-emerging notion of citizenship and all of them include figuring out hw to make news interactive and to involve citizens in the process of not only creating and commenting on the news, but be part of the editing and evaluating process.

Community

As the media rapidly transforms in the digital world, it is interesting to consider what role mainstream news will play in nurturing and enhancing community.

It would seem in many ways that the networked media environment has served to bring people together even more, not only through online mediums but in actual real time.

It would seem that although the bowling communities that Putnam suggests may have fallen to the wayside and been replaced by the virtual interconnectedness of the net, that things may still make a full circle. By this, I mean that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook while serving to form more interconnected then ever digitally, that effect also will continue to enhance social interaction in reality, be it bringing old friends together that may have lost touch or allowing for the ability to find community gatherings, a special interest group or even a date by way of the social networking platform.

In the mainstream news world, innovations such as Twitter now enhance community both virtually and in reality, as reporters can not only quickly offer up-to-the-minute news information tweets, but also communicate about that news information on a constant basis with the community they serve. By sharing through Twitter, Facebook or even linking YouTube links through the previous two platforms, news media members can offer their communities quick hits abut community happenings as they are happening not just before and after… enticing the community members to come out and participate rather than just plan for it or hear about it after it has happened. In this way, the news media offers a little bit of what both Dewey and Lippman acting a both an authority of the news but also as a teacher, interacting and helping to build the community.

In terms of local media innovations, I have found that personal blogs created by local reporters have provided a platform where citizens can feel comfortable to discuss and interact with reporters. Perhaps it the colloquial design of blogs that takes the average news reporter from “buttoned up,” serious news reporting to an everyday style of discussion and opining, but this does seem to lend to more interactive discussions between the reporter and the community. In the sports reporting world, many of my own colleagues have found their work related blogs to allow them to talk more intimately with the community about  the sports topics that they are passionate about and often better represent the broader community rather than the tight scope assigned by their editors in the actual hard copy of heir paper. In turn, blog readers can read about more community oriented topics and respond and interact accordingly.

Systematic and Anecdotal

Although I havent done much qualitative content analysis, I have done plenty of quantitative, and have been around the block a time a time or too with the systematic approach that content entails.

By approaching the work of content analysis using a ver systematic system — that is by very deliberately selecting a certain body of work, writing a code book to look for certain patterns, relationships and norms within the work, training coders and then setting forth to record trends or common occurrences within the body of evidence — a researcher can accurately start to dissect and reveal results.

The process, be it either quantitative or qualitative must be very methodical so that each of the coders can search of the same common themes within the content. Using Weber’s (1990) definition, content analysis “uses a set of procedures,” which implies that a system or systematic approach must be employed by the researcher. Other authors created similar definitions uses other descriptors that imply categorizing content uses a set system and objectivity of coders.

The data collected must be generalizable and empirical. That is to say that one can’t jut look at content and say the I think the content means “x,.” The content instead is subjected to a step-by-step protocol of problem identifying, hypothesizing about it and then testing it (McLeod & Tichenor, 2003).

But amidst the repetition that content analysis entails, the anecdotal work can be accurately tackled.

The recording of patterns allows the researcher to start tell the  story of what is contained in the content. It allows for the researcher to see how the creator of the content maybe have presented certain themes and frames and in turn how the content affected the audience that received it.

By breaking the material into patterns and an identifying of key ideas, the researcher is able to do the anecdotal work. they are able to use this systematic breakdown to start to see the bigger picture of what the content contains. It allows the evidence to answer the overall questions of what the information gathered has done to affect its audiences, the themes it has created, or how effective the material is at portraying or conveying key messages.

Pragvocate Worldview

Last year at about this time I might have hemmed and hawed about whether I would adopt a worldview and what that might be, but a years worth of docoral style classes fortified witha decent a mount a pressure and my worldview seems to be shaping up just fine.

Honestly thoiugh, I think my worldview tends be a a mix of at least two. In general i ascribe to the Pragmatist view witha dash of Advocacy/Participatory added in. I know…the need to add something… very pragmatic of me.

Over the last year, as I quickly found myself settling into a research area dealing with social media ad Olympic and Paralympic sport, I found I needed a worldview that comes from actions and situations and seeks to find solutions and explanations. I also needed a worldview that would allow me to freely use and flow between a mix of qualitative and qualitative research methods. When looking at something like the Olympic Games,with its historical contexts, it global impact, its multifaceted structure and its myriad of athletes, using a pragmatic methods that allows for flexibility in tackling all of it and attempting to harness or wrangle it its many meanings and effects seems to be the most logical.

When looking at Olympic/Paralympic Sport as it relates to social media, I have found that mixed methods or using qualitative for one study and quantitative for the next, has been the most effective way to try and capture what the related institutions and athletes are doing in the digital world. For instance, I am thinking to look at the narratives of the U.S. Paralympics on Facebook to look meanings and messages and will likely take a qualitative approach. Last year, I did a similar study looking at the Facebook posts of the U.S. Speedskating Team and found a quantitative content analysis best captured what I was looking for as far as the messages posted and who was posting them, but follow up studies will likely include a survey method to see if the audience or consumers of the media are actual finding the same meanings. Eventually, as my research becomes deeper and more complex, I know there will be some triangulation where a look at narrative content and case studies will be mixed with quantitative analyses.

The dash of advocacy comes in with the Paralympic research where my passion to disabled sports and the strategies for using media and marketing effectively are important and so my research often takes on a tone where I am seeking to share the Games’ mission and advance its impact and success in the world. As I have delved into social media and Parlaympic sport I have found that there is not as strong of a presence of disabled sport using social media or sometimes using it as effectively as it might be able to and certainly a huge lack of research in the area and so by using my worldview, I hope to highlight and perhaps suggest movement in those areas.

Definitions of Journalism

After reading the article and gathering from my own sense it seems that the definition of a journalist is no so much coherent as it is comprehensive.
Zelizer’s “Definitions of Journalism” or “Journalism As…” piece highlighted this sort of multifaceted way of bringing many of journalism’s roles together by defining separately — the intuitiveness and skill that comes with being a journalist, the capacity of journalism to assign parameters to life’s occurrences…its ability to reflect what the world is doing and so on.
Schudson, rather than trying to capture the essence of the field, took a look at media effects and tackled head on many of the “definitions” thrown at the media by the public that often categorize the field or medium as having unwieldy power and control. By highlighting the power of the media but also, dissecting the other outside forces that shape opinion, power and culture he seems to sorta get a definition of journalism going, but only. In the “Blur” piece we see that the emerging digital media is the newest form of technology used to shape and disperse the media but not so different of the previous technological advances in news dissemination in history
Three very different readings that all looked at different ways of defining the journalism – its definitions, its structure and historical context – and yet still, they all seem to dance around the topic never quite coming to a solid definitive statement of what it is. Which makes the task of deciding if everyone in a democracy is a journalist that much harder.
I like Schudson’s notion of the parajournalist that he assigned to U.S. presidents.
If you take Zelizer’s notion that you have to have sixth sense for being a journalist – that nose for news – then maybe that grand title could be reserved from those that report for a recognizable source on some contractual basis. Then those that help shape the news through their passing of opinion or participation in public discussion could earn more of the “para” title. But wait, that doesn’t work. It just brings up doubts. There are people with the talent for reporting that may not be using that talent, since it’s no secret that journalism is generally not so lucrative or glamorous. And so…here we are again…back at dancing around the notion of journalism.

The picture of journalism

Much like the online network it was discussing, I found the Nieman Report to build quite a network looking at journalism in the digital world. As I started in on some of the brain-related essays, I found myself thinking, “Where is this going? but quickly I saw how each essay built off the last one and moved seamlessly through a very broad discussion about how we digest news and gather information in the new age of technology. It gave a picture that shows how evident it is that our brains, our youth, our journalists and us who have been adults for a while are dealing with a new way of both finding our information, processing it and then using. We have become a society that loves the novelty of immediate information, playing out our social lives in cyberspace and figuring out how to work the network to make it work for or reach the greatest number of people . I amazed me by realizing through these reports on how everything seemed to be finding a digital outlet or channel through which to travel.

Beyond that, the Nieman Reports really got me thinking. Thinking about thinking, that is. Admittedly I’ve never been much of a science girl. That would be one of the glaring reasons I choose a creatively inclined career like journalism. But I as I was reading the collection I found myself very intrigued by the essays related to the research and discussion on the brain and they way we think and act and how that relates the digital world. I guess I never diced it out in such a “sciencey” way, but it makes sense that as the digital world progresses and slowly takes over and changes the information, it relates directly back to the way we are processing things. I was intrigued by Russell Poldrack’s discussion of brain function and novelty and how journalists must look for ways to capitalize on the human love of novelty, perhaps presenting important information over and over spaced out over time and keeping the learning or gaining of the information challenging and interesting because the brain seems to learn the most from these things that are hard. Along those lines was Jack Fuller’s discussion of emotional heat and how the more challenging the information is that is laid out, or rather how much it challenges your thinking, the greater the emotional response. Or how Maryanne Wolf wonders if such sophisticated digital technology may make our reading and thing less sophisticated because all of the information and flashiness has caused our brain to quickly skim over the overload of information. For journalists, the connection to science gives us a body of very factual and grounded research to figure out how we need to reinvent and repackage the news for the digital world to make sure the information is getting out there in the most effective ways and beyond that actually being consumed.

 

Introduction

My name is Adia Waldburger and I starting on the second year of a doctoral program in Sport Management. I am originally from Salt Lake City, Utah and lived there for 10 years before moving to Bloomington last fall. I did my undergraduate work at DePauw University in communication and then completed a Masters program in Sport and Recreation Management at Temple University in Philadelphia. After graduating from Temple I worked for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and later Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation. I then became a sports writer in the ski resort town of  Park City, Utah for many years cover local sports, outdoor recreation and Olympic and Paralympic winter sports. Last year I decided to pursue a PhD in Sport Management with an emphasis on sport communication. I do research in Paralympic and Olympic sports and new media and have used both qualitative and quantitative methods. After graduation, I hope to continue to research and teach either at a research center or as a full-time professor.