When he provided advice to student journalists earlier this month, Robert Niles suggested they take a course in science as a way to understand how research can be conducted.

He has elaborated on that point in a column at Online Journalism Review that identifies the need for standar procedures to gather, verify and describe.

"Today's journalism ethics are the ethics of a profession serving yesterday's information-starved communities," he writes. "Today, we need a journalistic method that serves communities seeking truth and relevance within the abundance of information surrounding them."

He suggests journalists develop their own version of scientific methods to improve their standards to move from a medium of information to a medium of the arbiter of information.

 
 
Leading U.S. communications scholars have published an assessment of the capabilities of citizen journalism as newspaper resources decline. Their conclusion: the paper's journalism can't be replaced.

Authors Stephen Lacy, Margaret Duffy, Daniel Riffe, Esther Thorson and Ken Fleming have examined 86 citizen blog sites, 53 citizen news sites and 63 daily newspaper sites. On the basis of what newspapers produce, the academics determined the bloggers and citizen sites could not be substituted.

Somewhat surprisingly, the study found the citizen sites weren't timely. The structure of content was different. The volunteer nature of the creation hampered timeliness.

But the authors found these sites can be effective complements to newspapers.

 
 
Cognitive research at the University of Missouri suggests readers understand, remember and respond more emotionally to material they search for on the Internet --- more so than material they discover by surfing.

The study examined how people responded to negative content when they searched and surfed. It assessed facial musculature, heart rate and skin conductance.

“Messages that meet readers’ existing informational needs elicit stronger emotional reactions,” says researcher Kevin Wise.

The implications might be interesting for advertising. It might be more effective to place ads near material more frequently searched than surfed, the research suggests.

The next phase will be to explore emotional and cognitive responses to more positive editorial content.
1 Comment
 
 

New research has been released from a recent select conference on the future of media, and it suggests online Canadians have a strong commitment to broadly defined field of news and information. On average they spend 2.3 hours consuming it from a variety of sources, with TV holding a small edge on the Internet and newspapers.
The Canadian Media Research Consortium report indicates online Canadians like the speed and visual qualities of the Internet, the reliability of television and the depth of newspapers. Having said that, the Internet is also used for deeper dives.
What is also clear from the report is an emerging visual culture. While older Canadians like their text, younger ones want stories told visually.
Disclosure: I am on the advisory board of the consortium.

 
 

What a question: What do teens want? From its research, OTX believes there is no particular fix on the teenager. He/she/they want all sorts of things and it cannot be pinned down.
What its survey finds is that teens are spending an average of 11.5 hours online weekly. That feels hard to believe. Harder to believe is that the survey finds teens are not trying to do everything online. They still have lives quite apart from their computing ones.
They prefer to shop in a store than shop online. They would rather watch TV than a program online.
Of importance for media: They prefer to get their information from the Internet than from traditional media.

 
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