Pop-up Newsroom Networking a 48-hour student journalism project - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Pop-up Newsroom

Networking a 48-hour student journalism project across 4 continents and 17 tim ime zones

Devadas Rajaram Melissa Wall David Baines Sandra Whitehead Marco Van Kerkhoven Priya Rajasekar

USA UK Lebanon Holland UK Bulgaria India

The story ry – it it grew out of WJEC4 in in Belg lgium

• Melissa Wall presented on CSUN Pop-Up news projects in Los Angeles:
• LA Marathon
• US Presidential Election
• Long-Distance Bus Passengers

The Pop-Up Newsroom: a temporary virtual newsroom that has no permanent space or location – born 2012, California.

• David Baines on NU hyper-local site and pop-up magazine:
• Turner modern art prize

‘… Let’s join up and do one internationally’

2

Networks - growth

Asian College of Journalism, India National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

How it it works

• Students research topic
• Practice reporting on social and mobile platforms
• Build contacts for live reporting on the day
• Some might prepare reports to release on the day
• It starts in California and rolls round the world as

students pass the baton to each other

• Content aggregated
• on dedicated websites
• through Twitter hashtags
• on Facebook

1st

st glo

lobal topic – poverty and deprivation

• Improving students’ news literacy regarding the subject matter –

poverty

• Explored the ways in which:
• students could use new media tools to produce live news in new

ways

• they could engage with complex issues through mobile technology

and social media platforms

• they could produce journalism without a real-world newsroom
• Allowed students to explore new paradigms of networked and

participatory journalism

Outcome

• The project brought many more people into the conversation than the

students themselves.

• TweetReach analytics - hashtag #livepoverty reached 54,590 Twitter

accounts over 48 hours

• #IWDpopup – when we covered International Women’s Day 2014,

reached 187,295 accounts

http://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/publikatione r-hela-pdf/global_citizenship_in_a_digital_world.pdf

Outcome

• International aspect helped students develop understanding of

poverty and how it is constructed by media

• How local conditions and values shape those constructions
• It encouraged students to seek out unheard voices
• To share control of the narrative
• To host a conversation and help to encourage participation and curate

new contributions

Outcome

• It helped students exercise greater levels of independence
• to rely more on engagement with communities they were reporting
• n.
• Embracing the power of networked communication helped them see

their roles in civic life as interconnected with their sources

• Revealed the possibilities of global teamwork.

http://civicmediaproject.org/works/civic- media-project/pop-up-newsroom

Track record

• Nov 2013: Poverty and Austerity
• March 2014: International Women’s Day
• Nov 2014: Food
• March 2015: International Women’s Day
• Nov 2015: Migration and Human Rights
• March 2016: International Women’s Day
• November 2016 -

It has included US, India, Holland, UK, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Brazil, Armenia, Taiwan

Pop-Up maps onto in internatio ional journalism collaborations Maps onto in internationalisatio ion of university programmes

What works

• Topic must work for everyone (migration crisis was less an issue for

India)

• Use local connections to partners in other countries
• Importance of personal connections
• It is flexible – we do not all have to do everything the same way

Challenges

• Time zones – for live reporting and getting students to communicate
• Language – what happened with Chinese, etc. Common language helps
• Just because technology enables easy communication doesn’t mean

students will automatically work with those not co-present

• Popularity of particular social media platforms varies across regions and

nations

….depth of engagement

‘When my students reported on the Syrian refugees in Lebanon one of the most important impacts I noticed was that they developed understanding and empathy for the refugees when explaining their situations to an international audience. ‘For the Lebanese audience … they felt like "everyone knew" the situation of the refugees. ‘So having an international audience created the need for more in depth reporting.’

Sandra Whitehead, Rafik Hariri University, Lebanon

Depth of engagement

‘Our students in India struggling for free wifi spaces - some reported checking into bars (not always the safest bet) and charging their phones in petrol stations. ‘They were very resourceful and even the shy ones returned with great content having managed to find ways to solve problems. ‘Back in Coventry, I found that wifi was rarely an issue and students were happy to use their 3G or 4G connections. That said, there was a lesser likelihood that they would step outside their comfort zones

Priya Rajasekar, Coventry University - ex Asian College of Journalism

Lik ike to come on board?

• Melissa Wall: melissa.a.wall@csun.edu
• Marco van Kerkhoven: marco.vankerkhoven@hu.nl
• Whitehead; Sandra whiteheads@rhu.edu.lb
• Devadas Rajaram drajaram@aubg.edu
• Priya Rajasekar ac1503@coventry.ac.uk
• David Baines: david.baines@ncl.ac.uk