•Session
3
•There are strong cultural differences in
the way we keep up with the news. A recent report by the Reuters Institute for the
Study of Journalism reveals insights about digital news consumption across
five countries: the UK, the US, Germany, France and Denmark. The
study shows significant differences in how and how often we consult the news in
different countries. Finally it emphasizes the growing impact of new
technologies such as smartphones and tablets and
their potential role in changing the news media system for better or for worse.
•A
recent study
by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found
significant differences across cultures in citizens’ interest in the media. The
polling was conducted online in April 2012 by You Gov. The five countries
polled were the UK, the US, Germany, France and Denmark. Older people were
underrepresented by the online polling. The analysis rejected those saying they
are not interested in news at all, which represents more than 10% of the
population, on average. The aim was to understand news consumption habits in
the UK compared to the other countries.
•Concerning
frequency, the results show that Germans are the most interested in the news.
More than 89% of them consult the news on a daily basis. The results in Denmark
are quite similar. In the USA approximately 82% of the respondents consult the
news daily, whereas only 78% of the French and 75% of the English do. In
general males consult the news more frequently than women, but the difference
is relatively small. Differences between countries also exist in the type of
news that people like to consult. For example, the English are more interested
in celebrity news, while Americans say they are especially interested in
political and economic news.
•Online vs. Offline
•Although
Germans consume more news today, they have not adopted internet-based news as
much as the other countries. With only 61% of the respondents consulting online
news on a weekly basis, they show the strongest adherence to traditional media;
87% report watching TV. The USA (86%), closely followed by the UK (82%), have
most widely adopted online media. In France, 77% of people consult online news
weekly; 80% watch TV and only 57% and 42% read newspapers and listen to the
radio. The rate of offline media consumption in the USA is surprisingly low.
•Consulting
online news is still today generally done on computers. Unsurprisingly, the
proportion of mobile phone use is rising, followed by tablets. More than a
quarter of people polled access news via their smartphone each week in the US and the UK, and even more in
Denmark (32%), a significant proportion of them saying the mobile was their
main way of accessing news. People using tablets are found to be more likely to
pay for news content, even though the resistance to paying for digital content
is generally high.
•The Digital Natives
•Young
people are generally less interested in watching TV and listening to radio than
their elders. Instead, between 20 and 27% of people under 44 use mobile phones
to access the news; tablets are generally used between age 25 and 54. Social
media is often used as a gateway to search for news, particularly by younger respondants. News websites and
search engines (Google or Bing) are still the main gateways to the news, ahead
of aggregator websites (MSN and Yahoo) and social networks (Facebook then Twitter). There
is also a difference between young and old in the way they participate and
interact with online news and content, the younger, again, being more active on
social networks and less so on traditional websites.
•
•Education
and access to news and information is crucial for better development of
citizens’ understanding of the world and critical thinking. Today most of the
media are owned by a small number of big companies, often involved in political
and economic life and policies. The plurality of the media should be preserved
to favor the quality of the information being diffused. Today, 75% of people on
earth have access to a mobile phone. Smartphones and tablets are modifying our habits of news
consumption, especially for younger people. The role of those new technologies
as intermediaries between the reader and the news providers could become
significant. It could favor the diversity of information sources and actors
but, given the control it has over the information’s path to the reader, it
could also do quite the opposite. It is still the perfect time for new players
in information diffusion to take action towards changing the traditional news system
for greater transparency and higher quality.
•HOW MOBILE PHONES ARE CHANGING
JOURNALISM PRACTICE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
•
•Mobile
phones are a crucial piece of equipment changing not only the way readers and
viewers consume the news today but also sometimes the way the content is being
produced. Mobile phone with a camera capacity is a product of the mid-1990s;
video capacity came a few years later, according to Hadland. Today, there are
around six billion phones around the world, many of them smart phones.
•
•There
was a moment in the recent history of journalism when Mobile Journalism (also
called Mojo) seemed to be the
next big thing. The use of content recorded with a mobile phone kicked off with
the Iraqi invasion in 2003. Footage shot on a mobile phone were also important
during the Madrid bombings and in Tsunami coverage. The peak of this type of
media production content came during the 2005 London bombing. As it took place
underground, with difficult access for TV crews, a lot of footage that became
available came from ordinary people's phones.
•
•"Within
hours, the BBC had received a thousand photographs, 4,000 text messages and
20,000 emails from the public. There was a real expectation there that this
piece of equipment would have a dramatic impact on journalism, broadcast and
others," says Hadland quoting Richard Sambrook of the BBC as saying
that "People were participating in our coverage in a way that we had never
seen before. By the next day, our main evening TV newscast began with a package
edited entirely from video sent in by viewers. From now on news coverage is a
partnership."
•
•With
news like Park Chan-wook, one of South
Korea's top movie directors, shooting in 2011 a short filmParanmanjag (Eng.: Night
Fishing) entirely on an iPhone and embracing the
mobile technology, things seemed to be moving well. But at least in journalism
it seems that everything did not go as expected. In Hadland's research on the use
of mobile phones in the production in UK broadcasting (analyzing the content of
news bulletins over six months of three UK-based broadcasters: Channel 4, BBC
and ITV News) mobile-produced content was only a small part of the broadcast
content of news bulletins (1% - 2%).
•According
to Hadland, there are three
types of Mobile Journalism:
•User
Generated Content -
raw unedited material sent by amateur eyewitnesses who happened to be there
•Citizen
Journalists content – who manage to get their material to major broadcasters
•Professional
Journalists who tell stories with video/audio using a mobile phone, who are
able to shoot, edit and upload from the spot in real time (produce on the spot
piece of work that is up loadable).
•
•
•There
are many apps out there for both Android and iPhone: Tout, Mobile video
publishing platform, FilmicPro (to shoot video on
your iPhone allowing you to
control exposure and white balance, etc.), Videon(allows you not only
to record but also to edit), VideoPro
Camera, iMovie, and for editing
also Voddio
•Many
media outlets like the BBC or CNN are encouraging especially UGC submission.
Post-2005, BBC has established a whole UGC hub. The Wall Street Journals
introduced in 2012 "Worldstream" with 400
reporters trained in smartphone video production.
Newspapers around the world are embracing the growth of online video to engage
their audience and expand their web presence. The focus is especially on videos
as there is public enthusiasm for this medium. Millions of videos are viewed
per day on YouTube, according to Hadland.
•
•CHALLENGES
•There
are many challenges with using mobile phones in reporting and production. The
first challenge is getting the sound right. Any background noise is recorded so
the reporter needs to stand really close to the person s/he is interviewing.
With UGC is it often difficult and expensive to verify the content. According
to Hadland, there are also
difficulties in integrating different newsrooms to a unified system of
production with so many different types of smartphones available. But it is a tool that is cost-effective.
With a small, handy, and inexpensive kit you can quickly produce content.
Especially when today, on average editorial staff are expected to produce three
times as much content as their counterparts did 20 years ago.
•
•Holland
says that he and his team of researchers were actually surprised how rare
broadcasters are using this type of content. "It is being used in
mainstream broadcasting quite sparsely. There are other areas like web
broadcasting where it will be probably used much more and the potential is much
greater. But it seems to me that it is really that it is Print/online
journalism where it is growing fastest and most progress is being made. I think
it is important and it will continue to be important,” he says. He added that Sambrook was perhaps
premature in his enthusiasm for stating that things will never be the same.
“Maybe there will be stories, for example the tsunami, that will be driven
largely by this kind of content but I think it will be periodic."
•It
seems though that journalists have not fully embraced producing mobile phone
content. Many use mobile phones as a back up or to take audio notes. Some radio
journalist use it also when they are in a field in difficult circumstances
where you don’t want to trigger a lot of attention with a big shotgun mike or
when you need to file a quick news a spot from a location of breaking news. It
seems to me that news consumer do not mind if the quality of the video is poor
on YouTube or social media. But when they turn to mainstream media outlets they
expect high-quality products and aesthetics with good sound and image. Maybe
this is also one of the reasons why Mobile Journalism has not become the next
big thing as expected. Undoubtedly, it is a good back-up when your equipment
fails.
•
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