Report on User-Generated Content (UGC) in TV and Online News

Another interesting report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism: AMATEUR FOOTAGE: A GLOBAL STUDY OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT IN TV AND ONLINE-NEWS OUTPUT is by Claire Wardle, Sam Dubberley, and Pete Brown. 

This Phase 1 Report (April 2014) represents research that has been split into quantitative and qualitative phases with this report focusing largely on the former.  I couldn't find a timetable for when we might expect Phase II, which will focus on interviews with over 60 journalists and editors, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Conclusions from the Executive Summary:

1) UGC is used by news organizations daily, but only when other content is not available to tell the story.

2) News organizations are poor and inconsistent in labeling content as UGC and crediting the individual who captured the content.

Our data showed more similarities than differences across television and Web output, with troubling practices across both platforms. The best use of UGC was online, mostly because the Web provides opportunities for integrating UGC into news output like live blogs and topic pages.

Article Feature: Mapping a Media Controversy (Trayvon Martin)

In case you missed First Monday's extensive analysis of the way the Trayvon Martin story moved through the media...The Battle for 'Trayvon Martin': Mapping a Media Controversy Online and Off-line, by Erhardt Graeff, Matt Stempeck, and Etan Zuckerman.

ABSTRACT
One of the biggest news stories of 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin, nearly disappeared from public view, initially receiving only cursory local news coverage. But the story gained attention and controversy over Martin’s death dominated headlines, airwaves, and Twitter for months, thanks to a savvy publicist working on behalf of the victim’s parents and a series of campaigns off–line and online. Using the theories of networked gatekeeping and networked framing, we map out the vast media ecosystem using quantitative data about the content generated around the Trayvon Martin story in both off–line and online media, as well as measures of engagement with the story, to trace the interrelations among mainstream media, nonprofessional and social media, and their audiences. We consider the attention and link economies among the collected media sources in order to understand who was influential when, finding that broadcast media is still important as an amplifier and gatekeeper, but that it is susceptible to media activists working through participatory or nonprofessional media to co–create the news and influence the framing of major controversies. Our findings have implications for social change organizations that seek to harness advocacy campaigns to news stories, and for scholars studying media ecology and the networked public sphere.

First Monday is one of one of the first open access (since 1996), peer-reviewed journals devoted to the Internet. The Trayvon Martin piece appeared in the February issue and new March articles are upon us, such as Taking tweets to the streets: A spatial analysis of the Vinegar Protests in Brazil and Homelessness, wirelessness, and (in)visibility: Critical reflections on the Homeless Hotspots Project and the ensuing online discourse. If you're not keeping up with First Monday, you're not keeping up with the Internet. 

INFLA Report on Internet Censorship Around the World

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutes (INFLA) has just released a 103-page report that looks at internet censorship in selected countries from around the world. You can access the freely available pdf here.

Trends in transition from classical censorship to Internet censorship: selected country overviews

ABSTRACT
Censorship is no longer limited to printed media and videos. Its impact is felt much more strongly with regard to Internet related resources of information and communication such as access to websites, email and social networking tools which is further enhanced by ubiquitous access through mobile phones and tablets. Some countries are marked by severe restrictions and enforcement, a variety of initiatives in enforcing censorship (pervasive as well as implied), as well as initiatives to counter censorship. The article reflects on trends in Internet censorship in selected countries, namely Australia, Chile, China, Finland, Lybia, Myanmar, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Kingdom (UK). These trends are discussed under two broad categories of negative and positive trends. Negative trends include: trends in issues of Internet related privacy; ubiquitous society and control; trends in Internet related media being censored; trends in filtering and blocking Internet content and blocking software; trends in technologies to monitor and identify citizens using the Internet to express their opinion and applying “freedom of speech”; criminalization of legitimate expression on the Internet; trends in acts, regulations and legislation regarding the use of the Internet and trends in government models regarding Internet censorship; trends in new forms of Internet censorship; trends in support of Internet censorship; trends in enforcing regulations and Internet censorship; trends in Internet related communication surveillance. Positive trends include: trends in reactions to Internet censorship; attempts and means to side-step Internet censorship; trends in cyber actions against Internet censorship; trends in innovative ways of showing opposition to Internet censorship. Detailed reports for each country are included as appendixes. A summary of how the trends manifest in the countries in which data were mined, as well as the trends per se is included in the article.

EU's Media Regulatory Mechanisms for Minors, a Briefing

Last month the Library of the European Parliament ("Working for a well-informed European Parliament") published a briefing Protection of minors in the media environment: EU regulatory mechanisms.

The briefing reviews the landscape of European Union nations' media (television, internet, and video games) regulatory policies in relation to the rights and interests of minors.

Summary:
Children are increasingly exposed to online content, through a growing range of mobile devices, and at ever younger ages. At the same time, they have specific needs and vulnerabilities which need to be addressed.

Ways to limit and prohibit the spread of illicit and harmful media content in relation to young people have been debated for many years. Striking a balance between the rights and interests of young viewers on the one hand and the freedom of expression of content providers (and adults in general) on the other, requires a carefully designed regulatory scheme.
In recent years, traditional (State) regulation has come under increased scrutiny. Gradually, less intrusive mechanisms, such as self- and co-regulation, have started replacing State regulation in a move towards user-empowerment.
This type of logic has governed the implementation of binding rules at EU level via the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. For online content and video games, the Commission supports a number of self-regulatory initiatives such as the Coalition to Make the Internet a Better Place for Kids and the Pan European Game Information System.
The European Parliament, however, considers that this type of initiative cannot replace legally binding instruments, and that only a combination of legal, technical and educational measures, including prevention, can adequately address the dangers faced by children online.

Mapping Digital Media: India

Mapping Digital Media: India is the latest Open Society Foundation report examining "global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media." This 154-page report is part of a series covering 60 countries; each is evaluated in terms of how digital media  affect "core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs." Since September of 2012, reports on Croatia, Slovenia, China, Spain, Central Africa have been published and March 2013 has produced reports on Kenya, and Bulgaria, and now India. 

For a perspective on "digital switchover" country by country from broadcast analog systems, especially as it effects democracy and freedom of expression, you'll want to check in with these reports. 

Recent Scholarship on Fair Use

In the latest issue of Cinema Journal (Volume 52, Number 2, Winter 2013), Peter Decherney leads a conversation with three other scholars on academic writing on fair use since 1990.  Joining him are Bill Herman, Jessica Silbey, and Rebecca Tushnet who respond to this introductory provocation:

A new wave of books takes account of the post-1990 landscape of fair use and its impact on culture, business, and creativity. Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola's Creative License examines the mounting restrictions courts have placed on music sampling and the resulting transformation of hip-hop music.³ Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's Reclaiming Fair Use chronicles and situates the movement they started to create fair-use best-practices documents.⁴ William Patry's How to Fix Copyright argues that fair use is an important engine for innovation and job creation that should be adopted beyond the United States.⁵Jason Mazzone's Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law details copyright holders' adeptness at claiming rights far in excess of those given to them by the law.⁶ And my own Hollywood's Copyright Wars argues that the Internet has homogenized fair-use communities that were once treated as distinct groups.⁷ Significantly, these are works by both media scholars and legal scholars, who are often collaborating on the same texts. Other projects, like the Organization for Transformative Works and its journal, also bring together lawyers and media scholars to think about fair use and its impact on culture. What do you think these books (and others) tell us about the changing character of fair use? And what are the implications for scholars, archivists, and media makers? --Peter Decherney

This article and the texts it mentions/addresses is good way to get up to speed on the current scholarly landscape of fair use. Cinema Journal is available from the Penn Libraries e-resources.

Big Data--To Be Wowed or Wary: Two Views

I was lucky to be able to drop in on the Big Data Workshop here at the Annenberg School, Big Data and the Transformation of the Public Information Environment: Implications for Public Health (March 19, 2013), where panelists from academic and commercial sectors met to discuss the new information ecosystem (think tidal wave) produced from social media--Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr and the like.  While most everyone in the room was either already working with this data--collecting it, asking questions of it, re-purposing it--or has designs on such, there is also a general buzz in the culture about the power and uses of big data. I'd like to recommend two books that tug in opposing directions on the topic. Neither of these are academic books per se but academics and non-academics are reading them. The first is upbeat and visionary:  Big Data: A Revolultion That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier. Writes Lawrence Lessig, "Every decade, there are a handful of books that change the way you look at everything. This is one of those books. Society has begun to recon the change that big data will bring. This book is an incredibly important start. " And speaking of tidal waves, Clay Shirky's metaphor about water may a good way to think about big data. "Just as water is wet in a way that individual water molecules aren't, big data can reveal information in a way that individual bits of data can't. The authors show us the surprising ways that enormous, complex, and messy collections of data can be used to predict everything from shopping patterns to flu outbreaks."

But Evgeny Morozov isn't buying any of this in To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. Observes the New Scientist: “Evgeny Morozov does a good job of dispelling 'big data' hype...If Silicon Valley is a party, Evgeny Morozov is the guy who turns up late and spoils the fun. The valley loves ambitious entrepreneurs with world-changing ideas. Morozov is, in his own words, an 'Eastern European curmudgeon.' He's wary of quick fixes and irritated by hype. He's the guy who saunters over to the technophiles gathered around the punch bowl and tells them…how misguided they are. Morozov should be invited all the same, because he brings a caustic yet thoughtful skepticism that is usually missing from debates about technology." 

Throughout the book two dominant ideologies, solutionism and "Internet-centrism," are questioned. Morozov contends that "Silicon Valley's promise of eternal amelioration has blunted our ability to do this questioning. Who today is mad enough to challenge the virtues of eliminating hypocrisy from politics? Or of providing more information--the direct result of self-tracking--to facilitate decision making? Or of finding new incentives to get people interested in saving humanity, fighting climate change, or participating in politics? Or of decreasing crime? To question the appropriateness of such interventions, it seems, is to question the Enlightenment itself. And yet I feel that such questioning is necessary. Hence the premise of this book: Silicon Valley's quest to fit us all into a digital straightjacket by promoting efficiency, transparency, certitude and perfection--and, by extension, eliminating their evil twins of friction, opacity, ambiguity, and imperfection--will prove to be prohibitively expensive in the long run...this high cost remains hidden from public view and will remain so as long as we, in our mindless pursuit of this silicon Eden, fail to radically question our infatuation with a set of technologies that are often lumped together under the deceptive label of "the Internet"...Imperfection, ambiguity, opacity, disorder and the opportunity to err, to sin, to do the wrong thing, all of these are constitutive of human freedom, and any concentrated attempt to root them out will root out that freedom as well." --Introduction (p. xiii--xiv)

As I write this these titles are not at Van Pelt yet; they will be soon. But I bought Annenberg copies so if anyone wants to intercept them before I send them off for cataloging, let me know.

Teens and Technology 2013

Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project and the Berkman Center for Internet and; Technology have jut released their 2013 report on Teens and Technology. Read the whole 19-page report or remain blogbound with the summary here: 

Overview

Smartphone adoption among American teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer.
These are among the new findings from a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey that explored technology use among 802 youth ages 12-17 and their parents. Key findings include:

• 78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of them own smartphones. That translates into 37% of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.
• 23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.
• 95% of teens use the internet.
• 93% of teens have a computer or have access to one at home. Seven in ten (71%) teens with home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they share with other family members.

“The nature of teens’ internet use has transformed dramatically — from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,” said Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and co-author of the report. “In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population.”

Measuring the Information Society 2012

In last Thursday's fascinating CGCS lecture, Digital Innovation for International Development, Martin Hilbert referred to the International Telecommunication Union Report, Measuring the Information Society 2012 which presents two authoritative benchmarking tools to monitor information society developments worldwide. From the report launch:

The first of these is the ICT Development Index, the IDI, which combines 11 different indicators into one single measure to track progress made in ICT access, use and skills.

The IDI measures the level of ICT developments in 155 economies worldwide, presents country rankings, and compares progress made between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011.

The second is the ICT Price Basket, the IPB, which combines fixed-telephone, mobile-cellular and fixed-broadband Internet tariffs for 165 economies into one measure, and ranks countries based on the 2011 tariffs, and in relation to income levels. It also compares tariffs over the four-year period from 2008 to 2011.

The report also features new data and analysis on revenue and investment in the ICT sector.

This 213-page report is required reading for anyone interested in the global information society--especially in terms of equality/disparity issues.  

After Broadband: Imagining Hyperconnected Furtures

I'm reposting this Wharton School Press Release from the end of last month.  The 25-page report is at the link below.

“After Broadband” Report Released

Wharton Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics Kevin Werbach, a co-organizer of the After Broadband workshop

Now that broadband Internet access is widely available in the United States, what comes next? What business models and policy initiatives will help move beyond broadband to a hyperconnected world? To tackle these questions, the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) are pleased to announce the release of After Broadband: Imagining Hyperconnected Futures, a report based on a high-level experts workshop earlier this year, at http://afterbroadband.com.

“Broadband today suffers from a failure of the imagination. We won’t get the networks needed to support tomorrow’s applications until we envision what those applications will be,” said Wharton professor Kevin Werbach, a co-organizer.

The day-long workshop brought together business leaders, researchers, technical experts, entrepreneurs, and futurists at Wharton’s San Francisco campus for a deep dive into eight specific domains: Management, Operations and Analytics; Communications and Collaboration; Education and Learning; Commerce, Identity and Security; Health, Well-Being and Life Management; Creation and Production; Social, Home and Community Life; and Entertainment. Guided by expert IFTF facilitators, the participants developed scenarios and identified six critical challenges that must be addressed.

“IFTF was delighted to collaborate with the Wharton School on this event where experts vigorously debated both the technical and social implications of a broad range of futures such as adaptive software defined networks, fragmented special function Internet Protocol networks, isolated large geographic internets, embedded and mobile swarm networks, linked supercomputing clouds, and the spiraling cyber security arms race,” said Mike Liebhold, co-organizer and IFTF Distinguished Fellow. “We hope this report serves to elevate and support the public discourse on the future of our communications systems.”

The workshop report, written by IFTF Distinguished Fellow Richard Adler and based on the contributions of over 40 leading experts, offers insights on topics including:

• The deployment of gigabit connections

• Mobile broadband and wireless sensor networks

• Big data and the cloud

• The tidal waves of streaming video and social networking

• Changes in user behavior and interfaces

The After Broadband website at http://afterbroadband.com includes a downloadable version of the report, materials from the workshop, and video interviews with selected participants. “Broadband is a critical foundation for both business and daily life as we move deeper into the 21st century,” said Werbach. “This report is one of the first to offer an independent, forward-looking perspective on where we’re going and how to get there.”

Pausing for Fiction

I've started a little tradition with new students the last few years.  I offer a door prize for the library orientation session I do after Convocation with the new crop of grad students. I pick a work of fiction that speaks to communication or media studies. The students won't be reading much fiction in the program, little if any, all the more reason for me to remind them tht literature, past and current, is pretty fertile ground for thinking about communication! I try to pick something fairly recent.  Last year's prize was Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, a May-December romance set in a dystopian New York in the near (as in next Tuesday) future that is dominated by media and brand-ridden consumption. 

This year's offering is a collection  (just out, with very good press) of short stories by Joshua Cohen, Four New Messages.

Reviewer Jesse Singal in The Boston Globe writes:

We still haven’t figured out what the Internet means for us, what it says about us. What does it mean that millions of us have begun obsessively documenting the minutiae of our lives, turning ourselves into abject exhibitionists? What does it mean that one ill-advised post, created by someone at a carefree and feckless age, can live on for decades, if not longer? If a whiff of triteness hangs around these questions, it is perhaps because they are asked so frequently and urgently by so many. So it’s a ripe time for talented literary voices to breathe some fresh life into them, and that’s what Joshua Cohen does in “Four New Messages,” his new book of short stories.

Tea Party and Occupy Movements on the Web

Irene McDermott in the latest issue of Searcher Magazine (Vol. 20,  No. 5, June 2012 ) has written an annotated bibliography on websites representing the Tea Party and the Occupy Movements.  If you can't get your hands on the article a handy little "cheat sheet" to the piece is freely available, a links list to the sites discussed.

Policy & Internet

The Policy Studies Organization has a rich website given the list of open access journals they publish, including Policy & Internet, Poverty & Public Policy, Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, World Medical and Health Policy, and, coming soon, Online Education.

The latest issue of Policy & Internet is on the subject of eHealth, as described below by editors Rik Crutzen, (Maastricht University) and Guodong (Gordon) Gao, (University of Maryland):

The explosive growth of the Internet and its omnipresence in people's daily lives has facilitated a shift in information seeking on health, with the Internet now a key information source for the general public, patients, and health professionals. The Internet has also driven an increase in eHealth initiatives, ranging from Internet-delivered interventions and therapy focusing on specific behaviors or diseases, to maintenance of electronic health records. A lack of policy measures is a common barrier to success of eHealth initiatives; we hope that the empirical research and perspectives gathered here in this Policy & Internet special issue on eHealth will make a significant impact among eHealth policymakers, academics, and professionals, and make a valuable contribution to future policy and research efforts in this area.

For political communication types check out PSO's upcoming conference  in September 2012. Internet, Politics, Policy 2012: Big Data, Big Challenges?

Pew's News Media 2012 Annual Report

Don't forget to check out The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Media 2012 for lots of interesting findings and data.

From the press release:

A mounting body of evidence finds that the spread of mobile technology is adding to news consumption, strengthening the appeal of traditional news brands and even boosting reading of long-form journalism. But the evidence also shows that technology companies are strengthening their grip on who profits, according to the 2012 State of the News Media report by Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
More than a quarter of Americans (27%) now get news on mobile devices, and for the vast majority, this is increasing news consumption, the report finds. More than 80% of smartphone and tablet news consumers still get news on laptop or desktop computers. On mobile devices, news consumers also are more likely to go directly to a news site or use an app, rather than to rely on search — strengthening the bond with traditional news brands.

The full report is freely available here.

Compete Pro

Interested in website traffic and engagement metrics? Then you will want to truck over to the Lippincott Library for access to Compete Pro. This Kantar Media product provides specific insight into how the top 1 million websites are performing. Simply type in a domain to see two years of site  metrics such as number of unique visitors, paid views, time on site, and visitor demographics. Compete Pro's key word traffic tool can provide semantic insight into how one stumbles upon a site (and we know a lot of stumbling goes on).  There is also a referral traffic tool to easily track which websites are sending visitors where. While Compete Pro was build for marketers internet and new media researchers have a gold mine of data here for the taking.

Remember, this database is available on-site only at Lippincott.  No appointment necessary.  

Computer and Internet Use at Home

The latest report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Exploring the Digital Nation: Computer and Internet Use at Home, has just been released (here).

Previous reports going back to 1995 can also be accessed from the site, including the historical data files from which the reports are built.

Abstract:
The Department of Commerce's Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a report, “Exploring the Digital Nation,” that analyzes broadband Internet adoption in the United States. Overall, approximately seven out of ten households in the United States subscribe to broadband service. The report finds a strong correlation between broadband adoption and socio-economic factors, such as income and education, but says these differences do not explain the entire broadband adoption gap that exists along racial, ethnic, and geographic lines. Even after accounting for socio-economic differences, certain minority and rural households still lag in broadband adoption.

The report analyzes data collected through an Internet Use supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) of about 54,300 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in October 2010. Earlier this year, NTIA released initial findings from the survey, showing that while virtually all demographic groups have increased adoption of broadband Internet at home since the prior year, historic disparities among demographic groups remain. This report presents broadband adoption statistics after adjusting for various socio-economic differences.

Internet as Public Commons

The current issue of Daedalus (Volume 140, Issue 4, Fall 2011) is titled: Protecting the Internet as a Public Commons. Explains editor David D. Clark, "This issue is concerned with the experience of using the Internet: how its character shapes the user experience and how our collective online participation raises larger societal and political questions."

Articles:

What are the Consequences of Being Disconnected in a Broadband-Connected World?

A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online

Online Trust, Trustworthiness, or Assurance?

Safety in Cyberspace

Doctrine for Cybersecurity

Reconceptualizing the Role of Security User

Resisting Political Fragmentation on the Internet

Who Speaks? Citizen Political Voice on the Internet Commons

Prosocial Behavior on the Net

WikiLeaks and the Protect-ip Act: A New Public-Private Threat to the Internet Commons

The issue is available from Penn Library e-resources

Digital Methods Initiative

Folks interested in research methods for studying the Internet can check out The Digital Methods Initiative, an Amsterdam-based group of new media scholars who have been developing tools and techniques for this increasingly massive undertaking since 1999.

The Digital Methods Initiative is directed by Richard Rogers (who paid the Annenberg School an extended visit last year).

The website is a hub of many of "the tools and scripts that we use to study the web in particular," as explained in the site's About section. Such tools and methods

"have been made to extend the research into the blogosphere, online newssphere, discussion lists and forums, folksonomies as well as search engine behavior. These tools include scripts to scrape web, blog, news, image and social bookmarking search engines, as well as simple analytical machines that output data sets as well as graphical visualizations....For example, how to study Internet censorship (by using proxies)? How to study information inclusion and exclusion (by interrogating robot.txt exclusion policies)? How to study surfer pathways (using measures of 'related sites')? How to study site reputation (by hyperlink analysis)? How to study a site's search engine placement over time (by storing and querying within engine results)?Additionally the Digital Methods Initiative provides views on the value of visualization. How to output the results of the analyses (in ranked lists, in cluster graphs, in line graphs, in clouds, on maps)? Which visualizations communicate findings? Which visualizations embed critical ways of seeing?"

You can also add their blog to your reading stream for updates on research, lecture slides, and course announcements.