Prospectus

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Innovations in Journalism

Course
2022-2023

Admission requirements

Admitted to the MA Journalism and New Media.

Description

Introducing new technologies inside the newsrooms creates new professional cultures, organisational structures, and business models. Although there has been a recent uptick in the literature that addresses innovation in journalism, the speed with which new technologies develop has left journalists and media scholars playing catch-up. In this course, we will pay attention to different areas of news production, from how journalists gather and analyse data to how they distribute new information using evolving digital platforms and news assistants.

During our lectures, we will draw from theories of innovation in journalism to identify and understand the current challenges journalists face today: Do platforms like Facebook and Google negatively impact newsroom autonomy? How can journalists discern between fake news and essential information in big data? How are algorithmic news recommenders and audience metrics changing how reporters imagine their audiences? Is artificial intelligence a threat to the democratic role of journalism?

Our seminar sessions are tailored to cover new developments in the industry. To achieve this, the sessions draw from a diverse set of articles covering topics such as:

  • Data and journalism

  • Data visualisation

  • Data analysis

  • Platformization and multimodalities

  • Digital cultures

  • Virtual reality

  • News recommenders and voice assistants

  • Audience metrics

  • Automation

  • Artificial intelligence

Course objectives

At the end of this course, the student can recognise the most critical debates around innovations happening today in newsrooms across the world.
The student can demonstrate a critical understanding of contemporary debates about data, journalism, and the relationship between ethics and new technologies.
The student can critically examine innovative technologies in journalism and their use in media projects and formulate an opinion about the opportunities and challenges they bring to the industry.
The students have gained insights into the critical phase of designing, implementing, and evolving new technologies inside newsrooms.
The students can assist with the implementation of new technologies inside newsrooms to gather, analyse, and disseminate journalistic stories.
The students can reflect on fundamental journalistic questions about technological innovations, such as ethical and legal issues, transparency, fairness and accuracy.

Timetable

The timetables are available through My Timetable.

Mode of instruction

Seminar

Assessment method

Assessment

Halfway through the course, students submit an individual essay based on the material reviewed during the first five weeks, including the assigned articles and the in-class discussion.
Toward the end of the course, students make a live, in-person group presentation to a committee of journalists and media workers. The presentation should focus on new technologies' challenges and opportunities for journalism. A small written reflection is also submitted.

Weighing

  • Individual Essay: 50%

  • Group pitch and group reflection: 50%

Resit

The resit for the mid-term essay will consist of a written essay based on the assigned readings and/or lectures content (i.e., same format, more content to cover). The hightest possible grade is a 6.0.

The resit for the group pitch will consist of an oral exam, where the group will go through a Q&A session about the presented material. The highest possible grade is a 6.0.

The resit for the individual reflection will consist of an oral exam, where the student will go through a Q&A session about the presented material. The highest possible grade is a 6.0.

Inspection and feedback

How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.

Reading list

Week 1. Data, journalism, and innovation

  1. Steensen, S. (2009) What’s stopping them?, Journalism Studies, 10:6, 821-836, DOI: 10.1080/14616700902975087

  2. García-Avilés, J. (2021). “Review article: Journalism innovation research, a diverse and flourishing field (2000-2020)”. Profesional de la información, v. 30, n. 1, e300110. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.ene.10

Week 2. Data journalism

  1. Rogers, S. (2014). Data journalism is the new punk. British journalism review, 25(2), 31-34, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956474814538181

  2. Casselman, B. (2019, Nov 13). “In Data Journalism, Tech Matters Less Than the People”. The New York Times

  3. Jamil, S. (2019): Increasing Accountability Using Data Journalism: Challenges for the Pakistani Journalists, Journalism Practice, DOI: 1080/17512786.2019.1697956

Week 3. Data analysis and visualisation

  1. Horky, T., & Pelka, P. (2017). Data Visualisation in Sports Journalism: Opportunities and challenges of data-driven journalism in German football. Digital Journalism, 5(5), 587-606, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2016.1254053

  2. Gray, J. (2012, May 31). “What Data Can and Cannot Do”. The Guardian

  3. Dick, M. (2014) Interactive Infographics and News Values, Digital Journalism, 2:4, 490-506, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2013.841368

Week 4. Platformization and multimodalities

  1. Meese, J., & Hurcombe, E. (2021). Facebook, news media and platform dependency: The institutional impacts of news distribution on social platforms. New Media & Society, 23(8), 2367-2384, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820926472

  2. Helmond, A. (2015). The platformization of the web: Making web data platform ready. Social media+ society, 1(2), 2056305115603080, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115603080

Week 5. Digital cultures

  1. Hoffmann, A. L., Proferes, N., & Zimmer, M. (2018). “Making the world more open and connected”: Mark Zuckerberg and the discursive construction of Facebook and its users. New media & society, 20(1), 199-218, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816660784

  2. Gillespie, T. (2014). The relevance of algorithms. Media technologies: Essays on communication, materiality, and society, 167(2014), 167.

Week 6. Virtual reality

  1. Pavlik, J. (2000) The Impact of Technology on Journalism, Journalism Studies, 1:2, 229-237, DOI: 10.1080/14616700050028226

  2. Jones, S. (2017) Disrupting the narrative: immersive journalism in virtual reality, Journal of Media Practice, 18:2-3, 171-185, DOI: 10.1080/14682753.2017.1374677

Week 7. News recommenders and voice assistants

  1. Helberger, N. (2019). On the democratic role of news recommenders. Digital Journalism, 7(8), 993–1012. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1623700

  2. Thurman, N., Moeller, J., Helberger, N., & Trilling, D. (2019). My Friends, Editors, Algorithms, and I: Examining audience attitudes to news selection. Digital Journalism, 7(4), 447–469. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1493936

  3. Bastian, M., Helberger, N., & Makhortykh, M. (2021). Safeguarding the Journalistic DNA: Attitudes towards the Role of Professional Values in Algorithmic News Recommender Designs. Digital Journalism, 9(6), 835–863. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1912622

Week 8. Audience metrics

  1. Helberger, N. (2020) The Political Power of Platforms: How Current Attempts to Regulate Misinformation Amplify Opinion Power, Digital Journalism, 8:6, 842-854, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2020.1773888

  2. Tandoc Jr, E. C., & Thomas, R. J. (2015). The ethics of web analytics: Implications of using audience metrics in news construction. Digital journalism, 3(2), 243-258. DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2014.909122

Week 9. Automation

  1. Lokot, T., & Diakopoulos, N. (2016). News Bots: Automating news and information dissemination on Twitter. Digital Journalism, 4(6), 682-699, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2015.1081822

  2. Diakopoulos, N., Trielli, D., & Lee, G. (2021). Towards understanding and supporting journalistic practices using semi-automated news discovery tools. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW2), 1-30.

Week 10. Artificial intelligence

  1. Broussard, M., Diakopoulos, N., Guzman, A. L., Abebe, R., Dupagne, M., & Chuan, C. H. (2019). Artificial intelligence and journalism. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 96(3), 673-695, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699019859901

  2. Stray, J. (2019). Making artificial intelligence work for investigative journalism. Digital Journalism, 7(8), 1076-1097, DOI: [10.1080/21670811.2019.1630289]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2019.1630289)

Registration

Enrolment through My Studymap is mandatory.

Registration Studeren à la carte en Contractonderwijs

Not applicable.

Contact

  • For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.

  • For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal Education Administration Office

Remarks

Not applicable.