Interview about social media and journalism

Few weeks ago, this interview with me appeared in UVV-info where I suggest that mainstream journalists and amateurs should collaborate more. Sorry it is in Dutch!

Print-alike online magazine

Few days ago, I received this online magazine in my mailbox, and I kept reading and watching for at least 10 minutes (and that means a lot). Not as much because I like gossips and other non-news, but because I liked the way the news is presented in this print-alike online magazine. Nice work!

Media4[ME] Den Haag

Last week, I was in Den Haag at the first Media4[ME] conference. During my talk, I presented the first preliminary results of my computer and eye tracking experiments that I conducted about one month ago. During the next two-three months, I will further analyse all the data I gathered during these experiments in a way to provide an answer on the question 'do multimedia, interactivity and hypertext benefit the learning process and knowledge outcome during and after online news consumption?'. I let you know if the results are there!

ICA Montreal

Two weeks ago, I was in Montreal for the annual ICA conference. I presented two papers, the first one about parental mediation of television viewing throughout adolescence, the second one was titled redefining multimedia: the (dis)integrated use of media and modalities.

The latter presentation discussed an important part of my Ph.D. research about the concept of multimedia. I question the use of the concept multimedia when speaking of the combined use of text, video, pictures and audio on for example news websites. In this paper I suggest that it is better to use the concept of multimodality instead of multimedia.
I received a lot of interesting questions and suggestions during and after my presentation. Especially the notes of my respondent, prof. dr. Singer (U.K) were very valuable for me, for which I want to thank her again. During the next two weeks, I try to rewrite this paper into an article for publication.

Apart from the conference, I just fell in love with Montreal! Great city, nice athmosphere, friendly people, beautiful hotels, ... this trip made me get charged up again.

Read aloud modality

When I was looking for some news coverage about the tragedy of the Belgian soccer player Francois Sterchele who died this morning in a car crash, I discovered a great modality of interactivity. On the Dutch news site of NOS.nl, one can click on the 'read aloud' button so that a gentle woman reads the message aloud. Apart from some pronounciation problems (clearly it is a a computer software program who transfers the written text into voice so that for example names aren't well pronounced), this feature can be a great help for people with hearing problems!

I haven't seen this feature on another website, if someone of you knows another example of this innovative feature, please email me!

Important three days

Tomorrow and the two days following tomorrow will be of high importance for my research. During these days, my third research phase takes place.

Research question: how do online vs. standard online news messages differ in effect on information-processing and objective and subjective knowledge outcome

Procedure: computer experiments + eye tracking experiments

Manipulations: 4 stories in 16 different versions: Form (2) x complexity (2) x Story (4) x Order (4)

Location: Centre for Media Research in Leuven

Participants: 70-95 students

Wheather forecast: hot, hotter, hottest

My personal condition: very tired, but excited

Special thanks to: my supervisor Prof. d'Haenens for making this idea possible, dr. P. hendriks-Vettehen and dr. Peter De Graef for their valuable contributions to my experimental design, the Flemish Ministry of Media for funding this innovative research and of course Koen Moens, webmaster of HLN.be for doing a great job when manipulating the online news stories and answering my email questions so quickly!

Third research stage: manipulations of online news stories

The first two research stages of my ph.d. (content analysis of features of online news media and online survey towards the differences in use of online news media and features) are finished, so it is time to move on to the last stage. In this phase I will test the effect of multimedia, interactivity and hypertext on the information-processing and the knowledge outcome during online news consumption. To test the impact of these formal and structural features, we have to set up some manipulations so that there are different versions of online news stories, one version with an adequate degree of multimodality, interactive features and hyperlinks, and another representing the same story but in a standard (or better offline) version without the key features of online news. We will conduct some knowledge and eye-tracking experiments to test the online consumption of different stories presented in different versions.

But since I'm not a webbuilder, I needed someone who could make the manipulations of the online stories. I needed a website that uses already as many as possible features of multimedia, interactivity and hypertext, so that it won't be a big problem to ad some specific features like reactions, videos etc. Therefore, I decided to ask The Persgroep (editor from HLN.be, demorgen.be en VTM.be) to make the manipulations. After a very interesting and stimulating meeting with Gert Francois (manager New Media) and the webmaster, they decided to help me out and to make the adjustments on the selected online news articles I found on the internet. These manipulated online articles will be used in the experiments that will be conducted on 7-8-9 may.

A special thank you goes out to The Persgroep!

Online-only videos in digital newspapers

Most of the Flemish digital newspapers and news sites use videos to illustrate the articles and to cover the news. Companies like Zoomin offer the possibility to digital news sites to buy videos and to put them online. Also video platforms like Youtube or GarageTV makes it possible to refer to some footage of a news event. There are also sites that link to videos that are made by television stations. Few of the news sites however make videos on their own, with the specific purpose to use them only for the website. With regard to digital newspapers, GVA started a few months ago with 'news in pictures', but this is more a slideshow of pictures then a real video. Therefore, I'm happy to see that Nieuwsblad.be and De Standaard Online started using online-only videos. Hopefully, this will be a stimulans for other digital newspapers to make videos on their own. After all, all you need is a simple camcorder, some(free) editing software and ten creative minutes.

VRT on VMMa

We all know that youtube is a bless for newssites that want to illustrate their stories with some videos. Sometimes, the use of Youtube movies is not as logic as it may seem at first sight. See for example this article about yesterday's UEFA match between Anderlecht and Bordeaux. At the end of the article, one can click on a youtube movie. The strange thing is that HLN.be (which is a newssite of de media group VMMa that also has television channel VTM in its holding) is presenting the highlights of the match which was originally broadcasted by the public television VRT, in the offline world the competitor of VTM. So the voice over is in fact a VRT reporter, and this on a VMMa website. Why doesn't HLN.be link to the short highlighs of the match as it was used in the news on VTM? With the voice-over of the own VTM reporter? Is it a technical problem? If anyone knows why, please email me.

I also wonder if this use of embedded link to the highlights of VRT isn't a infringement of the copyright. In the offline world, every television station has to pay a certain amount to the competitive company which has bought the broadcasting rights of that game. And I assume HLN.be did not pay a fee for putting this link online.

deredactie.be

Monday will be d-day for the VRT who is changing is website from vrtnieuws.net to deredactie.be I've always been a great fan of the newswebsite of the Belgian public service broadcaster and I'm looking forward consuming the news from deredactie.be Here you can see a preview of what the site will look like. I've read in the newspaper that the black banner on top of the page will also be part of the decor of the news programs on vrt television. Apart from that, also the use of anchors' faces on the website is remarkable.

User-generated photo

Today on demorgen.be and hln.be, a picture shows the damage after a car accident in Belgium. The picture is obviously of inferior quality than a professional photo. As we can see, the photo is taken from the inside of a car passing by. The eye witness seems to be Sam Hermans. I think this is one of the first times a famous, traditional newspaper uses user generated pictures to illustrate an article and note the author's name. If anyone knows more examples of the use of user-generated pictures by traditional digital newspapers where also the name of the amateur appear on the site, feel free to mail me the links.

Innovative online magazines

Few minutes ago, I read an interesting article about innovative online magazines. It seems that indeed this kind of magazines are making more use of the possibilities of online features than do (traditional) digital newspapers. Take a close look at the examples, they are very nice and show what really is possible online.

Immersive videos

I wonder if online journalists are investigating the possibilities of this kind of innovative videos. These videos make it possible to pan across the 360° view. Not only useful for sports coverage, but in my opnion for almost every story that deserves a video. Until today, the multimedia features of the online news stay rather traditional. If online news want to be really innovative, they can start using this feature. Wonder which online news medium will be the first to use this kind of videos and how long it will take.

Ps. the picture is the camera used for the immersive videos. Looks expensive to me!

JOSTA: Journalism Studies Antwerp

Few days ago, we opened the JOSTA research platform at the Lessius University College. JOSTA, which stands for JOurnalism STudies Antwerp, is the research group of the Master in Journalism. One of the interesting things at JOSTA is the JOSTA-lab which makes it possible to study and analyse the production and reception of traditional and online news media. I'm looking forward to use this lab for all kinds of studies..

Visited the Netherlands

Three weeks ago, I visited the Netherlands for three days. On the first day, I gave three guest courses at the University of Leiden in the bachelor and master of the department of linguistics (option: journalism and new media). One of the three was a seminar about my Ph.D., more precisely about how we should consider and study the internet. It was a pleasure for me visiting this university and giving these three lectures, especially because the students seemed to be very interested and kept on asking questions afterwords. I don't want to speak in stereotypes, but this experience learned me that students in the Netherlands are totally different (read: more assertive) from those in Flanders. I also want to thank the collegues for giving me a pleasant stay. Funny detail: I slept in this hotel, which is the same hotel where Mark Deuze stays when visiting Leiden for his courses.

The day after, I travelled to Groningen where I gave two parallel workshops about CAR (Computer Assisted reporting) at the VVOJ Conference. The subject of my workshop was 'finding people with the use of social media' (download powerpoint here). Both workshops where 'sold out' which made it extra pleasant. The day after, I sat for about 8 hours on a train from Groningen to Antwerp, which wasn't pleasant at all ;-)

What's another message?

Today, one can read two messages about the same subject on HLN.be about the fact that a desk job increases the risk to get cancer. Not only the fact that the two messages tell more or less the same story based on the same study of prof. Hamilton, also the fact that these two messages are located near each other on the website surprises me. Indeed, it happens sometimes that in a print paper, two messages about the same subject are presented, but most of the times, this happens when a short message about for example a transfer of a soccer player is announced on the general sports pages and the same transfer is covered on the regional pages with more background and an interview. But in this specefic case, or the webmaster, or the journalist(s) should have seen that the (same) story was already on the news website and that it would be better to delete one of the messages. The fact that this didn't happened is perhaps because of the stories are written by tho different journalists (bf) and (edp) and that maybe the two stories were uploaded at the same moment. Does this also mean that two different journalists are paid to tell the same story?

UPDATE: during the writing of this blogpost, HLN.be has deleted one of the messages. And no, I didn't call them ;-)

The risk of using Youtube movies

Using Youtube movies to illustrate or cover a news story online, can be of great value ... except when the movie isn't available anymore like in this example. The problem with online movies is that the control over content is no longer with the journalists but in the hands of the user who can choose to withdraw his/her movie from the youtube platform.

Local news at a simple glace (update)

Few days ago, Jan Martynowski, one of the online journalists of Concentra (the publisher of the two regional newspapers hbvl.be and gva.be) sent me an email to draw my attention on a new application hbvl.be recently started. Since the newspaper's focus is on regional and local news, online readers can insert their postal code to get referred to the news from their neigbourhood. Since few days, it is not only possible to select the news based on the postal code. A google map makes it able to visualize the region and to select the news by clicking on on specified city or village and further on by clicking at a specific news item (which are represented by flags on the map). Users can select which neigbourhood, which period and which type of news (e.g. general news, fire, theft, accident) they want to see on their screen.

In my opinion, the option provided by the newspaper to choose between a postal code or a google map is the right one. Perhaps they should focus even more on the latter option, since clicking on a map is more tempting then inserting a postal code. It provides the news at a simple glace on the google map. Can it be easier? I wonder how long it will take until the other regional newspaper, gva.be, will adopt this great feature.

Update: It seems that also Het Nieuwsblad Online started to use this kind of feature. As predicted, also GVA.be already uses maps to visualize local news.

ECREA symposium @ Brussels

Today, I presented a paper at the ECREA symposium in Brussels on "The Myth of the Global Internet", organised by the Free University of Brussels. In 'speaking of meta; questioning the internet as a homogeneorus and global news medium', I discussed some of my theoretical approaches and conclusions from the content analysis and online survey I conducted during the last two years.

Since there were not all too many participants, the discussions after the presentations was more profound than this is usually the case. I especially enjoyed the lecture and critical thoughts of today's keynote speaker, Prof. Andrew Calabrese. I also want to thank Prof. Van Audenhove and Prof. Morganti for inviting me at this symposium.

Refering from online to offline

Maybe not as unusual as it seems to be at first glance, but I found it rather strange to read this article on Gva.be
It is kind of a teaser for an article in the print edition of the newspaper. In the end of the online article, the journalist writes 'more in Gazet van Anwterpen' (= the offline paper). Normally, print papers refer to the online digital paper to provide extra information, but in this case, the opposite is true. As I read this article around midnight, I also wonder in which edition of the newspaper I can read this article: today's print newspaper or that of tomorrow?