I. Refugee Crisis: A Snapchat documentary – BBC News
In this short documentary, John Sweeney captures the refugee crisis on Snapchat. It covers the migration of refugees from Greek islands to Western Europe. The digital documentary was created by Panorama, BBC’s flagship current affairs programme. They had used Snapchat social network so that they could reach out and engage younger audiences. The documentary is an example of digital journalism that tells powerful stories using digital mediums. It has its roots in documentary films and photography where there are no reporters on screen and they do not read news like TV broadcast journalism. The MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing had released a podcast called “Convergence Journalism? Emerging Documentary and Multimedia Forms of News” that talks more on how journalists and filmmakers often use the same tools to tell their stories. I would recommend such online journalistic videos as it explores the crossroads of interactive documentary and digital journalism.
URL for documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5vwNKUb94&t=80s
URL for Podcast: https://cmsw.mit.edu/podcast-convergence-journalism/
II. “Digital Reliance”: Public Confidence in Media in a Digital Era by Stephen J. A. Ward
This paper questions public reliance on digital media which is critically low at present. For citizens, trust becomes important because what we know about the world is provided by media. The author talks about possible solutions where one could emphasize on ethics in the newsrooms. The current democracies are rich in information owing to the digital revolution; therefore addressing media trust would also lead to a redefinition of the role of journalism. One of the possibilities that Ward talks of is that journalists should act as democratically engaged journalists; they should acknowledge that their interpretations of news are not purely subjective opinion but are tested and open to inspection by the public of the digital world. The paper argues how the media can be more inclusive, participatory and accountable to the community which I think is of immediate concern.
III. You won’t believe how co-dependent they are Or: Media hype and the interaction of news media, social media, and the user by Vivian Roese
This paper shows how social media has taken over the news media as a primary source of information which has changed the production and consumption of news. Roese explores the shift from newspapers to social media platforms as a major provider of news and how journalism makes use of social media to increase the number of consumers. Automation of journalism has developed news written by machines producing mass content. Social media also functions as a catalyst to media hypes and helps in spreading the news faster. Roese writes about how algorithms work in a social media to filter and generate stories based on consumer interests. The inter-relation between news media, social media and its users is also driven by its dependence on economy This paper is important as it discusses the media in the light of commercialization of news and the impact of technological developments on traditional journalism.
IV. Websites of The Quint and The Wire.
I recommend the study of the websites of these digital journalism platforms that came up in 2015 in India. These new platforms show how Indian journalists and entrepreneurs are working to develop different content based (The Quint) or non-profit (The Wire) models for a digital approach in journalism. They prioritise a mobile friendly outlook and are based on mobile apps rather than websites for desktop internet users. In terms of distribution as well they use social media as a means to market and distribute their content. Most of them also provide content in Hindi to reach a wider audience. There has been rapid growth in the number of users in the last couple of years. Start-ups in India face challenges due to the dominance of established media houses, pressures from government and issues in the conflicted interests of the funders. However it might be interesting to look at some of these new digital mediums and study the innovative ways in which they present their content in an environment that is increasingly becoming digital.
References
Ward, Stephen J. A. “‘Digital Reliance’: Public Confidence in Media in a Digital Era.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, vol. 18, no. 3, 2017, pp. 3–10. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26395918. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020.
Roese, Vivian. “You Won’t Believe How Co-Dependent They Are: Or: Media Hype and the Interaction of News Media, Social Media, and the User.” From Media Hype to Twitter Storm, edited by Peter Vasterman, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2018, pp. 313–332. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21215m0.19. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020.
The Quint. https://www.thequint.com/. Accessed 10 February 2020
The Wire. https://thewire.in/ Accessed 10 February 2020.
MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing. https://cmsw.mit.edu/ Accessed 10 February 2020.
Sweeny, John. Refugee Crisis: A Snapchat documentary. BBC News. 29 September 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5vwNKUb94&t=80s Accessed 10 February 2020
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