Studying the intersection of journalism, interactive communications and public discourse
Now that AOL has laid off 40 percent of the Patch workforce, those of us concerned about the local news landscape in Connecticut want to know what’s going to happen to the state’s 67 Patch sites. Which sites will be shut down? Will AOL partner with existing Connecticut news organizations or independent news purveyors to …
A glimpse at the online comment management systems being used by various news organizations, as of July 2013:
ESPN this week becomes the latest major news organization to rely upon social media to help civilize its online comments. Starting Wednesday, ESPN.com’s 25 million active users will have to log in through a Facebook account if they want to participate in online conversations on ESPN.com stories. Patrick Stiegman, editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, said by phone that three …
I discovered a new metric today from Google. As I tried tweaking some of the webmaster tools for this website – mariekshanahan.com – I spotted a link in Google Webmaster Tools labeled “Labs -> Authorship.” If you use any Google products regularly, you likely have a Google account. As such, all your Google-based activities are …
While on Spring Break in Florida this week, a University of Connecticut basketball player was arrested and charged with trespassing. Too bad. Lots of college kids do foolish things on Spring Break. (I know I did.) But because the student in question is a member of the UConn Men’s Basketball Team, this minor incident is …
How 13 years of online “bits-conditioning” turned me into an aggregation machine. But what I really need to do is write ‘articles’ CUNY Professor Jeff Jarvis caused a stir within journalism circles when he first floated the idea that the “article” should no longer be considered the goal of journalism, rather, “as a value-added …
“Monday morning, parents must do what for many will still feel excruciating. Send their children to school. And try not to worry. What a regrettable milestone. The safest place isn’t that safe at all.” — Columnist Rick Green, The Hartford Courant My daughter and I spent a lot of time talking about what happened in …
[View the story “A Terrible Day for Women in the News” on Storify] A Terrible Day for Women in the News As I scanned my Facebook news feed this morning, the headlines revealed a disturbing trend: Misogyny, alive and well around the world, from Cairo to the U.S. to the Congo to Pakistan. The more …
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Drew Griffin, unmasked Reddit troll Michael Brutsch blamed Reddit’s culture for fostering his deplorable online behavior. Realizing he had a penchant for angering people anonymously online, Brutsch regularly used Reddit’s unfettered system of open access to create hundreds of subforums dedicated to topics like “Rapebait,” “Incest,” “Pics of Dead …
What makes for a successful political campaign speech? Is it the tone of the delivery? The turns of phrase? How about the repetition of certain keywords? President Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at his party’s convention on September 6, 2012. Below is a visualization of Obama’s acceptance speech in North Carolina, as …