Howard Rheingold's Library tagged comm217 →  View Popular

"Getting people to interact with others and upload content to a community-driven site enough may sound easy, but engagement doesn’t happen automatically. It takes time and work, and much of the right formula is deduced through trial and error.

Here are 10 tips for increasing user engagement that work for news community web sites, but can apply to all types of online user-engagement communities."

mashable.com/...community-engagement - Preview

comm217 online_community online_facilitation

"What I have in mind is not search. It’s not Yahoo Answers or AskReddit, either. This is for questions that cannot be answered by a simple, or even a sophisticated search. Or by the amateur expert who’s been reading Popular Mechanics since 1964. The kind of questions explainthis.org would handle have these three features:

* Lots of people have this question and they want a good answer. (Which argues for a participatory system to rate questions and vote them up or down. It also means we can ask those participants for help as the investigation gets underway)
* The answer is not easily obtained through search or by “looking it up.”
* It takes real journalism—investigative, explanatory, seriously enterprising pro-am journalism—to answer the question completely and well. "

jayrosen.tumblr.com/...p-for-a-news-site-that-i-think - Preview

comm217

"That metaquestion can now be answered in powerful new ways that take advantage of the collaborative web. In short, the public can actually suggest and rank questions it wants the professional journalists to answer. In some cases the public can also help answer the question.

Here are some encouraging examples that align reporting efforts with public interest or even financial support:

* MyReporter.com: An excellent project by the Wilmington, NC, Star-News that lets users ask questions that the paper’s journalists answer.
* Explainthis.org: A concept by Jay Rosen to align the journalist’s efforts with the interest of the audience. Jay has been into this subject since his NewAssignment.Net project in 2006. The idea of that site was “open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable.”
* HelpMeInvestigate.com: A site by Paul Bradshaw to let a community of users suggest investigative topics and then collaborate on putting the pieces together.
* The Virtual Assignment Desk: Part of the New York Times “The Local” community blogging project, the assignment desk let’s users suggest assignments for the blogger. It also offers assignments for users to go cover themselves.
* Spot.us: Ideas are nominated and users pledge small donations up front to support them. Ideas that raise enough support are executed, with the added benefit of an engaged audience waiting to see and share the outcome.
* Kickstarter.com: Similar to Spot.us, Kickstarter lets people secure multiple-donation funding for news projects, as well as company startups and almost any type of venture.

"

quickposts.jeffsonderman.com/...user-directed-assignment-desks - Preview

comm217

"As the news industry looks to reconstruct its suffering business model, the journalists of today must reconstruct their skill sets for the growing world of online media. Because of cutbacks at many news organizations, the jobs available are highly competitive. News companies are seeking journalists who are jacks of all trades, yet still masters of one (or more).

2010 will likely be a time of transition as today’s journalists catch up to learn the multimedia, programming, social media, and business skills they’ll need to tell their stories online. These new skills are especially relevant to startups that are looking to hire multi-skilled and social media-savvy journalists. Below we’ve gathered some skills that are quickly becoming basic requirements for the journalist of tomorrow."

mashable.com/...future-journalist - Preview

comm217

75 minute video

scienceblogs.com/...rosen_on_citizen_journalis.php - Preview

comm217 journalism citizenjournalism

"RSS is an incredibly useful way for journalists to keep track of beats by watching what is being published online, whether on news sites, blogs, Twitter, saved Google search terms, etc."

beatblogging.org/...-rivals-news-tweets-other-info - Preview

rss comm217

"Consider something even more fundamental: Water. Much of the villages have government-owned water pipes that are turned on for an hour or so once a day, or even in some areas once a week. Everyone has to bring their vats, pitchers and empty kerosene cans and get as much water as they can while the pipes are on. But these pipes don’t really run on a schedule so people frequently miss getting the day or week’s water. Now, SMSONE subscribers get a text when the pipes are about to be turned on.

I know it’s not as life-changing, but I’d pay to get micro-local, highly relevant news about my neighborhood in San Francisco in 160-character bursts, whether it’s about a power or cable outage, a construction project that’s disrupting traffic or details on a shooting that just happened. And I might even welcome local ads that report a hot new restaurant opening or a sale at a boutique two streets over. I feel like modern, uber-connected life has made us less interested in “local news” as we used to think of it on a city or region level, but more interested in the micro-local, hence the excitement in the Valley around Foursquare, CitySourced, and a host of location-aware iPhone apps"

www.techcrunch.com/...smsone-micro-local-india-news - Preview

ict sms comm217

"The magazine, EastLondonLines, is a riposte to despair and also the growing opinion that British journalism courses leave students lacking the entrepreneurial skills needed to survive in a world where media organisations are struggling to make content pay. Here, Goldsmiths' MA journalism students have been put in charge of their own startup: they are hoping to build an audience from scratch, market it, make it attractive to advertisers and make contact with those potential sources of revenue."

www.guardian.co.uk/...tudents-launch-online-magazine - Preview

comm217

"Earlier this month, Duke released "Accountability Through Algorithm: Developing the Field of Computational Journalism," a report based on a workshop held in July. The report is full of interesting ideas for applying technology to journalists' challenges. Here are a few of them.

Information Extraction, Integration and Visualization

A new set of tools would help reporters find patterns in otherwise unstructured or unsearchable information. For instance, the Obama administration posted letters from dozens of interest groups providing advice on issues, but the letters were not searchable. A text-extraction tool would allow reporters to feed PDF documents into a Web service and return a version that could be indexed and searched. The software might also make it easy to tag documents with metadata such as people's names, places and dates. Another idea is to improve automatic transcription software for audio and video files, often available (but not transcribed) for government meetings and many court hearings.

The report also suggests developing "lightweight" templates that enable journalists to create data visualizations based on XML or spreadsheet files, and tools that help them organize their findings in a timeline. As the report points out, reporters working on in-depth projects often create chronologies in lengthy spreadsheets or text documents. A better tool would let journalists "zoom in, tag events for publication, turn on and off players or events and otherwise use them effectively," the report says.

The Journalist's Dashboard

Here the Duke report suggests that journalists need "a tool with which to spot what's new and what's important in the flow of daily information." A dashboard could include:

* A news alert system similar to Google News that scanned only the sources specified by a beat reporter,identifying the originating publisher and the number of other sites that linked to the item;
* A tool helping journalists keep track of their sources, including news items about that person and citatio

www.pbs.org/...ogy-starting-to-add-up328.html - Preview

comm217

"Above is the pre­sen­ta­tion I gave at this gath­er­ing, orga­nized by a group of non­prof­its in a project called the New Media Lab (there’s no pub­lic pres­ence yet, just a pri­vate wiki). And while its focus is squarely on the role that journalist/media pro­duc­ers will play in our project, it can also be applied to the new roles that jour­nal­ists should be expected to take up in an age of social media if you work for a startup, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit.

Called Doing Good 2.0: The next-generation’s impact on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, media, mobile & civic engage­ment, it looks at the forces dri­ving Web 2.0 and the next-generation Inter­net, the role of mobile, the new cul­tural norms that social media is ush­er­ing in, and the role of the New Jour­nal­ist: how we need to still tell com­pelling sto­ries about peo­ple and causes but how we also need to expand our reper­toire in this new arena by wear­ing mul­ti­ple hats:"

www.socialmedia.biz/...ist-in-the-age-of-social-media - Preview

journalism social_media comm217

"Maplib.net turns pictures into zoomable& panable views in easy steps and enables new ways of viewing pictures, just like Google Maps does.
Features

1.

It's simple and professional knowledge is not required.
2.

Make annotations on pictures with legend.
3.

Various icons for markers, as well as uploading your own icons.
4.

Social network system. You can join groups and post topics, and share pictures with group members.
5.

Easily to embedded into your own website, for both atlas and pictures.
6.

Using tags and atlas to organize picture more efficiently.
7.

Full permission control system. Your atlas, pictures and groups can be open to specific users only.

Maplib.net can be used to

1.

Create geographic maps, for example, campus maps and so on.
2.

Create game maps, and share it with those who also love this game.
3.

View digital pictures in a whole new way, and invite your friends to make annotations on it.
4.

Introduce products. Just upload the picture of a product, and make annotations on parts of this product.
5.

Create flow charts that can be used for snapshots of web pages and softwares and so on.
6.

View huge pictures and save the loading time.
7.

And more... "

maplib.net/about - Preview

mapping comm217

"Social networking upstart Twitter has made the jump to academia's hallowed halls, with 'tweets' made compulsory writing for would-be journalists at Griffith University."

www.smh.com.au/...-curriculum-20091016-gzut.html - Preview

twitter comm217

YouTube's video platform has enabled a new generation of content creators to connect with billions of viewers every day. There's a great opportunity for organizations to leverage this online activity for video campaigns, coverage, or programming initiatives - but many find it difficult to connect directly with YouTube's community in a simple, effective way. We've just made that a lot easier with YouTube Direct.

YouTube Direct allows you to embed the upload functionality of YouTube directly into your own site, enabling your organization to request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos with ease. News organizations can ask for citizen reporting; nonprofits can call-out for support videos around social campaigns; businesses can ask users to submit promotional videos about your brand. With YouTube Direct, the opportunities to connect directly with the YouTube community are endless.

Key features of YouTube Direct include:

www.youtube.com/direct - Preview

video comm217

"Valuable social networking presentation for the News21 Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Journalism Education.

It’s by Jeremy Rue, multimedia training instructor for the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism."

reportr.net/...o-social-media-for-journalists - Preview

comm217 social_media

"What is computational journalism? Ultimately, interactions among journalists, software developers, computer scientists and other scholars over the next few years will answer that question. In July 2009 the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences hosted a workshop on this topic called Developing the Field of Computational Journalism. In their workshop report , James T. Hamilton and Fred Turner discuss how computational journalism’ s combination of algorithms, data, and knowledge from social sciences could help preserve the watchdog function of journalism.


Accountability Through Algorithm: Developing the Field of Computational Journalism describes how computational approaches, such as the development of a suite of open source reporting tools, can make it easier for reporters and citizens to hold government accountable. This workshop report, written by Hamilton and Turner, lays out the roles that foundations, government agencies, academic research centers, nonprofits, open source developers, journalists, and readers can play in the evolution of this new field."

dewitt.sanford.duke.edu/...computational_journalism - Preview

journalism comm217

"Though Twitter Lists are new to most users, some news organizations are trying to stay ahead of the curve by taking advantage of the new feature and implementing it quickly. Whether by creating staff directories to make their journalists easier to find, or recommending tweeps to follow on specific subjects, Twitter lists are giving news sites the ability to curate news and further open up to Twitter users that can help them to gather news. "

mashable.com/...news-twitter-lists - Preview

twitter comm217

"Here are the slides and the text of my presentation on ambient journalism at the Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University:"

reportr.net/...a-system-of-ambient-journalism - Preview

twitter comm217

"Here’s a perfect way to engage your community by providing them with local breaking news resources using Twitter and Twitter Lists. And it only takes ONE HOUR to build… see the slideshow (best seen in full screen)!"

mediatransparent.com/...esource-on-twitter-in-one-hour - Preview

twitter comm217

"
Throwing a few markers on an interactive map? That's so last year. The next generation of online maps or bigger, bolder and incredibly detailed. They provide a unique service to the viewer and push the envelope of data visualization and the distribution of information."

www.10000words.net/...nique-and-innovative-maps.html - Preview

mapping comm217

"As of today Android and iPhone 3GS users can see recovery.gov contract data on their phones via the Layar augmented reality application. Layar is an application that overlays your view of the real world with waypoints representing your favorite coffee place, the movie theatre you're trying to find, or in this case, where some of that $787 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going.

If you have an iPhone 3GS or Android device you can install the Layar app for free and then search for "recovery" or "sunlight" within Layar to find this layer. The layer works best near large cities where you are most likely to find recovery contracts, below is an example of what it looks like on the streets of Washington DC."

sunlightlabs.com/...coverygov-contracts-your-phone - Preview

augmented_reality public_sphere iphone comm217