The Arab Spring has been providing the middle east citizens with a voice to express what they are feeling and witnessing first-hand. The middle east citizens have been recording and capturing their experiences through the use of mainstream media, but more importantly social media(s)-Facebook and Twitter. While citizens are taking risks and reporting what they are seeing, they're also bringing to life a knew kind of reporting- "ambient journalism" . Ambient Journalism, is where journalists use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform to present news.
Ambient Journalism was coined by Alfred Hermida who is is an award-winning associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on changes in journalistic practices, social media and emerging genres of journalism, and has been published in Journalism Studies and Journalism Practice. An online news pioneer, he was a founding news editor of BBCNews.com and was a BBC correspondent in the Middle East for four years.
With Laila Shereen Sakr, aka, VJ Um Amel coming to our class to discuss the Arab Spring, I thought that we can ask her about "ambient journalism" and see if she supports Hermida's discovery. What appears a bit strange is that we may have seen or heard of this type of journalism before,only with a different name...citizen journalism...or what Professor Losh would call Facebook Journalism?
Interesting posting! Thanks for introducing us to this very relevant material about ambient journalism. It's an interesting way to think about the relationship between social media and the news that challenges some of the basic premises that we have been working with in the class until now.
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