John Steel

The Emperor's New Clothes: Globalisation and e-learning in Higher Education

Two closely related and over-determining myths have shaped government inspired policy towards Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and education: the one is the irresistible power of globalisation, the other is the determining effect of technology. The result of both is to present the acceptance of e-learning throughout the education system as inevitable. The space left for practitioners in Higher Education is either to embrace the new media enthusiastically or to stand aside and watch its inevitable unfolding. In this paper we develop a critical stance towards the dominant discourse and suggest that the shape of new media in education can be, and is being, contested. We argue against both technological determinism and the passive acceptance of the neo-liberal globalisation paradigm. No technologies are neutral. They are always the products of real historical social relations as well as the emergent technical capacities they provide. ICTs as artefacts and social processes are already inscribed with gendered assumptions and the accumulation strategies of their purveyors. Moreover, the conditions under which e-learning is being introduced into education are shaped by managerialist agendas. Placing pedagogy at the forefront is therefore to struggle over the terms and shape of the media adopted. We can see this at both the micro and macro level. Our paper exposes the emperors new clothes while arguing that there is space for critical discourses that can more meaningfully engage with socially available technologies.

THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS

To what extent can we disassociate the technology and economics of newspapers from their political and cultural functions? Many of the latter functions have survived previous eras of technological change, often with a heightened promise of a more democratic engagement with readers and a subsequent amelioration of civic communication. Toolan (1998) has provocatively suggested that, in their narrative conventions, newspapers often literally do not know what they are writing about. This has partly been because of the time constraints on the production of news and the narrative conventions which this economy imposes upon them. Yet this clearly has not prevented newspapers from having a very strong sense of longer narratives and ideological identities, in combination with an ability to tailor these to a highly conventional notion of audience. What happens when newspapers are freed from this diurnal duty, as is increasingly the case in the contemporary world of newspapers, when more and more breaking news is dealt with by “quicker” media? Does this provide newspapers in whatever new formats with the opportunity to reconfigure themselves as spaces more accessible to traditions of communication and civic engagement; ones which draw upon a more discursive space of commentary and opinion on the contemporary rather than being limited to the provision of daily news? This paper sketches an analysis of how the shift of newspapers from news to commentary and identity politics which is already occurring may be informed by previous paradigms of periodical news production. It explores certain aspects of the newspapers function over time in order to consider what it has to offer in whatever reconfigured technological future.

Experiential Learning and Journalism Education: Lessons Learned in the Practice of Teaching Journalism.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to detail research into experiential learning and journalistic practice in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield.Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores a range of themes and issues stemming from the application of an experiential learning approach to postgraduate journalism education at the University of Sheffield. Following the experiential learning exercise, a number of semi‐structured interviews were conducted with students and teaching staff in order to get an insight into their perceptions and experiences of the learning exercise.Findings – The development of experiential learning programmes within journalism education provides valuable experiences that simulate the real world of journalism practice. Further reflective research work would be required to embed such learning approaches within journalism practice modules across the UK.Practical implications – Embedding experiential learning exercises within vocationally orie...

Introduction: Digital newspaper archive research

The papers in this volume emerge from a conference which brought together scholars of journalism history and experts in digital newspaper archives. It was the first event organised as part of the AHRC Research Network, ‘Exploring the language of the popular in American and British newspapers 1833–1988’. The purpose of the conference, held at the University of Sheffield in January 2011, was to examine a range of scholarship on historical newspapers that was coming out of the expansion in the use of digital newspaper archives. As the conference organiser Martin Conboy notes, there is a ‘refreshing’ abundance of work which examines both British and American journalism in the 19th and 20th centuries which has ‘sketched out the mutual influences’ therein. The papers in this volume then draw on these themes as well as signal developments and opportunities in the production, use and development of digital archives themselves. The papers either explicitly address the range of challenges and opportunities of using digital newspaper archives while at the same time presenting research made possible by the archives. Other papers are less evaluative or prescriptive and demonstrate the scope and depth of analysis that such archives allow for media historians. An example of the former is the article by Clare Horrocks which highlights a number of important issues that relate to the development and scope of such resources and the diversity of their users’ needs. As both developer and user herself, Horrocks emphasises the benefits of projects which have prioritised a more collaborative and userfocused approach to their development. Significantly, she draws out some of the issues which stem from the market-orientated approach of commercial providers which position the user as customer and as such has implications for those of us who use such resources in our teaching, arguing that such priorities can often raise potential barriers for student learning and collaboration. Interestingly, Horrocks draws on scholarship from within the field of ‘e-learning’ and digital pedagogy to elicit relevant points about how we teach and learn using digital resources. Of particular concern for Horrocks is the situation of the learner as ‘consumer’ which she suggests limits the pedagogic scope of the resources. She argues that greater collaboration between users in the development and refinement of the resources can be undermined by commercial imperatives. Similarly, Nicole Maurantonio asserts that media historians, particularly those of the twentieth century, should embrace a much wider pool of resources for their historical research. In developing this argument, Maurantonio focuses on the ‘exquisite opportunities’ which lie in encompassing the visual as well as the textual in digital archival research. Via an analysis of both newspaper (digital and analogue) and television coverage of the 1985 Philadelphia police bombing of a house occupied by MOVE—a ‘radical’ collective which took up residence in an area of West Philadelphia—Maurantonio suggests that a greater appreciation of the visual/pictorial would enhance the scope as well as appreciation of journalism’s narrative Media History, 2014 Vol. 20, No. 1, 1–3, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2013.872410

Normative Expectations: Employing "communities of practice" models for assessing journalism’s normative claims

Journalisms relationship with the public has historically rested on an assumption of its Fourth Estate roles and as fulfilling democratic imperatives. The normative dimensions of these ideals have also long been “taken as given” in journalism studies, serving as a starting point for discussions of journalisms public service, interest, and role. As contradictions to these normative ideals expose flaws in such assumptions, a reassessment of this normative basis for journalism is needed. This paper looks to challenge normative legacies of journalisms societal role. Drawing on uses and gratification theoretical frameworks and engaging with communities of practice, it explores how communities understand journalism from both top-down (journalism) and bottom-up (citizen) perspectives. This research considers citizen expectations of journalism and journalists, and evaluates perceptions of journalistic values from the ground up. By employing a community facilitation model, it offers an opportunity for participants from across the community to reassess their own conceptions of the role of journalism. This establishes a better basis to approach the journalism–public relationship that does not advantage historic, normative, or traditional legacies.

THE ‘RADICAL’ NARRATIVE, POLITICAL THOUGHT AND PRAXIS

This article offers a methodological refinement to the radical narrative of media history and advocates an exploration of the ideological dynamics of media texts as a crucial component of their praxis. Focusing on early to mid nineteenth-century utilitarian theory and praxis as exemplified in newspapers and pamphlets such as the Westminster Review, the Examiner and Pamphlets for the People, the article offers a sophisticated ideological critique which is intended to augment radical analyses of media history. This analysis allows a more focused and precise account of the ways in which early proto-liberal reformers used the press in their political strategy. Despite the Philosophic Radicals having democratic aspirations, the article identifies inherent paternalistic and oppressive components of this praxis which has their seeds in classical Greek political thought.

Redefining Journalism During the Period of the Mass Press 1880–1920

While history is the sum of continuous change, in some eras the course of things changes more profoundly and quickly than in other. At the turn of the twentieth century, the massive transformations that came with the rise of the mass press set the standards for new roles and functions for journalism in society. The ‘old’ journalism, rooted in ideological frameworks and targeting a relatively small and elitist part of society, was complemented with a ‘new’ journalism that tried to cater the needs for information of a much bigger audience based on increasingly distinct journalistic criteria. Journalism had to essentially redefine itself, to remain economically viable, find audiences, and establish a position in what could be labelled a ‘democratic market society’. In this ‘professional project’ new role perceptions of what journalism should be and how journalists should act came into being. A ‘reflective style’ rooted in ideological frameworks as well as literary and intellectual values was supplemented with a ‘news style’ which centred around facts, news values and active reporting. These transformations were not revolutionary—traditional conceptions of journalism existed alongside new initiatives—nor did they happen overnight. Although both utopian and dystopian discourses of contemporary observers suggest that journalism quite quickly changed for the better or worse, these dynamics of change were slower and more subtle. However, with hindsight one can conclude that the media landscape and the journalistic profession looked profoundly different at the end of the 1920s than it did four decades earlier. The reconceptualization of news, journalism and the news industry that took place during this period laid the grounds for the development of the profession for over a century—until the rise of the Internet disrupted the field again. The collection of essays in this special edition addresses various dimensions of change in journalism along the lines of technology, economy and professional repertoires, norms and practices. It draws from a bigger collaborative project between the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen and the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History at the University of Sheffield. The project ‘Capturing Change in Journalism. Shifting Role Perceptions at the Turn of the 20 and 21 Centuries’, jointly funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, has sought to examine the changes within journalism at distinct historical junctures. It starts from the assumption that crucial to understanding journalism’s future role is looking to previous moments when its position in society was seemingly tenuous. To investigate the mechanisms underlying processes of rapid transformations, it analyses

FROM “WE” TO “ME”: The changing construction of popular tabloid journalism

In 1886, in “The Future of Journalism”, W. T. Stead expressed the view that it was the “personal touch” in newspapers that would transcend the vapidity of a hypothesized “we”. Nevertheless, it was to be the ability of newspapers, exploiting his own pioneering take on the New Journalism, to articulate a plausible version of a collective voice which was to dominate the journalism of the mass market of the twentieth century. A refinement of the language of this collective articulation of the interests and tastes of a mass readership comes in the popular tabloid newspapers of the period following the Second World War and reaches its most self-consciously vernacular expression in the Sun from the 1980s onwards. However, when comparing the print version of the contemporary Sun with its online version, we might expect to witness a radical departure from traditional notions of the popular predicated on an appeal to a relatively homogenous collective readership and a move to a more atomized, self-assembling notion of the online reader. The “personalized” touch of this form of journalism is very different from that envisaged by Stead but by exploring the ways in which a theme which he considered central to journalisms mission (its address to an audience) is adapting to an online environment, we may be able to reconsider the changing definition and function of the “popular”. In doing so, it may allow us to reflect upon the implications of a move from “we” to “me” in the articulation of audience in the online version of the Sun.

‘Making voices heard …’: Index on Censorship as advocacy journalism:

The magazine Index on Censorship has sought, since its launch in 1972, to provide a space where censorship and abuses against freedom of expression have been identified, highlighted and challenged....

Media Control: News as an Institution of Power and Social Control

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