The Project for Excellence in Journalism today released a major study looking at changes in the newsroom over the last three years. A major focus of the study was the influence of the Web. While the report has some gloomy assessments of the print product, the discussion about the influence of the Web on newspapers was largely upbeat. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Fully 57 percent of those surveyed at large papers (and 40 percent at smaller papers) thought “web technology offers the potential for greater-than-ever journalism and will be the savior of what we once thought of as newspaper newsrooms.”

2. The Web is thought to open up many new worlds for newspapers. For instance, the Web enables them to offer video content to directly compete with television. The Web allows newspapers to open up a dialogue with those in their community as well as extend the reach of their circulation worldwide. News junkies now realize that online newspapers are often their best source to find out timely, exclusive content.

3. Newspaper websites are no longer thought as competing with the print product, but “complementary and mutually strengthening.” For instance. website readers want strong visuals, concisely-packaged stories and easy navigation and this has affected how they present news in the print product.

4. The Web has been accepted as a fact of life in the newsroom. Reporters aren’t asked to file the story with the Web after sending it to the print product; they are expected to file it to the Web. Exclusive material is no longer kept off the Web to protect the print product, but is now posted immediately.

This study comes at an interesting time as the Newspaper Division of AEJMC is having a heated (although often illuminating) discussion on its list about whether to keep the name the same or whether to change it and what to change it to? Those who advocated a name change often do so for the reasons that the division is associated with the print product, although newspapers certainly go beyond something that gives you inkstains and lines the bottom of birdcages.

Is the Web, like 57 percent of those surveyed at larger newspapers believe, the savior for the journalism industry? Has the influence of the Web been largely positive or has it created negative consequences as well?? I would like to hear what you think

First, a confession. I spend WAY too much time on Facebook. I enjoy my virtual friendships and peaking in on what my friends are doing. I am always on the look out for new friends to add. But according to a study by Stephanie Tom Tong and associates in the most recent Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, you CAN have too many friends on Facebook. Tong did an experiment showing students Facebook pages where everything stayed constant except the number of friends (102, 302, 502, 702, 902). The students were asked to rate the Facebook page on social attractiveness, physical attractiveness and extroversion. In each case the relationship was more curvilinear than linear. That is, those with scores of either 302, 502 or 702 (depending on the measure) were viewed at the most sociable, attractive and extroverted. Why so? The authors use Social Information Processing theory to argue that people do use clues such as number of online friends as indicators of popularity, attractiveness and being extroverted. However, when someone has a huge number of online friends (like 902), people assume that the individual has spent too much time simply fishing for additional friends and that many of these people have no relationship with the subject. People may assume that the subject also spends too much time online and therefore is probably introverted. I am still in that “reasonable zone” of 350 friends. If you know of someone who isn’t my Facebook friend….

I have tried to be a good steward of the earth and recycle, so I have always felt guilty about printing out drafts of papers to edit rather than edit them on screen. My guilt has been relieved. Patty Wharton-Michael, in the most recent issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, confirmed my suspicions that people edit better on printed paper than they do on computer screens, although the nature of what they edit makes a difference too. One less thing to feel guilty about. Now if I could only feel less guilty about having a dirty desk….

Since the beginning of the World Wide Web, scholars have talked breathlessly about the possibility of the Internet creating a deliberative democracy. Internet utopians such as Lawrence K. Grossman, Nicholas Negroponte, and John Pavlik claimed that information-rich Internet would level the playing field between the average citizen and the political insider by providing the average citizen access to greater information and enhancing their ability to express those views directly to elected officials. Public officials, in turn, would actively seek out public opinion through electronic town halls and online opinion polls, producing a Jeffersonian Revolution in this country. The Internet would allow people from across the globe to communicate, causing nation states to evaporate so that the world would become one global community.

While some researchers such as Peter Dahlgren and Steffen Albrecht have found that deliberative forums can exist, evidence that the Internet in general, or its components such as blogs, can serve as forums that can transform politics and create a more deliberative democratic system is more sparse.

Jurgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, though often criticized, serves as the basis for setting standards of what would constistute a deliberative space.

*It is a status-free zone were everyone has the ability to participate. This means both that everyone has access to the deliberative space and people are judged less by their status than the soundness of their arguments.

*A deliberate space is a forum of rational and critical debate. Participants enter the debate armed with well-reasoned arguments and a willingness to listen to conflicting views.

*Participates debate areas of social interest not normally questioned in the political arena.

*Deliberative debate is not just concerned with engaging in discussion but developing solutions to problems. Ideally this debate is not just between citizens but citizens and public officials to develop the best solutions to society’s problems.

Several studies, including one that my co-author Barbara Kaye and I have done for Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics as well as a recent (2008) article in Javnost by Kim Strandberg, have identified several problems with the notion that the Internet in general, or components such as blogs in particular, can become public spheres. First, the deliberative forum must enjoy universal access. Many citizens do not have physical access to the Internet. There are also social barriers to deliberating online such as the need to be Internet literate as well as literate in English, the dominant language online. While a strength of the Internet is that it has sites devoted to nearly every imaginable topic, that also signals its weakness.The Internet may reflect the existing polarized and fragmented society by encouraging likeminded individuals to gather in “cyber ghettos” rather than to expose themselves to a diversity of people and opinions. Finally, there is little evidence that the Internet encourages critical, rational debate. The Internet structure doesn’t foster a sustained, robust discussion on a topic, and studies and do not indicate that the discussion online reaches the level of critical-rational arguments based on solid evidence.

I have painted a pretty negative view of the ability of the Internet to create a space for deliberative democracy. I would be interested in hearing your views.

Miriam J. Metzger, Andrew J. Flanagin and Ryan B. Medders reported in their ICA paper “Social and Heuristic Approaches to Credibility Evaluation,” which relied on a focus group 109 participants, that decisions about credibility of a Website are often based on social rather than individual criteria. For instance, respondents said they often read reviews or testimonials and often relied on the recommendations of enthusiasts or presumed experts as well as recommendations from trusted friends. The authors found that in making credibility decisions respondents often depended on heuristics to minimize their cognitive effort and time. Some of the most common heuristics subjects relied on were reputation of the site or source, endorsements from others, expectancy violation (did the site meet their expectations for that type of site, the appearance of the blog, whether the purpose of the site was to inform or persuade and to validate the information on the site with other Websites. This paper adds to the rich literature of what goes into credibility decisions and serves as a nice foundation for further theory building. What are ways in which you make credibility decisions?

This is part II of a series on the findings of the recent Pew Internet election study:

Pew Internet indicated that nearly 4 in 10 Internet users go online to get primary documents and to observe the campaign directly. This includes watching candidate debates, speeches and announcements, position papers and speech transcripts. Obama supporters, in particular, search out primary documents online. These results are in line with earlier Pew studies that suggest people many citizens prefer to avoid getting information filtered through the media and to get documents and visuals firsthand.

CNN.com just ran a report on a study On Cyberslacking: Workplace Status and Personal Internet Use at Work. Authors R. Kelly Garrett and James Danzinger, found in a survey of more than 1,000 people that using the Internet for personal reasons during work may not necessarily cut productivity. People may be able to easily take care of personal matters at work, allowing them to focus more clearly on their job tasks. Further, those higher up in the organization may be more likely to use the Internet for personal reasons than lower level employees. I now feel less guilty about reading PerezHilton at work.

Pew Internet just released its report on the role of the Internet in the 2008 presidential campaign. The study found that social network sites were playing an important role, particularly among young voters. Of those who have a social network profile, 40 percent had engaged in some political activity. For most individuals, this means discovering your friends’ political affiliation (which is posted on their profile). But among SNS users, 28 percent had sought out camapign information, 16 percent had signed up as a friend for a candidate and 15 percent had joined a political group. These numbers may seem small, but it is likely that those getting involved through social network sites such as Facebook are not the political activists who search out blogs or political Websites. While Pew Research doesn’t say so, my guess is that social network sites are getting many, particularly young people, involved in politics for the first time.

There are plenty of video games based on movies and movies based on video games.  Sometimes the crossover process results in successful movies and games, and sometimes it results in horrific movies and games.  Meanwhile, sometimes it seems that the two are becoming more and more like one another with game-like movies and movie-like games.  There’s obviously a little bit of hit and miss involved in the intermedia transfer process, and presumably a fair bit of thumb-holding from those who approve the crossovers as they wait to see if the spin-off is a hit or a dud.

In an attempt to reduce the portability challenge, the Radar Group is stepping into the breach with a plan to make convergence-friendly tales from the ground up in the form of “storyverses” (story universes) that can subsequently be developed into movies, video games, and whatever else one might like to crank out.  Radar Group’s chief creative officer, Scott Miller, describes the process thusly in a quote from an interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

“It will all start at Radar with what I call the ’storyverse’ — or story universe — which is a big bubble of story, character, and game play ideas.  From that central hub, one spoke will go to game development, another will go to movie or TV production, and so forth.”

A profile on the Condé Nast Portfolio site also has a bit more on Radar Group and its vision.

This isn’t exactly brand new, as Radar announced its launch in March, but the summer blockbuster session and resulting swarm of related video games and movies brings it to mind.  Form your own opinions on whether this is convergence at its best or worst.  Hopefully, it will at least help ward off future cringe-inducing crossovers like the Super Mario Brothers movie and the E.T. video game.

I just got back from the International Communication Association conference in Montreal. While AEJMC always seems like a high school reunion, ICA always seems like your wife’s Christmas party. There are a lot of people there you don’t know, but there are also important people in the field you had never seen before but just heard about.

I’m always impressed with the quality of papers at ICA. I am also impressed with how quickly that newer convergent research is being researched. I don’t remember seeing many Internet papers at AEJ until 1999. At ICA, a whole session was devoted to ways to study YouTube. Go to the ICA site to check out the papers at this year’s conference (although you need to be a member to download articles.