Following from Deepak Ranjan Jena, Managing Editor, Media Watch
Call for Papers: Journal of Media
Watch
Topic: Mutualisation of News and Engaging Media
Important Dates :
March 15, 2016
(Abstract Submission)
May 15, 2016
(Full Paper Submission)
In 2010, the former editor of Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, showed the world about
the power of publicness through his twitter posting revolting against the court
injection on Guardian to report on the dumping of toxic chemicals by the
company ‘Trafigura’. Trafigura became
viral in twitter; the result is more vigorous news stories and personal
comments that could have possibly escaped from the newspaper pages. Calling
this as ‘Mutualisation of News’, Rusbridger underlined the
collaboration of professionals and non-professionals in the dissemination of news.
From a carefully filtered and controlled letters to editor, the role of readers
or news consumers have traversed such distance that news are no produced by a
collaborative effort. The Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ is a typical
example of how the laymen or those having a journalistic flair or at least an
opinion work together to build an interactive or collaborative news platform, a
completely different experience social media platforms provide.
As mutualisation gears its definition to wider
spectrum, this issue of The Journal of
Media Watch looks at the possibilities of using this concept in the
developing world for journalism and news media. Journalism pays sustained
attention to the coverage of ideas, policies, programs, activities and events
dealing with the improvement of the life of people.
As far as thedeveloping world is concerned, media
plays a pivotal role in keeping any eye not only on the government policies,
but the larger human and societal developmental issues in the country. However
the media in the developing world, both press and electronic, in entangled in
the serious competition amidst the clutter where they consider political tussle
and power struggle as the prominent grey matter to boost their readership or
viewership. Though the 24 hour news channels ‘report’, these are often news
pieces ‘to inform’ rather than ‘to change’. This is same with the
revolution of e-papers as well; print shifted to online that eased readability
for larger users, but added nothing to the wide opportunities that the online
platform provide news media. The role of people in this process is limited to
sharing the news links and posting comments only to the selective news allowed
by the newspaper. The downturn for journalism in developing countries lies
here, while exciting opportunities are wide open. If in 1969, George Varghese,
a prominent journalist in The Hindustan Times could make revolutionary changes
through his fortnightly column, ‘Our Village Chatera’ depicting the
life in the village of Chatera that opened the windows towards the rural life
of India, in this era where technology has put forward immense opportunity for
journalists to embark on ‘reporting for changes’, we cannot see such
advancements in journalism.
News is now a collaborative effort, and with
developmental reports, it is even more demanding. Many a times reporters need
to get various insights into the wider spectrum of an issue which is possible
only through considering audience’ or reader’s point of view. On this special
issue Journal of Media Watch invites
empirical and objective research papers on the following topics:
§
Mutualization of news
§
Engaging news media
§
Community journalism
§
Collective media ownership
§
Prosumers
§
Shared media platforms
§
News plurality
§
Paywall and Firewalls
§
Hyperlocal media
§
Diversity innovations
Dr. Sony Jalarajan Raj
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Media Watch
Department of Communication
7-166C, 10700-104 Avenue
MacEwan University, Edmonton, AB, Canada, T5J 4S2
Email: sonyjraj@gmail.com
Tel: 001-587-778-2426
For detail information regarding paper submission, please visit the
journal’s website: http://www.mediawatchglobal.com
E-mail your submission to
sonyjraj@gmail.com
mediajournal@ymail.com
mediawatchjournal@gmail.com
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