Making news online : a case study of online journalism education

Abstract

New media has brought along constant evolution to professional journalism practices and news genres. Online news practices challenge the occupational jurisdiction of journalism with a multiplicity of conflicting and competing journalistic ideals, such as objectivity, transparency and participation. In order to prepare journalist students to live up to the demands of online journalism today, journalism schools have developed courses that emphasize journalistic practice on online news platforms and tools, such as Twitter, WordPress.com, Soundslides Plus, etc. Multi-platform expertise of journalism is a core element of those courses.

The present thesis problematizes the emphasis on transmission of certain professional values and news formats without raising students’ critical awareness that there can be diversity of values by exploring a genre-aware approach to online journalism course design and analysis. Drawing upon three theoretical traditions, i.e., critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2003), genre analysis (Bhatia, 2004, 2008, 2010; Martin & Rose, 2008; Rose & Martin, 2012), and multimodal discourse analysis (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996; Van Leeuwen, 2005), a multi-dimensional, genre-aware framework of online news analysis has been devised. In order to facilitate the pedagogical design and analysis of online journalism courses, the present thesis also integrates genre pedagogy (Rose & Martin, 2012), Community of Practice (CoP) (Lave &Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and Outcome-based Teaching and Learning (OBTL) (Biggs & Tang, 2007, 2011). The alignment between the intended learning outcomes (ILOs), teaching and learning activities (TLAs) and assessment activities is examined in both stated and enacted course curricula with specific focus on the construction of a shared knowledge base/repertoire of online news genres in relation to the multidimensional online news genre analysis framework.

In terms of data collection, the present thesis focuses on an online journalism course provided by a journalism school in a tertiary institute in Hong Kong through a methodological triangulation of classroom observation, qualitative interviews with students, and collection of course documents and students’ online news assignments and records of preparation activities, such as Facebook groups’ chatting records. Content analysis has been adopted to conduct within-case data analysis. The multi-method triangulation allows a comprehensive analysis of the case.

By focusing on the analysis of the teaching and learning of the two major platforms, the audio slideshow and the multimedia news website (referred to as the multimedia package by the course instructor), the present thesis has found that the course under investigation has been lacking in the provision or construction of a knowledge base on meaning making through multi-modal (especially audio-visual) semiotic resources and schematic structures of online news genres. The pedagogical design has also widened the divide between the good- and bad-performers when average students mystified the goodperformers’ success as ‘inborn gifts’ rather than early exposure to implicit knowledge of professional practice, genre patterns and multimodal, semiotic meaning making strategies.