Photo credit: Clare Bloomfield

Michael Karlberg from Western Washington University blogs about why we should care that, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, girls and boys in middle school and high school put in a full day’s workload worth of facetime with media:

A recent study of media consumption in the U.S. shows that the average 8-18-year-old consumes over 7.5 hours of media every day. If you measure the use of more than one media at the same time, this age group actually packs over 10.5 hours of media into those 7.5 hours, through media multi-tasking. (And none of these figures include talking or texting on cell phones, which add up to about an hour per day.)

Within these overall figures, 8-18-year-olds in the U.S. spend 4.5 hours every day viewing TV – a number that has risen steadily over the past decade despite the growth of the internet. If you add up all TV viewing on weekdays, weekends, and vacations, this age group spends more time watching television every year than attending school. Full blog post.

I agree with Karlberg that we will not be able to tackle social problems on our streets, in our schools and inside our homes until we turn off the television and use more discretion in how we spend our time on our laptops and cellphones. Frankly, using these media devices has made entire generations of people apathetic. Instead of confronting issues in our neighborhoods, we turn to the TV and Internet for entertainment and even seemingly good causes like (constantly) “staying in touch” with friends and family (which borders on playtime, if you ask me).

There was a funny clip from the Colbert Report in which the host mocked the idea that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook were responsible for the activities in the recent uprising in Egypt. He asked his guest, tongue-in-cheek,  something like, “Would it have been smarter to keep the Internet up? Because I find young people are less motivated to do anything when they can go onto Facebook.” I felt this succinctly summed up the same point Karlberg makes that media breed passivity, and then cynicism and lethargy.

Except, the Egyptian young people were using the same social network sites that my friends and I in the U.S. use. So what’s the difference? Why did they use their access to millions of voices to create social change, while in the U.S. we use it to follow celebrity meltdowns? Is that an implicit statement that we don’t think there is anything that needs to be changed? Are we saying, ‘yep, I looked around and it seems everything is fine, so I’ll just see what Charlie Sheen has to say?’

In the spring semester we conducted an online survey and analysis of Alabama newspaper readers to research how they get their news from their local newspapers. Each of us wrote an industry report on an element of the findings, and each report is accompanied by a “white paper”, a.k.a. the write up of our research methods and procedures in arriving at our conclusions.

Here is the main page to access all of our reports, or you can click here to go straight to mine, which is about what Alabama readers want from their local newspapers in a mobile environment.

Print newspaper websites and mobile news applications frequently use audio and video to report their news, and their counterparts of television, cable and radio operations are filled with text reports of their broadcast stories.

 Adding to the difficulty of defining what news audiences like and dislike in their news menu is the fact that readers may invent unforeseen uses of new communication technologies and modes of accessing and using news and information. Good examples would be the telephone and SMS.

Northwestern University professor Pablo Boczkowski writes that research in journalism studies gives a striking image of the “emergence of a multifaceted process of boundary blurring, shaping the contours of traditional media’s forays in the new information environments.”

These boundaries, Boczkowski explained, borrowing from anthropologist Clifford Geertz, are reshaped by a transition in the news ecology much like “a sea change in our notion not so much of what knowledge is but of what it is we want to know.”

The forces of change also include how people want to know it, particularly on the go.

If you want more on the new news ecology, check out Professor Lowry’s blog: http://wilsonlowrey.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/the-new-news-media-ecology/

The inventor told his father about his big dreams for the new device. “I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to house just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.”¹

Alexander Graham Bell at the opening of the long-distance line from New York to Chicago, 1892. Source: Library of Congress

In essence, Bell was announcing that communication technology had advanced from the age of “text messages” (after all, was that not what telegraphs were?) to the age of voice calls.

How surprised might the father of the telephone be to learn that more than 130 years after his breakthrough, Americans have reverted to communicating by sending abbreviated typed messages?

In fact, a study released by Nielsen Mobile in 2008 found that cell phone users on average sent more text messages than the number of calls they made. During the second quarter of 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber placed or received 204 phone calls each month. In comparison, the average mobile customer during the same period in 2006 sent or received 357 text messages per month – a 450% increase over the number of text messages circulated monthly .²

Makers of the original mobile phone handsets certainly did not anticipate that text messaging would become the primary use of the devices. Companies designed small keypads primarily for punching numbers, with the alphabet as an afterthought.³ Their prediction – unlike Bell’s, which correctly guessed that the public would use his Transmitting Instrument to “call on” their friends without leaving the house – did not account for the user-generated revolution now underway in mobile communication.

The typical teen texter exchanges more than 50 text messages per day, or 1,500 per month. That's 18,000 text messages per year! - Study by The Pew Internet and American Life Project

This revolution is being led by youth who come from a generation than speaks as much with thumbs as it does with tongues.⁴ According to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the typical teen texter exchanges more than 50 text messages per day, or 1,500 per month. That’s 18,000 text messages per year.

In 2009, a writer for the Los Angeles Times technology blog caught up with Friedhelm Hillebrand, former chairman of the nonvoice services committee within the Global System for Mobile Communications and the man responsible for deciding the space limit for text messages would be 160 characters. The writer asked the inventor of the short messaging service (SMS) for his impressions about the evolution of the technology since 1986 when it was first created.

“Hillebrand never imagined how quickly and universally the technology would be adopted. What was originally devised as a portable paging system for craftsman using their cars as a mobile office is now the preferred form of on-the-go communication for cellphone users of all ages. ‘Nobody had foreseen how fast and quickly the young people would use this,’ Hillebrand said.”⁵

It is significant for news media that the division of the Pew Research Center that is dedicated to studying the Internet has focused an entire report on teens and their relationship and use of their cell phones. Users, in increasing numbers, are turning to their cell phones for news and information. The mobile devices industry is rushing to facilitate this consumer behavior. News providers, then, should be rushing to fulfill their audiences’ needs and their heightened capabilities on-the-go. Some of these needs will look familiar to what newspapers have provided in the past and some will be new and specific to the dynamic mobile landscape.

Newspapers want to follow the example of Alexander Graham Bell, who envisioned the uses for the technology he invented and created a company that thrived on the huge demand for both the device and the service. However, the news industry has been more apt to have the low expectations and limited vision of the SMS providers. For example, when television emerged, news shows began as radio content with a camera that slowly evolved into visual storytelling.

New media is old, and old is new again!

The Internet, as well, was initially used for little more than pasting print content on a Web page until reporters and editors discovered the power of interactive multimedia.⁶ This was not the final frontier, however. As journalists finally begin to acclimate to digital storytelling on the Web, connectivity has gone mobile with hand-held devices – smartphones, eReaders, the iPad, what’s next?

Some industry analysts predict that, again, our “old” medium – the Web site – is giving way to a new one: the “app” – or application software that makes connecting to the Internet from a portable device involve less clicking. News companies that assume readers would use these mobile devices to connect through Internet browsers to their Web sites may be bypassed for stories that are pushed to readers through news apps or through social media on the mobile devices. News providers not only have to adapt to the new communication technology, they must also adapt to the unforeseen preferences and uses that users dream up for the new technology.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the iPad launch

In January 2010 Apple, Inc., unveiled its much-hyped iPad and pitched the device as a technology that aimed to maximize the potentialities of mobile Internet connectivity. Perhaps more important than the arrival of highly anticipated gadget, which begin shipping in March, was Apple’s overt market expansion, almost a re-branding, as a mobile devices company.

“Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world now,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in his address at the January 2010 iPad launch event in San Francisco. He pointed out that the mobile devices divisions of Sony, Samsung and Nokia fall behind Apple’s sales of mobile products, in which he includes MacBooks, iPods with the iTunes Store, and iPhones with the App Store.⁷

Apple has proposed that the iPad with its iBookstore will do for the publishing industry what the iPod with its iTunes store did for the music industry.

Reports, however, indicate resistance from newspaper and magazine publishers over sharing subscription revenues with Apple, which is asking for 30% percent. Even The New York Times, which introduced its app for the iPad at the launch event, is rumored to be plagued by disputes about how to price its content for the iPad.

Wrapping up the demonstration of the Times’ iPad app at the Apple event, Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations at “the paper of record,” said, “We”re incredibly psyched to pioneer the next version of digital journalism.”⁸

So, your thoughts: Is Apple giving us a piece of technology that will be our major mode of communication for the next century, like Alexander Graham Bell? Or is a user-generated change (like the text messaging revolution on mobile phone) still ahead?

¹ Letter written by Alexander Graham Bell to his father, Alexander Melville Bell, Boston, March 10, 1876, in Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers 1862 to 1939, in the Library of Congress.

² “In U.S. SMS text messaging tops mobile phone calling,” Nielsen Mobile, September 22, 2008

³ “Effects of Mobile Communication,” Scott W. Campbell and Rich Ling, Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, eds. Jennings Bryant and Mary Beth Oliver, p. 603.

⁴ “Teens and Mobile Phones” study, April 20, 2010, Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project.

⁵ Mark Milian, “Why text messages are limited to 160 characters,” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2009.

⁶ David Carlson, “The Online Timeline, A capsule history of online news and information systems.”

⁷ Apple Special Event January 2010, San Francisco, video-on-demand.

⁸ ibid. Minute 39:30.

Here is what I wrote before about what the mirror metaphor suggests:

that “media are the very part of social reality that we can see (the reflection in the mirror) …. media are not simply floating above or outside their communities. In fact, they are more than just shaped by society; shaping them is the very process of negotiating meaning of our social reality.”

www.whomakesthenews.org

This afternoon, Sarah Macharia made a wonderful presentation of a preliminary report on the findings of the Global Media Monitoring Project 2010. The name of the Web site says it all: www.whomakesthenews.org.

Who makes the news? The answer to this question is a reminder that the media have a long way to go to reach the ideal of the mirror metaphor – to accurately reflect the world.

Consider this: Women make up 52% of the world’s population, but they are the subjects of only 24% of the world’s news coverage. “What’s wrong with this?” Macharia asked to make everyone think – really think – about how and why this is. She pointed out that if the media were truly a mirror of the world, the representation of women in the news would reflect their representation on this planet.

This figure of women as news subjects is up only three percentage points from 2005 (21%). In 2000 the figure was 18% and in 1995 17%. At this rate of progress (used in the most liberal sense of the word), it will be another 47.3 years – nearly another half of a century – until we achieve parity.

Someone in the audience, however, said a very heartening thing. Social media and the other powers of the Internet will surely help us speed up the rate of advancement on this front.

Participants all agreed that the first step in this endeavor is awareness; so take note, people, and make sure your circle of family, friends and acquaintances are also conscious of this barrier to the global advancement of women and the entire human race. Read the report. This is a problem of news media and also global society. We are all implicated, and we are all capable of contributing to social change.

Nobody — not even Jobs, by his own admission — is sure what consumers will use the iPad for, but I’m guessing it will be the first true home computer. Conventional PCs live in studies; laptops make brief, furtive forays into the living room. The iPad will become the first whole-house computer, shared among an entire family, passed from hand to hand, roaming freely from living room to kitchen to bedroom to — look, it’s going to happen — bathroom, at ease everywhere, tethered to nothing. It’s not a revolution, but it’s a real change, the kind of change you notice.

But technology doesn’t change society, people change society… Apple tapped into that user-driven model of innovation with the iPhone and App Store, in which companies and individuals can write their own app software and make it available to the public at the price they determine. The impressive results, which apparently surprised even Apple, have been well documented and analysts project the success will continue to accelerate.

But to say the iPad is revolutionary isn’t quite right. There’s nothing like it out there, so there’s no regime to change. One of the things that makes Apple unique is that it never holds focus groups. It doesn’t ask people what they want; it tells them what they’re going to want next. Where Microsoft likes to enter established markets and take them over by brute force, Apple works by creating new niches and dominating them from the get-go.

First, a quick story that may or may not relate to one or both of the topics of this post: I was reminded recently to take some time for restraint, reflection, and remembrance. These are spiritual ideas about finding rejuvenation, and it struck me that they are somewhat drowned out by their secular counterparts, also beginning with the letter ‘r’: rest and recreation.

Spring break is coming up and I know students are busy making plans for some R&R, because that’s what the commercials tell you to do when you need to be rejuvenated. There is a beautiful poem by one of my favorite musicians about this idea of taking time for ourselves when we also have the choice to be giving of ourselves: http://david-hunt-music.com/store/one-life-live.html

This anecdote is a roundabout way of leading into an update on some of the research I’ve gathered on two pursuits this semester: religion & journalism and mobile news delivery. These topics are so rich that I can never wrap my head around even a sliver of their complexities to write anything, so forgive me here, but I had the urge to publish anyway.

Why is it relevant to note the divergent preferences for secular r&r and spiritual r&r&r? A common theme emerging in my sources on religion and journalism is that newsrooms feel out-of-touch with their ‘believing’ readership and many studies find that readers feel their news sources ignore religion or even harbor suspicions and skepticism toward their faiths.

It is in the best interest of the news outlets to bridge this divide because audiences want more coverage of religion, according to the recently released report titled Understanding the Participatory News Consumer published by the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project.

When asked what subjects should get more coverage, 41% of respondents said religion and spirituality. That was second on the list of desired news after scientific news and discoveries at 44%, and followed by 39% in favor of health and medicine, 39% state government, and 38% neighborhood or local community.

Obviously I obtained this report primarily as a source for mobile news delivery research, but I’ll take current religion and journalism data anywhere I can get them. I’m excited to be attending the Religion Communication Congress in Chicago in April to gather fresh insights for this project.

As for the status of understanding delivering news to mobile devices, the adoption of this technology (and the blogging and market researching, etc.) is happening at such a breakneck speed, it is hard to keep up.  Here is a Harvard Nieman Lab blog summary of key points in the Pew report to whet your appetite to read some or all of the full 51-page report.

There is a discrepancy in reports of the popularity of local news that I’m currently trying to clear up. For example:

Local tops the list of mobile news accessed by AP Mobile news app users, according to Verve Wireless’ 2010 press release. (The figures show that local news maintains users’ interests but breaking news creates traffic spikes.)

• Local news was the most accessed content.
• Within local, general news followed by sports, and then national was the most accessed content.
• However, major breaking world or national news drove the biggest traffic spikes, for example the news of Michael Jackson’s death spurred a daily increase in traffic by 133%.
• Video has grown in importance for local media. In the past 3 months, more than seventy local media companies started mobilizing their video content through Verve’s platform. Viewership has increased by 106%.

However, according to the Pew report:

Internet users use the web for a range of news, but local is not near the top of the list.

The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%).

So local news is not heavily accessed online from a stationary or laptop but it is a favorite on-the-go? Remember, above we saw survey respondents didn’t forget news about the places they live and work when asked what subjects should get more coverage: “38% said their neighborhood or local community.” Would that number increase if respondents were asked specifically in the context of news accessed on their mobile devices?

Yes, I realize that Verve Wireless is motivated to sell its White Label app platform to local news outlets, but it is worth asking whether that platform actually succeeds in its purpose to deliver local news to users and whether Pew’s numbers account for the many news consumers who aren’t using AP’s mobile devices app.

That’s the update. Everyone enjoy their spring break. Try to squeeze in some time for r&r&r, while you r&r.

I’ll try to blog about the David Mathews Center for Civic Life student conference I attended this past weekend.

One of the books that I’m reading for my research paper in Contemporary Issues in Journalism makes the argument that, owing to journalists’ professional disregard and wariness of all things religion, reporters are getting an incomplete picture of the world. How incomplete? At least half, according to the book, and that’s not including the other other half that gets coverage that is often incorrect.

The author of the foreword, Michael Gerson, attributed the missed stories and misunderstandings to “secular blinders,” and said the more sophisticated our knowledge of religion (i.e. the sooner we take off the veils), the more sophisticated our knowledge of the world.

The book promises to go beyond just diagnosing the problem to making prescriptions for a remedy. I’ll be sure to blog about my thoughts on those solutions. I hope they go beyond merely advocating acceptance of this “professional dichotomy” that is holding newsrooms hostage and actually get at the underlying inconsistencies that have resulted in this cognitive dissonance of religion in the press.

From what I can tell just by reading the foreword and the introduction, this book will make an attempt.

Anyone who wants to learn more about the most recent developments in the discourse on religion and journalism should check it out: http://www.blindspotreligion.com/

IRE talked about how the Web--both the Surface ("visible") and Deep ("invisible") Webs--can help reporters address the occupational hazard of having to know everything about anything at any given moment.

The hour-long presentation, Effective use of the Internet, was fittingly framed by the first word in the title. Mark Horvit, IRE’s executive director, began by emphasizing that reporters should approach online research armed with a strategy (i.e., key words to search and a general idea of what’s available and desirable) to avoid getting distracted by the Web’s potentially cavernous detours. Step one, Horvit said, is not to log on, but to sketch out a plan.

Important for every investigative journalist to know about search engines is that a Google search, for example, does not look through the actual Internet, per se. It searches Google’s servers, which are stocked with information that the search engine company’s Web “crawlers” have found and stored.

What they’re missing – eye-opening stats:

• Google searches far less than half of what’s out there
• Total shared results of any two search engines: 8.9 percent
• Any three search engines: 2.2 percent
• Above figures from 2007 study by Dogpile, Penn State and Queensland University of Technology
• Some estimate the “invisible” Web is 550 times bigger than the “visible” Web.
• Google says more than 1,000 federal government sites can’t be crawled.

If (way) more than half the Web isn’t showing up in a search engine result, then it is important for investigative reporters to know where to go to find it. Here are some of the principles behind efficiently conducting those searches, with both superficial tools and subterraneous means.

Surface Web – Savvy searching tips:

• Treat info online as one would any source (confirm)
• Find out who owns the Web site
• Know Google advanced search options (esp. domain and file type)
• Archived Web: Gone doesn’t mean forever. (Google cache, Wayback Machine)
• Consult at least two other search engines–each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
• People finders (i.e., www.pipl.com, www.whitepages.com, etc.)
• Social media searches (i.e., www.whostalkin.com… Who’s Talkin’, not Who Stalkin’… or so they say)
• Use Wikipedia for the footnotes only

The session then took Web searches to the next level… well, at least a step above what amateur voyeurs might use to get information.

Deep Web – Search like a pro:

• Know what search engines typically miss (databases, content behind firewalls and registration screens, ASP/dynamically generated pages, Robo.txt excluded pages)
• The information is out there, but the key is to find organizations that make is more easily accessible. Bookmark these!
• Directories by and for journalists (‘Net Tour and Reporter’s Desktop)
• Know the gateways to public records
• Pipl actually claims to access the Deep Web. Try it. Pipl yourself. It’s scary how much information it digs up with just a name.
• The census is your friend, especially in 2010
• To get fully submerged… go to IRE’s Web site!

I’m not going to copy-paste in this post all of the useful links for discovering the “hidden Web” and the “dead Web,” which were hyper-linked in the PowerPoint presentation that Mark offered to send out to anybody at the day-long seminar who asked for it. All of this stuff is available at the organization’s site, and I can see what the nominal membership fees pay for, seriously.

Last night I watched CNBC’s “Planet of the Apps: A Handheld Revolution.” Although the report mainly focused on the profitablity of the apps market and how the “small applications – or apps – that fit on our mobile phone do everything from helping us accomplish mundane tasks to keeping us entertained while we wait for the bus,” it also delved into how the technology is changing society.

But technology doesn’t change society, people change society… at least, that’s how it should be.

For example, cell phones, although they had texting capabilities, were not originally designed for sending frequent text messages. Users drove that innovation.

From CNBC.com's Top-Selling Non-Gaming Apps of 2009: No. 3 Textfree Unlimited Send unlimited free texts for a whole year to any US mobile phone. Replies are free, too. Category: Lifestyle Seller: Pinger, Inc. Price: $5.99 Requirements: iPhone OS 2.2 or later, iPod Touch

Apple tapped into that user-driven model of innovation with the iPhone and App Store, in which companies and individuals can write their own app software and make it available to the public at the price they determine. The impressive results, which apparently surprised even Apple, have been well documented and analysts project the success will continue to accelerate.

In “Planet of the Apps” I saw evidence of a user generated paradigm shift similar to that of the texting cell phone. The popular “Bump” app (which lucked out in being the 1 millionth app downloaded from the App Store) has the technology of enabling devices carrying the app to “talk” to each other. Thus, while users currently “bump” their devices for simple exchanges such as photos, contact info and other data, the app could potentially be used for more formal social exchanges, mundane and otherwise, such as making a purchase by “bumping” your device to a register.

One of the experts interviewed in the hour-long report said that apps are the ultimate “instant gratification,” but I beg to differ. The mobility of these devices essentially transcends conventional conceptions of space, so why wouldn’t we also need to reconceptualize our notions of time as well. Again, it depends on the user.

For example, my husband was finally allowed to purchase an iPhone (and I hope he isn’t downloading the same first-person shooter games that he put on my iPhone or reading this blog.) Beside the occasional penguins bombing igloos,  the huz is great at identifying good, useful apps. Before a road trip to Canada, he suped up my iPhone with everything I needed, including navigational help, mileage calculator, cheap gas locater, a packing reminder list and more.

Even six months ago, he knew that the key to a good app was location-awareness, which is something I’ve picked up on in the industry mainstream discourse only recently. So it didn’t surprise me at all when the huz said I had to get the AroundMe app. Many are saying that what is the greatest step forward in the much anticipated/heavily speculated iTablet/iSlate is its hyper-local capabilities.

“Smartphones,” as they are often called—a name which will will recede from our vocabulary with the advent of Apple iTablet/iSlate and its ilk—are leading us into the next generation of computing, e-reading, mobile gaming, TV viewing and news and information delivery/gathering. The ultimate convergence device… until the next advance in technology, at least.

Thus, the smartphone needs a new name. Until we develop the capability of projected 3D “screens” like Minority Report, Iron Man or Avatar, I’m calling my handheld my finger-smudge device.