(Left) Veronika Jermanova, Communications Intern at EMMA/the Future Media Lab..
In the most recent edition of our bi-weekly news roundup, Veronika Jermanova shares the news that caught her eye in the past two weeks. The news round-up is a way for the Future Media Lab. team and members of the Future Media Lab. network to share articles about innovations and developments in the media sector, including references to relevant media policy debates.
Here are Veronika’s choices for this week:
1) With the popularity of drones skyrocketing in recent years (alongside the falling prices of the devices, making them increasingly accessible to civilians), journalists and academics have begun exploring the impact the devices could have on journalism. Drones would be able to provide significant input into the field of journalism. Their ability to reach places that are not accessible or that might be too dangerous for humans, could help journalists obtain new and divergent angles for their research. However, the prospect of conducting journalistic investigations via drones has many ethical, legal and regulatory consequences. The European Parliament has recently launched a working group for fostering debate on the drones market, but it remains an area that is under-regulated, and questions about privacy and data protection largely unanswered. Since an (admittedly intoxicated) guy crashed his drone on the White House lawn earlier in the year, companies have been making efforts to limit the data collected by the devices to adhere to regulations on privacy and security. But while the technology clearly brings new opportunities, there are a number of challenges that come along with it.
2) Another trend in journalism has been the increase in collaborative efforts between different newsrooms. While not completely new, it has reached a different dimension recently, mainly due to the rise of digital innovations. For instance the European Press Prize stated that all projects that were submitted were based on the cross-border collaboration of several journalists’ newsrooms. The winning project was The Migrants Files, which launched in 2013 and unified several European journalists in order to report on information about immigrants trying to reach Europe. This cooperation, particularly in the area of data analysis, has the potential to give a huge boost in not only the quality of reporting, but the areas being covered and the methods available for coverage. Additional predictions of trends in journalism can be found in this overview compiled by the Nieman Lab.
3) According to report from VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (an American research organisation that works towards further transparency around gender equality issues in the literary arts) in the last five years there has been a persistent gap in the number of published articles by men and by women inmany top magazines, including the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the New Republic and the Atlantic. For instance, only 30% of articles in the New Yorker last year were written by women. While gender inequality is certainly an issue in media, one editor is fighting back: Jillian Goodman, associate editor of Fast Company, has started a Kickstarter campaign to launch a new magazine, titled Mary Review, a magazine written, edited and photographed solely by women. The issue of gender equality is also high on the agenda in Europe. With the current Strategy for Equality Between Women and Men 2010-2015 approaching its’ end, the European Commission started to launch new discussions with stakeholders and the European Parliament has adopted a draft strategy, which include tackling gender inequality in the media sector.
4) British publishers have won their fight over pirate ebook sites. Though the book industry has been affected a bit less than music or movie industry, a 2014 study has shown that e-book piracy prevails mainly among university students. While this ruling from London is great news in the UK, the piracy of e-books has also reached significant numbers in other countries. For instance, according to a Havoscope report, an average e-reader in the Netherlands has 117 e-books, out of which only 11 were bought through legitimate websites.
5) Following their recent change in policy, Twitter has banned the accounts of Charles Johnson, a self-proclaimed journalist and infamous troll due to his post (24 May 2015) that could potentially be read as provoking a violent attack against civil rights activist DeRay McKesson, who was active following the recent police shootings in Baltimore and Ferguson. While Johnson argues that his Twitter banishment is akin to censorship and violates his right to free speech, Twitter argues that it has a right to exclude users who deliberately perform harm, abusive behaviour or harassment. As social media companies begin using vague policies to moderate the discourse on their platforms – and because journalists and other public figures represent a large number of Twitter’s core users – how will the balance between freedom of speech versus harmful speech be impacted?
6) In other Twitter news, last week new service was introduced in the TweetDeck Application that enables users to add a “confirmation step” to double-check the details of a Tweet before sending it out. The purpose of the new tool is to prevent posting inappropriate Tweets and avoid spelling mistakes.. The new tool will be particularly useful by people managing several accounts.
7) We still encourage you to join us in supporting the #CopyrightforFreedom initiative. While many people argue that copyright has become outdated in the digital age, the reality is that it is an increasingly important tool for promoting freedom of speech and the freedom to create not only for publishers, but also for journalists, authors and photographers. If you agree, please feel free to sign the petition #CopyrightforFreedom available here.
