after digital journalism

The presentation for our project did not go as well as myself and my group, which was made up with John Gillman and Darragh Cole and myself, had hoped. While it wasn't the worst it definitely had some shortcomings. This assignment was different in that instead of showing our research in person we had to instead make a video of it. I know our video wasn't the best but in fairness it was very last minute as my group was formed during the week before submission, so we only had a few days to make it. When we formed our group decided to do a fake news report for our video for digital media as our methodology assignment, it would be about a car crash on the M50 to Blanchardstown, we also learned from our lecturer Shawn that we had to use one of the tools he gave us so we decided to use StoryMapJS and research all the car crashes and incidents that had happened on the M50 in the last few years, I feel we did pretty well with that since it only took us a day. However, we still had a few problems. After we had submitted it one of the team members suggested that we should add music to the video, so we had to edit the video again and then re submit it.

Another thing different about this presentation was instead of the lecturer asking us what we had thought we earned as a mark, this time the system was that everyone in the class reviewed each video and rated each different aspect of each video. However like I said before at the start are video wasn't the best but it certainly wasn't the worst so I hope we achieved a pass mark at the very least and I feel that I have learned what to do next time when we have to make a video if we have to do one for another assignment in the future I also learned how impotent a team is because I would never have been able to complete this project by myself. I only just learned the basic about editing and I did not know how to edit music or clips into the reports because those where already given to me to use, so this has been a learning experience.

Brief on digital journalism

I learned a lot about digital journalism and about how social media has affected journalism and the news industry. Digital journalism, also known as online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. For the most part it has helped journalism by increasing it’s distribution worldwide, people no longer have to buy a newspaper to find out what's going on in the world now they just have to look at their phones or computers to find out. Some news organizations try to resist social media because they find a drop in their circulation which has resulted in a loss of jobs while some embrace it with many having their own websites, news organizations formed recently like for example Buzz Feed know how to use social media and they use it to their advantage to spread their stories. Social media has also become a valuable research tool, whenever a person is in the news, Facebook or other social networks are a ready source of images, no longer needing the persons loved one to offer a picture. In a way a blogger could also be considered journalist, albeit unqualified. However social media has caused a few problems one being there is too much news, and it can be difficult for people to figure out the veracity of the news they see on social media. The readers will start to wonder which news organization they should trust especially when two news company's take different sides of a story. According to my research in 2014 the Irish Social Journalism Survey published the statistic that 64% of Irish journalists reported that information on social media could not be trusted. News publishers have lost control over distribution. Social media and other platforms have taken over the role of the publishers and now the news is now being filtered through algorithms.

As part of the research for our project I  learned how many crashes have happened on the M50, I learned that the M50 motorway in Dublin has been the scene of more than 50 collisions a month over the past year and a half, with 962 crashes occuring between 2019 and 2018 according to newly released figures. One example being a crash on the M50 near Clondalkin involving two cars and a truck on the 2nd of December 2019 or the incident that took place on January in 2019 when a women who will remain anonymous was decapitated during a car crash near Nangor road and instead of helping some people just started recording the incident to later upload onto social media.

I feel myself and my group did a good job gathering all this information especially if you consider the fact that the decision to create a map of past car crashes was last minute and we did it in a day, however I don't have my hopes up because we only had a week left to make the actual video. It has made me realise just how different the News and journalism was before the internet. It required a lot more work and a lot more research. I hope I can learn from any mistakes we might have made while doing the project. This has also shown me how valuable a team is, I could never have managed this on my own and, I think, the project would certainly have failed without them. 

digital journalism

When I was choosing the subject for our assignment my first choice was mapping the next thing I needed to do was find a group to work with but I couldn't because they were either doing a different type of project or in a full group of three already I could have tried to make a team with people outside group 1 but I thought it would be more appropriate if we were all attending the same class. It took me a week before I decided to change to digital journalism but by then everyone already had a team made up so I had no other option but to form a team with a person named John Gillman who is not in my group, we decided that we would do a video on a car crash. Then a week before the submission deadline we managed to get a third member for our group named Darragh Cole who was incredible at editing, so we decided he could do the editing for the video we also decided to follow his idea of showing the research we had on car crashes that have happened on the M50 in the last few years with the use of an interactive map. However our first try at making the video did not go well as we had hoped the scripts for the news report needed some changing and we also had to find a room to do the video in as well as something to operate as green screen, we also had difficulty recording the last scene of the news report. When we tried again the next day, we were a bit more prepared and knew what to do. We decided to scrap the green screen idea and work without it we also used a tablet to record the material for the video this time instead of a phone. However, I am not expecting a perfect score on account of all this being last minute.