Abstract
Smartphones have become a key social tool: They have changed the way people consume, receive and produce information, providing potentially anyone with the opportunity to create and share content through a variety of platforms. The use of smartphones for gathering, producing, editing and disseminating news gave birth to a new journalistic practice, mobile journalism. Incorporating mobile journalism is, thus, the current challenge for journalism educators. Our article aims at discovering whether new models of education, such as massive online courses, can help mobile journalism training. The research focuses on the first pilot project of a massive open online courses (MOOC) on mobile journalism, the Y-NEX MOOC. By assessing structure, functioning and participants’ opinion, the objective is to discover if MOOCs prove to be useful tools in mobile journalism training. Results show that this model of distance open learning can be helpful for mobile journalism training, providing some recommendations for improvement.
Highlights
We will analyze the Youth News Exchange (Y-NEX) massive open online courses (MOOC) to evaluate this pilot experience with the aim of understanding whether MOOCs can prove to be a successful tool for mobile journalism training
We examined the data collected during the MOOC, both from the analytical services in the platform itself and the content services (Eliademy and YouTube) and the ones collected during the final survey
“Strongly agree” options is the one about technology. This result is quite predictable because technology is the most innovative, intriguing and challenging side of mobile journalism (MoJo)
Summary
Every great technological invention has led to a change in the communicative paradigm, but few moments in the history of humanity have been so revolutionary, in terms of consumption and distribution of information: nowadays we live and interact in a digitally enriched environment, in a kind of digital bubble [1].The commercial birth of touchscreen-enabled mobile devices, offered with flat-rate subscriptions for mobile internet [2] (p. 7), transformed smartphones into a key social tool, a crucial part of people’s everyday lives [3] (p. 22), changing the way they live, and how they receive and produce information.As Mark Briggs effectively explains, mobile devices have become like “electronic Swiss Army knives, arming anyone and potentially everyone with all-in-one media tools that can view, capture and publish or broadcast” [4] (p. 137). 7), transformed smartphones into a key social tool, a crucial part of people’s everyday lives [3] 22), changing the way they live, and how they receive and produce information. As Mark Briggs effectively explains, mobile devices have become like “electronic Swiss Army knives, arming anyone and potentially everyone with all-in-one media tools that can view, capture and publish or broadcast” [4] Most media are embracing mobile journalism, considering it “a groundbreaking way of doing journalism” [7] The literature focusing on new newsroom models [8,9,10] stresses the importance of this new technological dimension of journalism, and how going mobile significantly boosts newsgathering potential [11] The literature focusing on new newsroom models [8,9,10] stresses the importance of this new technological dimension of journalism, and how going mobile significantly boosts newsgathering potential [11] (p. 9)
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