Online Media Platforms Research Articles

Learning fast: Broadband and the future of education

Educational institutions have always had a central place in the online age. Before the advent of high-speed broadband, other communications technologies and services also played a big role in education. University researchers were among the first Australian users of what became known as the Internet. When the domain name system was deployed in the mid-1980s, the .au domain was delegated to Robert Elz at the University of Melbourne. When the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee decided to set up a national communications network to support research, Geoff Huston transferred to its payroll from ANU to work as technical manager for AARNet, whose current chief executive, Chris Hancock, is interviewed by Liz Fell in this issue. When a 56 kbps ARPANET link with Australia was made by NASA and the University of Hawaii via Intelsat in June 1989, the connection was established in Elz’s University of Melbourne laboratory. (Clarke 2004: 31) In earlier times, the postal service made learning-at-a-distance possible by ‘correspondence’, particularly in remote areas of Australia. Advances in radio communications made it easier and the interactivity more immediate. Television sets and later video cassette and DVD players and recorders made it more visual. The telephone provided a tool of communication for teachers and learners; the best of them understood that most people were both at different times. Then simple low bandwidth tools like email and web browsing provided new ways for students, teachers and their institutions to communicate and distribute and share information. Learning management systems like Blackboard have been widely deployed through the education sector. Information that was once housed in libraries is now available online and social media platforms are providing new ways for students to collaborate. Ubiquitous, faster broadband and mobile access via smartphones and tablets promise further transformations.

HOSTING THE PUBLIC DISCOURSE, HOSTING THE PUBLIC

In this paper, we examine the inverse and converging movement of two sets of institutions: news organizations, as they find that part of their mission necessarily includes hosting an unruly user community that does not always play by the norms of journalism; and online media platforms and social networks designed for users to share content, as they find that the content being shared is often much like news, some of which challenges their established user guidelines. We draw on in-depth interviews to understand how each industry is finding itself increasingly on the other's turf and facing the challenges and tensions the other has long coped with, but from its own distinct vantage point. From this we explore the ways in which the roles of news provision and community management are increasingly intermingled—in ways that will continue to have an impact on both news organizations and social media platforms, along with their audiences and users.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INTERNET FOR JOURNALISTIC RESEARCH

This article reports how journalists integrate online research procedures into the overall research process, how they assess the Internet and search engines, and how highly developed their competences are in using search engines. Observation of 235 journalists from newspaper, radio, television and online media platforms provide the data base. To this is added a written survey of 601 journalists and the participation of 48 journalists in an experiment. The observation phase revealed that journalists employ computer-aided research tools more frequently but for shorter periods than classical, non-computer-aided research tools. The telephone remains the most important research tool. Search engines, in particular Google, dominate the source-determination process and thereby have a decisive influence on the entire course of journalists’ research. The survey showed that a high level of journalistic attention focused on only a few Internet offerings. The surveyed journalists exhibit a pragmatic attitude towards the Internet and search engines as a research tool, even though they are aware of possible problems. The search-engine experiment revealed that journalists only achieved moderate success in their research. The greatest search success was achieved by journalists who entered the search terms in a thought-out manner and combined them logically. Overall, the study shows that computer-aided research supplements but does not displace classical research. Instead, the Internet gains in significance in those tasks which it helps to fulfil more efficiently. However, the increased self-referentiality in journalism and the “Google-ization” of research represent a cause for concern.