Journalism and Law 2.0: Collaborative Curriculum Redesign

Introduction

The initial impetus for this project was a growing realization that journalism was in crisis (Hall, 2005; Hirst, 2011; McChesney & Nichols, 2010) that was highlighted by the importance of mobile social media within the ‘Arab Spring’. It became a question of; how should traditional journalism respond to a world where consumer preference is for music that is now distributed via the Internet rather than purchased on CDs, video that is streamed either live or on demand rather than played on DVD, and news that is distributed via a host of social media channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and viewed on mobile devices such as the iPad rather than by traditional print media? One of the responses has been to lay off staff. Internationally, thousands of full-time journalists in traditional roles have lost their jobs over the past five years (Guskin, 2013; Ponsford, 2014). Since 2008, Fairfax media has reduced its workforce by more than 3,000 people in Australia and New Zealand as a direct result of the impact of digital and mobile social media technologies social media uptake (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDGrfhJH1P4. In our original paper, we argued that not only is traditional journalism in crisis but journalism education also cannot ignore the implications of the impact of mobile social media.

In response to these emerging issues, the authors decided to explore the possibilities and implications of journalism 2.0 within the context of journalism education. Journalism 2.0 as defined by the authors of this paper involves the exploration of two parallel aspects of social media in journalism education: exploring the embedding and modelling of social media in the delivery and pedagogy of a journalism course, and the exploration of the use and impact of social media on the practice of journalism in authentic contexts. This is based in the collaboration between an educational technology expert and experienced journalism lecturers within the framework of a community of practice (COP) investigating the potential of social media in the context of journalism education. Beginning in 2011, this was the first foray into integrating the use of social and mobile web 2.0 within the journalism curriculum, and the technology steward’s previous mobile web 2.0 experiences in a variety of educational contexts were used to broker examples of mobile web 2.0 pedagogy to the journalism lecturers.