Visual Communication by T.J. Thomson
Digital Journalism, 2025
Digital Journalism has an important role to play in encouraging and publishing research with soci... more Digital Journalism has an important role to play in encouraging and publishing research with societal relevance that advances digital journalism studies as a field. In this article we discuss the multiple types of articles we publish: research articles, conceptual articles, review articles, advancing methods articles and commentaries. We also introduce you to several great examples of such articles, as well as introduce the growing number of articles that have received outstanding article awards over the years. Finally, we present our revised editorial agenda that will guide our priorities for the editorial processing of article submissions in the year(s) to come. the editorial agenda consists of five key thematic areas, each featuring carefully selected bullet points outlining our key research priorities. We set the context for each of these thematic areas by positioning them in relation to some of the research we have published in recent years.
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, 2025
This evidence-based report aims to familiarise the reader with a wide array of AI in journalism u... more This evidence-based report aims to familiarise the reader with a wide array of AI in journalism use cases, provide grounding on the legal and ethical issues that journalists and audiences identify regarding this technology within journalism, and reveal news audiences’ expectations regarding how this technology should or should not be used. The report ends with a series of questions for journalists and news organisations to consider as they work through their experimentation with and guidelines around AI use in journalism.
This report brings together six discrete research and engagement activities over a three-year period (2022-24), drawing on fieldwork in seven countries (Australia, Germany, USA, UK, Norway, Switzerland, and France), and focuses on AI in journalism within three broad domains: AI-generated content in journalism, journalists’ perceptions of and use of AI in journalism, and news audiences’ perceptions of and reactions to this technology being used in journalism.
Journalism Practice, 2025
Generative AI applications have been hailed as “transformative,” “disruptive,” and posing a “thre... more Generative AI applications have been hailed as “transformative,” “disruptive,” and posing a “threat to human journalists and media professionals.” Much of this discourse reflects longstanding concerns about the impact of technological change on both the production and consumption ends of journalism. Perhaps nowhere is this felt more strongly than in visual journalism, where fears about AI replacing cameras and associated implications are rife. These concerns resemble earlier debates about visual technologies, from the smartphone camera to social media, and intersect with fundamental debates about journalism’s boundaries and norms: what news “is,” how it is produced, and what we expect it to achieve. Amidst this hype and anxiety, we offer an analysis of AI’s risks to visual journalism that contextualises this technology against journalism’s existing tensions. Our study asks: How unique are the threats that generative AI poses to visual news? Specifically, we look across academic disciplines to interrogate three threats that are especially prevalent in the literature. Our conceptual evaluation is benefited empirically by dozens of industry perspectives spanning three continents, and allows us to identify exactly which threats, if any, that generative AI poses to visual journalism are new, and which are extant threats folded into more longstanding discourses.
University of Canberra and Western Sydney University, 2024
The rapid uptake of social media, which Australians now use more than any other type of media, pr... more The rapid uptake of social media, which Australians now use more than any other type of media, presents many opportunities for accessing information, but also presents the highly significant challenge of misinformation. The sheer volume of information online can be overwhelming and very difficult to navigate. As a result, bad actors seek to undermine democratic processes and target individuals. This has been widely recognised as a global problem. However, Australians lack the confidence and ability to verify misinformation.
This report is based on analysis of four linked datasets and finds that the vast majority of adult Australians want to be able to identify misinformation and are trying to do so. It also finds that many adult Australians overestimate their ability to verify information online.
The research findings illustrate the need for media literacy initiatives. These might include videos that show people how to fact check online or how to identify high-quality news sources, quizzes or games that help people develop their digital media knowledge and skills, explainers that show how platform business models operate and how this relates to the spread of misinformation, or in-person media production training that can help people think critically, and accurately represent people, places and ideas.
Journalism, 2024
Journalism has both contributed to shaping and been shaped by colonialism and has reproduced the ... more Journalism has both contributed to shaping and been shaped by colonialism and has reproduced the status quo at the expense of those on the margins. Considering this reality, this study explores how journalism education and practice can be unlearned through a decolonising, Indigenous standpoint. It does this through an Indigenous co-led approach that brings together journalism students, journalism academics, and working journalists with family connections to, or extensive experience working with, 10 distinct Indigenous people groups. The participants provided provocations to journalists interested in unlearning the standard way that journalism is learned and practised.
Journalism and Communication Monographs, 2024
Place matters a great deal to many people and informs much of their perspectives, worldviews, and... more Place matters a great deal to many people and informs much of their perspectives, worldviews, and values. So does identifying who “belongs” in a place and who respects or transgresses on a real or imagined boundary, whether physical, cultural, or social. Sometimes this evaluation happens by evaluating written language or speech. At other times, it happens through analyzing visual phenomena, such as how someone dresses, who they accompany, or where they position themselves in a space. This essay argues that an attention to the people who encounter and consume news; a willingness to focus on heterogenous news providers; and an ability to select and use visual research methods that are grounded in a field-specific context are necessary to provide depth and nuance to the scholarly study of the visual news representation of people on the margins of social space.
Journalism Studies, 2024
Visual news can be a broad topic and encapsulate a myriad of forms, conventions, and representati... more Visual news can be a broad topic and encapsulate a myriad of forms, conventions, and representational content. The present study delves deeply into the image-based side of news to explore how visual news is produced, framed, and presented at four print and digital news outlets in urban and regional parts of Australia and China. We first conducted a qualitative denotative, stylistic-semiotic, and ideological framing analysis of a total of 1,408 images, published as part of 674 articles. Next, we deepened our understanding of the image analysis results through semi-structured interviews with 14 editorial staff in the visuals departments at these four outlets. Using framing theory and the hierarchy of influences model as theoretical lenses, this study uncovers how economic, social, and political factors affect the types of visual stories that journalists in these countries cover and sheds light on how those stories are presented. Specifically, our results indicate that outlets in Australia illustrate their news more than comparable outlets in China and that the types of visuals used also differed considerably. Online templates and editor directives influenced visual news in Australia to a greater degree while comparable Chinese news outlets paid more attention to audience expectations and political considerations.
Media International Australia, 2024
Many scholars find the peer-review process to be a puzzling, non-transparent, and subjective exer... more Many scholars find the peer-review process to be a puzzling, non-transparent, and subjective exercise. Many emerging scholars also learn about the peer-review and publishing process through painful and time-consuming trial and error while still students or as early-career researchers rather than through formal training or guided supervision. Yet many pitfalls exist in this process for new and veteran scholars alike. With this study, grounded in the communication field, we aim to pull back the curtain on this opaque process and assist scholars in their publishing ambitions while also providing suggestions, primarily for journal editors and those who train future reviewers, about how the peer-review process can be improved for collective benefit. To do so, this grounded theory study reviews a year's worth of reviews from a communication journal to explore which issues reviewers identify within the submitted research, to explore how the reviewer feedback reveals their implicit understanding of their role in the peer-review process, and to identify how clear reviewers and editors are regarding which feedback is most important. Taken together, this allows for an understanding of how reviewers and editors engage in the social construction of research. The results inform the training of communication scholars, reviewers, and editors.
Journalism, 2024
This study explores a key question around local visual news: what do non-specialist journalists r... more This study explores a key question around local visual news: what do non-specialist journalists regard as a quality news visual? This study focuses on still images as the most ubiquitous building block in the local visual news landscape, whether as thumbnails that are shared with links on social media platforms, as hero images accompanying articles, as photo galleries, or as still frames extracted from videos. Much of what we know about a quality news visual comes from the perspectives of visually literate specialists: photo editors, photojournalists, and related roles. Yet, despite the ubiquity of photographs within print and digital news, they are increasingly being made not by staff photojournalists but, rather, by freelancers, words-based reporters, or community members. As these dynamics have shifted over the past two decades, scholarship has struggled to keep up with how non-specialist journalists define the attributes and properties of a quality news visual. This study aims to address this gap within the context of local and regional news using an interview-based approach and finds that interviewees most commonly defined quality news photographs through the lens of news values, followed by technical considerations and narrative dimensions, aesthetics, the perceived effect the visual had on the audience, how the visual was made and presented, and who or what was photographed.
Digital Journalism, 2024
The use of AI-enabled text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney and DALL-E, raises profound qu... more The use of AI-enabled text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney and DALL-E, raises profound questions about the purpose, meaning, and value of images generally, and the production, editing, and consumption of images in journalism specifically. This study explores how photo editors (or their equivalents) in seven countries perceive and/or use generative visual AI in their editorial operations and outlines the challenges and opportunities they see for the technology. It also identifies the extent to which these news organizations have policies governing how generative visual AI is used or, if not, the principles that they feel should inform their development. Participants identified mis/disinformation as the primary challenge of AI-generated images, also raising concerns about labor and copyright implications, the difficulty or impossibility of detecting AI-generated images, the potential for algorithmic bias, and the potential reputational risk of using AI-generated images. Conversely, participants saw potential for using AI for illustrations and brainstorming, while a minority saw it as an opportunity to increase efficiencies and cut costs.
Journalistik, 2023
KI-Dienste, die Antworten auf Anfragen bereitstellen, wie ChatGPT, haben leidenschaftliche Diskus... more KI-Dienste, die Antworten auf Anfragen bereitstellen, wie ChatGPT, haben leidenschaftliche Diskussionen über die Zukunft des Lernens, der Arbeit und der Kreativität entfacht. KI-gesteuerte Text-zu-Bild-Generatoren, wie Midjourney, werfen tiefgreifende Fragen nach dem Zweck, der Bedeutung und dem Wert von Bildern auf, haben jedoch trotz der aufgeworfenen Implikationen für die Produktion und den Konsum von Bildern wesentlich weniger Forschungsaufmerksamkeit erhalten. In diesem Essay werden grundlegende Überlegungen angestellt, die Journalist*innen und Nachrichtenmedien im Auge behalten sollten, wenn sie die Konzeption, Beschaffung, Präsentation oder Überprüfung von KI-generierten Bildern in Betracht ziehen. Insbesondere werden in diesem Essay die Transparenz bezüglich der Auswirkung von Algorithmen sowie Herkunft, algorithmische Vorurteile, Arbeitsethik und die Verdrängung von herkömmlichen Bildjournalist*innen diskutiert. Weiterhin werden in diesem Essay potenzielle Auswirkungen auf Präzision und Repräsentativität von Bildern angesprochen, die das Publikum in Nachrichten sieht, während auch der Mangel entsprechender Vorschriften und Initiativen zur Entwicklung von Richtlinien zur Nutzung von KI-generierten Bildern in Nachrichten bedacht wird. Die Autoren haben dazu acht Bildredakteur*innen bzw. Journalist*innen in entsprechenden Positionen in leitenden Nachrichtenorganisationen in Australien und den USA befragt. Insgesamt arbeitet dieser Essay Schlüsselfragen heraus, die Journalist*innen und ihre Nachrichtenorganisationen im Zeitalter von KI und synthetischen, visuellen Medien in Angriff nehmen müssen.
Journalism Research, 2023
AI services that provide responses to prompts, such as ChatGPT, have ignited passionate discussio... more AI services that provide responses to prompts, such as ChatGPT, have ignited passionate discussions over the future of learning, work, and creativity. AI-enabled text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney, pose profound questions about the purpose, meaning, and value of images yet have received considerably less research attention, despite the implications they raise for both the production and consumption of images. This essay explores key considerations that journalists and news organizations should be aware of when conceiving, sourcing, presenting, or seeking to fact-check AI-generated images. Specifically, it addresses transparency around how algorithms work, discusses provenance and algorithmic bias, touches on labor ethics and the displacement of traditional lens-based workers, explores copyright implications, identifies the potential impacts on the accuracy and representativeness of the images audiences see in their news, and muses about the lack of regulation and policy development governing the use of AI-generated images in news. We explore these themes through the insights provided by eight photo editors or equivalent roles at leading news organizations in Australia and the United States. Overall, this study articulates some of the key issues facing journalists and their organizations in an age of AI and synthetic visual media.
Journalism Practice, 2023
Thumbnails and link previews play an outsized role in determining which online content is shared,... more Thumbnails and link previews play an outsized role in determining which online content is shared, seen, and engaged with. But conventions for these vary depending on the platform and the content creator. Journalists and non-journalists alike use and sometimes design these thumbnails with often striking differences. On some news aggregators, like Apple News or Google News, the bulk of the thumbnails are photographs related in some way to the linked content. Yet, on other platforms, such as YouTube, the thumbnails are often bespoke designs that allow for more storytelling freedom and potentially more ethical risk compared to camera-based images. This study, informed by visual news values, uses the context of the 2022 stabbing homicide of four University of Idaho students to systematically examine all YouTube thumbnails related to the murder suspect in the first four days after he was publicly identified. In doing so, this study is able to contribute to our understanding of the visual presentation of a crime-related topic with limited source material and is also able to shed much-needed light on how journalistic practices and conventions compare to those of non-journalists in the selection and design of image thumbnails on YouTube.
Journal of Visual Literacy, 2023
Visual language and culture are co-constitutive and constantly evolving. This transformation is m... more Visual language and culture are co-constitutive and constantly evolving. This transformation is more pronounced in the contemporary visual literacy landscape especially with widely used social media and more democratic technologies, such as smartphone cameras, which are used for myriad purposes and in diverse ways. These uses and purposes vary by culture and demographics but little is understood about how smartphone cameras shape contemporary Western ways of seeing: visual culture and literacy. Specifically, this study seeks to explore and identify how people living in Australia use their smartphone cameras to document their everyday lives. It also explores how these devices influence the participants’ visual languages and literacies. To analyse these changes, this study adopts a two-method approach. First, 30 participants were recruited from three different age groups. These participants donated a consistent two weeks of the images on their camera rolls for analysis. These images were then subjected to an 11-variable analysis. Second, 23 participants followed through with an interview to contextualise their photographic behaviour and identify the aspects they perceive shape their ways of seeing. These two methods allow an understanding of who or what is photographed as well as how and why these participants made images in certain ways.
Digital Journalism , 2023
The question of “who is a journalist?” has animated much discussion in journalism scholarship. Su... more The question of “who is a journalist?” has animated much discussion in journalism scholarship. Such discussions generally stem from the intersecting technological, economic, and social transformations journalism has faced in the twenty-first century. An equally relevant aspect, albeit one that has hitherto been less studied, is what a journalist looks like. Some studies have tackled this through, for example, examining depictions of journalists in popular culture, but artificial intelligence understandings of what a journalist is and what they look like have yet to receive research attention. While AI-enabled generative art has existed since the late 1990s, the ease and accessibility of these processes has greatly been boosted by providers like Midjourney which emerged since the 2020s and allow those without programming skills to easily create algorithmic images from text prompts. This study analyzes 84 images generated by AI from four “generic” keywords (“journalist,” “reporter,” “correspondent,” and “the press”) and three “specialized” ones (“news analyst,” “news commentator,” and “fact-checker”) over a six-month period. The results reveal an uneven distribution of gender and digital technology between the generic and specialized roles and prompt reflection on how AI perpetuates extant biases in the social world.
Teaching journalism online: a handbook for journalism educators, 2023
Teaching journalism online offers the possibility of having various stakeholders interact in dive... more Teaching journalism online offers the possibility of having various stakeholders interact in diverse ways. You might find yourself teaching the same students who would take a face-to-face journalism course at your university, with backgrounds and preparation varying among the students in expected ways. Or you might have an online course with hundreds of students from multiple continents joining from diverse time zones, political systems, cultures and devices. The diversity of the online cohort can be refreshing but raises questions about the feasibility of group work, the consistency of the student experience, whether synchronous learning opportunities are possible, and even whether certain course topics, such as news values or journalistic principles, will translate and be applicable to students from diverse cultures. (In an online course that we taught for our Australian university, Singaporean students, for example,
reported struggling with the “conflict” news value, which they said is absent in Singaporean media. Likewise, Aboriginal journalists sometimes critiqued the “independence” principle in journalism, which they argued is a Western value that often conflicts with Indigenous values where connection to community and land is paramount.) Catering to an online and potentially diverse student cohort requires, in many ways, a radically different approach from face-to-face teaching. This chapter aims to help instructors use digital spaces and tools by outlining best practices related to the design and use of course management software and videoconferencing to support student learning.
Journalism Practice, 2023
Sources are an essential component to journalistic reporting and are a critical determinant of it... more Sources are an essential component to journalistic reporting and are a critical determinant of its quality. Who or what is referenced, in which ways, how often, and why matters and can reveal important insights into journalistic practice as well as the values and implicit assumptions of both the news outlets and broader societies under study. Acknowledging this, this study examines sourcing practices of journalists working at four national news outlets in Australia over a 15-month period as they report on the topic of ageing and aged care. Specifically, the study investigates six key questions related to sourcing: Who or what is used as a source? What is the proportion of elite to non-elite sources? What is the identifiability of sources? What is the number of sources per news story? What is the proportion of primary to secondary sources per story? And how are these aspects different for different news outlets? The results reveal that journalists overwhelmingly used elite rather than non-elite sources in their reporting on this topic, used politicians most frequently in their coverage, and used an average of five sources per article. However, who was used as a source varied markedly by outlet.
Interactive Technology and Smart Education, 2022
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents the successes and challenges of introducing a mo... more Design/methodology/approach
This study presents the successes and challenges of introducing a mobile learning resource, Pocket Tutor, to bolster autonomous learning in a supported university learning environment. Pocket Tutor was designed and developed in 2019 and integrated in 2020 and 2021 into a multimedia design class offered at a large university in the Asia-Pacific. The resource's effectiveness is measured against common technology acceptance factors-including self-efficacy, enthusiasm, and enjoyment in relation to contextual purpose and class learning outcomes-through a multi-pronged approach consisting of a class-wide survey, developed specifically for this purpose, and analysis of usage data. Deeper context was also provided through a small pool of follow-up interviews.
Purpose
The Pocket Tutor learning resource that was designed and evaluated in this study responds to a number of teaching and learning challenges within the tertiary education context. These include those related to the number and type of learning activities that can be offered, class pacing, subject-specific content considerations, and the availability and quality of off-the-shelf learning resources. Educators have to potentially contend with all of these amidst mounting institutional constraints and external pressures. Yet, a supplemental, from-scratch online learning resource can help mitigate some of these challenges.
Findings
Evidence from our data suggests that a bespoke, mobile learning resource can provide greater consistency, more relevance, more flexibility for when and where students learn, and more efficiency with limited opportunities for synchronous interaction. At the same time, a bespoke mobile learning resource represents a significant investment of skill and time to develop and maintain.
Originality/value
The present study responds to calls from scholars who argue that more research (especially that is qualitative and discipline-specific) is needed to investigate students’ willingness to use learning apps on their mobile devices. This study pairs such research about student willingness with actual usage data and student reflections to more concretely address the role of mobile learning resources in higher education contexts. It also, importantly, doesn’t just assess perceptions and attitudes about mobile learning resources in the abstract but assesses attitudes and usage patterns for specific generic and bespoke mobile learning resources available for students in a specific university class (thereby providing discipline-specific insights). It also provides a unique contribution by including multiple years of data and, thus, offers a longitudinal view on how mobile learning resources are perceived and used in a particular higher education context.
Communication Research and Practice, 2022
Older Australians, particularly those in aged-care settings, are frequently the targets of persis... more Older Australians, particularly those in aged-care settings, are frequently the targets of persistent discrimination and marginalisation. Indeed, a dominant narrative in Australia is that the country’s ageing population is a burden to the community, and that the influx of older Australians into the aged care system over coming decades is a problem which must be fixed. Such perceptions are most commonly held by younger people and are shaped, in part, by media portrayals of older people in aged care. Acknowledging this, the present study analyses how journalists visually cover ageing and the aged care sector during a critical event ‘frame’: the calling of, and government response to, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety from 2018 through 2021. This study recognises that the type of representation of older people in media is more difficult to examine than simply the frequency of representation. Using visual social semiotics as an analytical framework, this paper examined 351 images from a nationally representative news sample published over the 30-month timeframe. This approach has enabled us to go beyond simple frequencies of who is depicted and explore in a more nuanced way how older Australians are depicted, and with what implications.
Australian Journalism Review, 2022
News media coverage of Indigenous Australian peoples and perspectives is often absent or, when pr... more News media coverage of Indigenous Australian peoples and perspectives is often absent or, when present, unfair or shallow in context or understanding. This raises the question of how much-and what kind of-exposure to Indigenous knowledges and perspectives journalists-in-training receive in their university studies. To find out, this study analyses 30 unit outlines and assessment details of journalism subjects at three Australian universities. It follows this analysis with interviews of seventeen undergraduate journalism students at these universities to explore their perceptions of if and how their journalism programmes paid attention to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander topics and perspectives in the classroom setting. The results reveal that the journalism students in this sample, even those from the same university, had an uneven experience related to Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in their university journalism subjects. This testifies to the generic nature of unit outlines and learning objectives and to the broad discretionary power that individual tutors and lecturers have to shape the flow of information that is engaged with during the learning opportunities they oversee. Student recommendations for how Indigenous knowledges and perspectives could be more usefully integrated into journalism education were also gathered and reported.
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Visual Communication by T.J. Thomson
This report brings together six discrete research and engagement activities over a three-year period (2022-24), drawing on fieldwork in seven countries (Australia, Germany, USA, UK, Norway, Switzerland, and France), and focuses on AI in journalism within three broad domains: AI-generated content in journalism, journalists’ perceptions of and use of AI in journalism, and news audiences’ perceptions of and reactions to this technology being used in journalism.
This report is based on analysis of four linked datasets and finds that the vast majority of adult Australians want to be able to identify misinformation and are trying to do so. It also finds that many adult Australians overestimate their ability to verify information online.
The research findings illustrate the need for media literacy initiatives. These might include videos that show people how to fact check online or how to identify high-quality news sources, quizzes or games that help people develop their digital media knowledge and skills, explainers that show how platform business models operate and how this relates to the spread of misinformation, or in-person media production training that can help people think critically, and accurately represent people, places and ideas.
reported struggling with the “conflict” news value, which they said is absent in Singaporean media. Likewise, Aboriginal journalists sometimes critiqued the “independence” principle in journalism, which they argued is a Western value that often conflicts with Indigenous values where connection to community and land is paramount.) Catering to an online and potentially diverse student cohort requires, in many ways, a radically different approach from face-to-face teaching. This chapter aims to help instructors use digital spaces and tools by outlining best practices related to the design and use of course management software and videoconferencing to support student learning.
This study presents the successes and challenges of introducing a mobile learning resource, Pocket Tutor, to bolster autonomous learning in a supported university learning environment. Pocket Tutor was designed and developed in 2019 and integrated in 2020 and 2021 into a multimedia design class offered at a large university in the Asia-Pacific. The resource's effectiveness is measured against common technology acceptance factors-including self-efficacy, enthusiasm, and enjoyment in relation to contextual purpose and class learning outcomes-through a multi-pronged approach consisting of a class-wide survey, developed specifically for this purpose, and analysis of usage data. Deeper context was also provided through a small pool of follow-up interviews.
Purpose
The Pocket Tutor learning resource that was designed and evaluated in this study responds to a number of teaching and learning challenges within the tertiary education context. These include those related to the number and type of learning activities that can be offered, class pacing, subject-specific content considerations, and the availability and quality of off-the-shelf learning resources. Educators have to potentially contend with all of these amidst mounting institutional constraints and external pressures. Yet, a supplemental, from-scratch online learning resource can help mitigate some of these challenges.
Findings
Evidence from our data suggests that a bespoke, mobile learning resource can provide greater consistency, more relevance, more flexibility for when and where students learn, and more efficiency with limited opportunities for synchronous interaction. At the same time, a bespoke mobile learning resource represents a significant investment of skill and time to develop and maintain.
Originality/value
The present study responds to calls from scholars who argue that more research (especially that is qualitative and discipline-specific) is needed to investigate students’ willingness to use learning apps on their mobile devices. This study pairs such research about student willingness with actual usage data and student reflections to more concretely address the role of mobile learning resources in higher education contexts. It also, importantly, doesn’t just assess perceptions and attitudes about mobile learning resources in the abstract but assesses attitudes and usage patterns for specific generic and bespoke mobile learning resources available for students in a specific university class (thereby providing discipline-specific insights). It also provides a unique contribution by including multiple years of data and, thus, offers a longitudinal view on how mobile learning resources are perceived and used in a particular higher education context.
This report brings together six discrete research and engagement activities over a three-year period (2022-24), drawing on fieldwork in seven countries (Australia, Germany, USA, UK, Norway, Switzerland, and France), and focuses on AI in journalism within three broad domains: AI-generated content in journalism, journalists’ perceptions of and use of AI in journalism, and news audiences’ perceptions of and reactions to this technology being used in journalism.
This report is based on analysis of four linked datasets and finds that the vast majority of adult Australians want to be able to identify misinformation and are trying to do so. It also finds that many adult Australians overestimate their ability to verify information online.
The research findings illustrate the need for media literacy initiatives. These might include videos that show people how to fact check online or how to identify high-quality news sources, quizzes or games that help people develop their digital media knowledge and skills, explainers that show how platform business models operate and how this relates to the spread of misinformation, or in-person media production training that can help people think critically, and accurately represent people, places and ideas.
reported struggling with the “conflict” news value, which they said is absent in Singaporean media. Likewise, Aboriginal journalists sometimes critiqued the “independence” principle in journalism, which they argued is a Western value that often conflicts with Indigenous values where connection to community and land is paramount.) Catering to an online and potentially diverse student cohort requires, in many ways, a radically different approach from face-to-face teaching. This chapter aims to help instructors use digital spaces and tools by outlining best practices related to the design and use of course management software and videoconferencing to support student learning.
This study presents the successes and challenges of introducing a mobile learning resource, Pocket Tutor, to bolster autonomous learning in a supported university learning environment. Pocket Tutor was designed and developed in 2019 and integrated in 2020 and 2021 into a multimedia design class offered at a large university in the Asia-Pacific. The resource's effectiveness is measured against common technology acceptance factors-including self-efficacy, enthusiasm, and enjoyment in relation to contextual purpose and class learning outcomes-through a multi-pronged approach consisting of a class-wide survey, developed specifically for this purpose, and analysis of usage data. Deeper context was also provided through a small pool of follow-up interviews.
Purpose
The Pocket Tutor learning resource that was designed and evaluated in this study responds to a number of teaching and learning challenges within the tertiary education context. These include those related to the number and type of learning activities that can be offered, class pacing, subject-specific content considerations, and the availability and quality of off-the-shelf learning resources. Educators have to potentially contend with all of these amidst mounting institutional constraints and external pressures. Yet, a supplemental, from-scratch online learning resource can help mitigate some of these challenges.
Findings
Evidence from our data suggests that a bespoke, mobile learning resource can provide greater consistency, more relevance, more flexibility for when and where students learn, and more efficiency with limited opportunities for synchronous interaction. At the same time, a bespoke mobile learning resource represents a significant investment of skill and time to develop and maintain.
Originality/value
The present study responds to calls from scholars who argue that more research (especially that is qualitative and discipline-specific) is needed to investigate students’ willingness to use learning apps on their mobile devices. This study pairs such research about student willingness with actual usage data and student reflections to more concretely address the role of mobile learning resources in higher education contexts. It also, importantly, doesn’t just assess perceptions and attitudes about mobile learning resources in the abstract but assesses attitudes and usage patterns for specific generic and bespoke mobile learning resources available for students in a specific university class (thereby providing discipline-specific insights). It also provides a unique contribution by including multiple years of data and, thus, offers a longitudinal view on how mobile learning resources are perceived and used in a particular higher education context.
To See and Be Seen considers some of the ideological, aesthetic, pragmatic, institutional, cultural, commercial, environmental, and psychological forces that consciously or otherwise shape the production of news images and subsequently influence their reception. T. J. Thomson examines the expectations, experiences, and reactions of those depicted by visual journalists and considers other relevant factors: how do everyday people perceive cameras and those who operate them? How are identities visually represented and presented to different audiences? And how does the physical and the socially constructed environment shape those depictions?
The results of Thomson’s research provide one of the first empirical and real-time glimpses into the experience of being in front of a journalist’s lens. To See and Be Seen enables us to understand the stories behind images by considering the environment in which such images are made, the exchange (if one occurred) between the camera-wielding observer and the observed, the identities of both parties, and how they react to the representations that are created.