BBC College of Journalism Blog - A vigorous and robust discussion about journalism from every perspective.

#bbcsms is trying to encourage more collaborative research between social media users, mainstream media and academia.

As someone with a foot in all three camps (before anyone starts, I know I'm not the only one), I wanted to reflect on the work I've been doing with the BBC College of Journalism as part of my doctoral research.  

WARNING: If you are a journalist, this post contains words and phrases you may find offensive, like 'cultural theory' and 'post-modernism'.

If you have heard Kevin Marsh speak in the past few years, you are probably familiar with the idea of 'flat knowledge' and what it means for big journalism. As part of the discussion around that concept, I have carried out a literature review for the College of Journalism around the question 'Is the internet changing the way we think?'

Your first reaction to the question may be a reflection of how much you believe in technological determinism. But perhaps on reflection you'll decide it depends on what you mean by "think".

In other words, is it a question of the neuroscience of how we think? Or is it more to do with cultural theory - what we think about? There are arguments for and against both.

An example:

Despite endless mainstream media coverage of climate change (née global warming), the public seem less convinced than the media.

The post-modern perspective on this would be that one can see how 'climate change' has become a 'grand narrative', and therefore something that citizens in the modern world are likely to treat sceptically - because history shows that kind of narrative can be all-too-easily manipulated.

Thanks to web technologies, voices previously excluded from conversations can now find a channel, and organise themselves with a far greater degree of influence than before. They can probe into the credentials of expert journalists and share emails which show how academia is every bit as politicised as the rest of the world.

And that means the audience doesn't take journalism at face value anymore. For knowledge to be proved, it must be acquired through conversation and discourse, and not be just something we're told.

That's my current focus of research, but there's no shortage of other unexplored questions to be answered.

So, for journalists, does an effective social media presence mean audiences like your journalism more?

Are the 'private' social media presences of media staff in conflict with any requirement they may have to be impartial?

And how does 'news' received through social media break down? How much is hard news? How much gossip? How much is local? How much fun and random tittle-tattle?

This conference is all about allowing different types of people to talk about social media. One of its biggest hopes is to connect academics - who are interested in or are studying social media - with media practitioners - who need or want rigorous research - and are prepared to offer access and data to make that happen. Above is the start of a list of possible research questions I would like to see answered.

What are your questions? 

Andy Tedd worked for the BBC College of Journalism and is now at the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, which is part of Bournemouth Media School.