Why New Media & Society?

I have chosen the seminar New Media & Society because my basic research interest is online journalism - its theoretical and methodological issues.

I am interested in locating online journalism in the context of contemporary developments in communications and to set online journalism in the broader frame of historical evolution of journalism.

Some of the theoretical issues to be considered through the prism of cyberspace include:
- questioning a definition of journalism and a journalist,
- reflecting the crisis of journalism and revisiting its normative framework,
- reconsidering contemporary concepts in journalism studies (i. e. public journalism),
- re-establishing journalistic communication process,
- reasoning the transformation of the public sphere in the online environments,
- questioning the relationship between technology and cultural transformations of journalism.

Another dimension to be considered involves methodological issues and developments related to conducting empirical study. Practices and circumstances of online journalism need to be studied both on the institutional level as well as on the level of daily practices.

My personal objective with regard to this seminar is strengthening my methodological and theoretical knowledge regarding new media, cyberspace, online environments and online journalism, my idea of the seminar paper is (at this point) focused on conducting a qualitative research project of Slovenian leading online newspapers through the prism of online media logic.

See you on Friday ...