Here’s a book I’m looking forward to reading:
According to a prominent academic in the field, the revolution in user-generated media content happened around the end of 2004.
The Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December that year, followed by the 7 July bombings in London and Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2005, spurred a huge rise in people using the internet and social media to document major events, according to Farida Vis, research fellow in the social sciences at the University of Sheffield.
“It coincides with technological changes such as [the spread of] camera phones, so you get material coming out of tsunami-hit areas or videos from the Tube in the aftermath of the London bombing,” she said.
These developments have significant implications for anyone researching communications or the shifting nature of public opinion.
Dr Vis, who has established herself as an expert on these developments, has joined forces with Mike Thelwall, professor of information science at the University of Wolverhampton, to produce a textbook called Researching Social Media. It is expected to be published by Sage in November 2013.
Read full story… and I might even lift my ban on BUYING books to get this one – although I’m not so much into journalism … but lots of convos with those who do, and historical research certainly depends much upon what journalists have said in the past..
