The Future of News

What is the future of news?

PBS' Frontline tries to answer that question in News War, a four-part series beginning tonight and a companion News War Web site.

The site will include online viewing of the full series (Parts I & II are now available) as well as transcripts of interviews with 50 major players in the debates over the role of media in U.S. society.

Mass Comm Theory & The Wizards of Buzz

The Wall Street Journal this week wrote about a "new generation of hidden influencers ... taking root online." They're key users of social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, Newsvine, and others, and (says the Journal) they're "shaping what we read, watch and buy."

Is this the venerable two-step flow with a cyber twist? A new kind of agenda-setting? Or are other mass communication theories at play?

Read the journal article, "The Wizards of Buzz", and see what you think?

Creating a Personal List in the Library Catalog

(From Books & Bytes in Major Mail)
How do you keep track of lists of books and other items you find while searching in Quest, the BC Libraries Catalog? Print them out one at a time? Write down the information for each item on a piece of paper?

Here’s a better way:

The “My List” feature of Quest lets you create your own personal list of records you select. You can then print, save or e-mail the selected information for later use.There are two ways to add items to your list:

1. When looking at an individual record, simply click on the Add to My List button at the upper left of the screen; or
   
2. When you have a group of records on the screen after conducting a search, check the check boxes next to the items you want, and then hit the Add to My List button.

You can continue to add records through different searches as long as you are in Quest. When you’re done, click on the View My List button at the top of the screen, and you’ll be offered options to print the list, e-mail it to yourself (or someone else), or save it to your computer.

Super Bowl Ads: Great Online Analysis

The New York Times Web site has a terrific interactive look at Super Bowl ads from 1984 to 2007. Use the slider at the top of the screen to move through the years. For each year, it shows a count of the number of ads in different product categories (vehicles, beverages, travel, food, etc.) plus the percentage of ads each year that featured humor, animals, and celebrities. 2007 had the highest percentage of ads with humor (72%) of any year, though there's no analysis of the quality of the humor. Selected ads can be viewed on screen.

Communication and Culture in The Encyclopedia of American Studies

The Encyclopedia of American Studies, a new addition to BC's collection of electronic resources, includes an excellent collection of articles on topics related to Communication and Culture. Check it out for historical overviews on such subjects as Advertising, Celebrity, Hate Speech, Media and Politics, Political Cartoons, Public Relations, Reality Television, and more.

Communication Abstracts Update

The bi-monthly update of the Communication Abstracts database is now complete, with 340 new journals articles, book chapters, and books. Use the links below to view all of the new entries or to browse them by major topic area:

All New Abstracts

New Abstracts by Topic Area

1. Communication Processes
2. Interpersonal Communication and Relations
3. Economics and Communication
4. Communication, Culture, and Society
5. Education and Communication
6. Health Communication
7. Political Communication
8. Communication, Regulation, and the Law
9. Organizational Communication
10. Public Relations
11. Advertising, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior
12. Mass Media
13. Journalism and News Media
14. Communication and Information Technology
15. Telecommunications
16. Communication Theory and Research

Millions of News Photographs in Factiva

Did you know ...?

....that the Factiva database , best known for access to the Wall Street Journal and thousands of other newspapers and magazine articles from around the world, also includes an ever-expanding archive of more than two million news photos from Reuters and other sources as far back as the 1980s?

Here's how to search and find news photos in Factiva:

1. From the main Factiva page, click on the Search tab at the upper left.
2. Click on the Source button (in gray, next to the plus sign, in the center of the screen).
3. From the Source Category drop-down menu, select Pictures.
4. Click on Reuters Pictures. (Other sources are Fashion Wire Daily and McClatchy Tribune Photo Service)
5. Enter search terms and hit the Run Search button.

New pictures are added to Factiva every day. Note that the default search covers only the last three months, but there are many other date options from which you can choose.