The BBC unveiled details this week on its Make It Digital initiative, a partnership with 50 organizations, including Google, Microsoft and Samsung, which includes giving coding devices to every 11-year-old in the UK (about 1 million). The project aims to “inspire the digital visionaries of the future” with an ambition to “help digital creativity become […]

When most of us grew up it was clear what we meant by “the news.” We saw boundaries — the nightly newscast, the confines of a newspaper, bulletins on a radio broadcast. Those sources still exist, but so do many more. Young people today are immersed in media, receiving news, marketing and messages from many […]

Justin Ellis writes about how six news outlets are approaching Snapchat, and not all on the Discover section. “News organizations say their Snapchat presence needs to match the tone of their outlet,” writes Ellis. “That’s why Philly.com, the joint web presence of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, is focusing its efforts on covering local […]

Craig Silverman’s in-depth, 100+ page research on the spread of misinformation challenges media on their role in spreading falsehoods. Mathew Ingram notes how the media environment has changed over time, the incentives for publishers with viral news, and how now “the media we consume comes at us from all directions, and the original source isn’t […]

While much has been written about Snapchat’s possible “game-changing” opportunities for news, Ben Clarke writes about how Daily Mail is using the launch to reach for the demographic of young females 13-25 in the US. For the Daily Mail this meant reassessing how to deliver its content on mobile in general. Said Clarke of the […]

As we approach News in Education Week (the first week of March, this year March 2 – 6), we wanted to share an update about the American Press Institute’s increasing work in matters related to helping young people be better news consumers and helping publishers better reach the next generation. API hosts and has built […]

Hank Green defends his participation as one of three YouTube video creators selected to interview the president after the State of the Union. The interviews received ridicule on cable news and as Green says, “even new media companies like Vice were dismissive.” Green notes, however, “there’s a problem that needs to be solved and this […]

“We noted that the activity of young people has gone down on Facebook, even here in Finland,” said news editor Jussi Pullinen, which got her team thinking about reaching younger readers through WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service growing in that country and elsewhere. The team decided to try a one-message daily “newsletter” drawn from its […]

Last week Andrew Watts published a Medium essay, “A Teenager’s View on Social Media written by an actual teen,” which was subsequently shared far and wide and drew the attention of teen researcher danah boyd. In this essay, boyd responds to the article, noting that Watts’ essay should not be taken as representative of everyone. […]

All this week in Montreal, faculty and students from around the world are presenting studies and research on an immense variety of mass communications topics.  About 2,000 people are attending the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference this year, with hundreds of presentations and work sessions taking place. You can read summaries of many of the […]