“We in the Mojo Community” – Exploring a Global Network of Mobile Journalists

Abstract

Mobile journalism is a fast-growing area of journalistic innovation that requires new skills and work practices. Thus, a major challenge for journalists is learning not only how to keep up with new gadgets but how to advance and develop a mojo mindset to pursue their interests and solidify future work options. This paper investigates a globally pioneering network of mojo journalism, the Mojo Community, that consists of journalists and practitioners dedicated to creating multimedia content using mobile technologies. The study is based on empirical data from interviews with and the observation of the participants of the community over a two-year period. The analysis draws on Wenger's concept of "communities of practice" to explore the domain, structure, and role of this communal formation for innovation and change in journalistic practices. The community's core group is comprised of journalists mainly affiliated with legacy broadcast organizations and with a particular interest in and extensive knowledge of mobile technologies. The participants perceive their engagement with the community as a way of meeting the challenges of organizational reluctance to change, fast-evolving technological advancements, and uncertain job prospects.

Digital Skills of Mobile Journalists: Exploring Learning Needs and Learner Experiences of Just-in-Time Learning With Smartphones

“…Mobile journalism (MoJo) has rapidly moved to embrace mobile technologies as tools of gathering and disseminating digital news since the late 2000s (Cameron, 2009;Martyn, 2009;Marymont, 2006). In particular, smartphones have become an important resource in journalists' daily work routines in the 21st century (Kitsa, 2019;Salzmann et al, 2020). The nexus of smartphones allows journalists to process information on the go within minutes and quickly edit and report news anywhere from the field at any time (Cervi et al, 2020;Westlund & Quinn, 2018).…”

“…Mobile journalists (MoJos) are solo reporters who use their smartphones as a comprehensive production unit for newsgathering, editing, and dissemination (Salzmann et al, 2020). Because the mobile media have changed from a 24-hr news cycle to a minute-by-minute update format (Costello & Oliver, 2018), journalists must report news as soon as they gather it, digesting it and breaking it down into smaller pieces of mobile-friendly contents (Wenger et al, 2014).…”

Competencias y perfil profesional de los gestores de medios sociales en los medios de comunicación: detección de una fuerte apuesta por la automatización robótica

“…Quien se encarga de esa tarea abarca funciones del periodista multimedia porque sabe contar historias con rigor y con capacidad para conectar con la audiencia, tiene interés por la tecnología y es muy ágil en la producción de contenidos (Calvo, 2019), pero, además, sabe redactar para formatos informativos digitales y posee conocimientos de edición de vídeo y audio (Caminero & Sánchez-García, 2018). El gestor de medios sociales también es periodista móvil (Salzmann et al, 2021) porque está altamente capacitado para producir contenido multimedia con un teléfono y con apps sin menospreciar la rigurosidad de la información ya que una de sus utilidades también es la de tutorial (Barrientos-Báez, et al, 2017). De ahí que el encargado de los medios sociales también deba actuar, en parte, no sólo como un especialista sino también como un fact-checker, pues es precisamente en las Redes sociales donde los bulos y la desinformación se propagan con más facilidad, sobre todo a través de Twitter y Facebook (Vizoso et al, 2018).…”

Mobile Journalists as Traceable Data Objects: Surveillance Capitalism and Responsible Innovation in Mobile Journalism

“…Consequently, the key technologies and the infrastructure of mobile journalism are building on what Von Schomberg (2013) called an 'irresponsible innovation' (p. 60) paving the way for what arguably can be seen in the context of mobile journalism as an irresponsible adoption of irresponsible technology. Although mobile technology has not been developed exclusively for journalism, journalists all over the world have adopted smartphones, exploring the boundaries of mobile technology for journalistic purposes (Salzmann et al, 2020).…”

“…Mobile journalism is a fast-growing field (Burum & Quinn, 2016;Duffy, 2011;Goggin, 2010;Perreault & Stanfield, 2018;Salzmann, Guribye, & Gynnild, 2020;Westlund & Quinn, 2018), and smartphone-based reporting is an emerging playground for media innovations (Palacios, Barbosa, da Silva, & da Cunha, 2016) that proposedly holds the potential to further democratize journalism (Burum, 2016;Duffy, 2011).…”