Prepare for a National Communications Conference on a theme entitled. Fundamentals of virtual communication; Key issues for online communication Professionals.
The following are the five issues prepared for the panel Discussion.
- The skill set required for writing effective stories for a digital journalism platform.
Validation and verification. This is a very crucial skill since it involves investigation, searching and going to a further extend of knowing the soundness, authenticity of the information from reliable sources. This may involve getting to the ground to obtain firsthand information as relates to a particular story, the date, and the place. Investigation of the image or key elements of the video.
Understanding analytics and how to use them. Knowing how to find, understand and use analytics data is key to improving skills in online journalism.
Know how to use mobile phones and enhance the users’ experience. Knowing effective use of android, iPhone for capturing of information in a quick way, and sending information especially when one has first hand to hand information about an event happening somewhere is very crucial. The capability to keep on innovating to enhance the skills to next unlimited levels of new experiences in online and digital journalism is key and imperative to enhancing users experience in the phone.
- Considerations that they must be aware of in covering their stories.
Journalists must be aware that they should be held accountable to the stories they make and that they are serving as a public watchdog.
Journalists must be aware to uphold journalism values such as reporting the truth, with the knowledge that, key values of the societal governance and pillars shall hold as long as they stand on a strong and sound social economic foundation.
Journalists must understand that the transparency that they uphold should be linked with accountability. This is a vital dimension that they, together with their organizations should uphold and maintain with their audiences.
- Ethical Issues to take in to consideration in online journalism.
The tensions thereof arise from our bodily existence and the proper object of research. , i.e. online existence.
Online Identity. The main challenge consists between digital identities and their bodily source. The issue being who shall be hurt, whether the digital platform identity or the bodily harm of people undergoing their diverse programs. One should not pretend to be someone else in order to gain entry and fool users to give unwarranted information to them.
When we do research on online identities we explore their presence online essentially but in fact we may not only be dealing with them but life wise also they aren’t available.
Accuracy. One is required to have a sequential order of the flow of information to the context and any errors and inaccuracies should be promptly corrected in the text.
Fairness. Avoid unwarranted, negative inclination to be able to precisely, and impartially give reports and comments without undue categorization. One is supposed to present all facts in a well composed manner without undue consideration.
- Convergence of Media.
Emergence of computers and web in the years of 1960 and 1970 brought the term Convergence. The term itself means to gather or coming together.
It also means the integration of older media technologies in to new informational forms where telephones, television, computers and internet are used simultaneously in the communication process.
Research in to convergence has led to a process called Mediamorphosis where media tools and such as computer, telephones, mobile, internet have begun to perform similar functions although they are not related. Therefore we derive a fact that multimedia development is the basis of convergence. We have different types of convergence which include
Technological convergence which involves convergence of devices, solutions, and network.
Economic convergence which involves the convergence of markets and regulatory bodies
Content convergence which involves the convergence of media content and media users in their diverse media platforms.
- The Law and the Internet.
The law being the guiding regulations and the internet according to Wikipedia being the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the internet protocol suite to link networks worldwide has fairly been developed and a yet a conclusive precedence been set awaiting its big and evolving nature.
Laws that protect original works such as journals, graphics, and literary works amongst other literature, drama and arts have been set to protect the original owners from losing their hard earned gain.
Examples are copyright laws which protect original works, but not ideas or facts. This warrants the copyright holder to have right in reproduction, distribution, performance, display and audio and video transmission.
Fair use allows reasonable use of a copyrighted work such as in teaching, commenting on, reporting and researching where necessary giving referencing .
Trademark. This refers to a word, name symbol, device or combination of both used by someone to identify their product. They normally arise from use. They need to be registered to establish a public record and in order to file for trademark infringement.
Other internet crimes that occur generally include and are related to domain name issues and include typo squatting, cybersquatting, pagejacking, and cybercrimes which involves changing emails header so it looks its coming from someone else leading to people giving personal information to fraudsters.
The law also touches majorly across the internet on issues related to defamation, breach of contract, tortious interference with business and issues to do with security fraud.
Cover picture by ragan.com
Lawrence Kitaka 