Student journalists tackle 'maker culture'

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By Heather Travis
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Students in the Online Journalism classes at The University of Western Ontario and Ryerson University are taking things into their own hands to examine 'maker culture'.

Lecturer Wayne MacPhail, who teaches online journalism at both universities, has brought his two classes together for a unique collaboration to examine people who make their own technological gadgets and software, art, citizen journalism and activism.  
 
The multimedia special report, MakerCulture - Taking Things Into Our Own Hands, will be published in an 11-part feature series containing dozens of articles, a podcast series and a collection of video clips and mini-documentaries. It will be published in January on journalism websites rabble.ca and The Tyee.
 
Students are documenting the work of the innovative citizens who are reacting to consumerism and globalization by finding new uses for hardware, hacking their own software, printing parts with 3D printers, open sourcing recipes and creating their own books, magazines and clothing. The ‘makers’ also share their creations online.
 
“I wanted to do a project that really took advantage of a lot of the things you can do online, particularly around social media,” says MacPhail.  
 
“I’ve always been frustrated by the inability or lack of desire of traditional media to really fully embrace what you can do online and to stick with a model of journalism that was really predicated on things that don’t make a lot of sense online anymore – broadcast, central command and control, and secrecy.”  
 
Social media and collaborative tools online allow journalists to engage the community in the writing process, he adds. He used online social networking tools often adopted by those involved in maker culture, such as a wikis (a collaborative website), blog, Facebook and Twitter, to get the students to share their work online and to encourage transparent, collaborative storytelling techniques.  
 
Forty-five students will produce stories for the online publications using video, audio, text, photos and graphics.  
 
A community of followers has been watching the students’ work as it developed online through the social media networks.  
 
“People are really interested in what we are doing,” says MacPhail. “It sort-of turns journalism on its head.  
 
Using these online social tools to showcase the journalistic process can help to create a sense of community, he adds, noting the project helped to pull together the worldwide maker culture.  
 
The project marks a first for the Journalism program at Western.  
 
MacPhail challenged the students to think about online journalism in a new and different way than the content produced by most media outlets. He hopes traditional journalists can learn from the project and the process of creating it.  
 
“I think it fundamentally changes the nature of story, it changes the nature of journalism, it changes the nature of communication. If all you do is the same stuff in a new medium, that’s not very interesting.”  
 
Paul Benedetti, program coordinator for the Masters of Arts in Journalism program at Western, says the future of journalism is about “innovation, collaboration and creativity. This project captures all those things.  
 
“Western Journalism is pleased to be working for the first time with Ryerson's journalism students to produce state-of-the-art online content,” he adds. “We're also thrilled that students are showcasing their work on quality journalism sites like the Tyee and rabble.ca."
 

Charting Maker Culture

To view the wiki visit http://makerculture.pbworks.com/. Journalism students also published an online journal of their progress at http://makingmakers.posterous.com/.     

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