Visiting Norwegian journalism scholar Ivar John Erdal is currently developing a model of locative journalism.
In this two-part lunchtime presentation, Associate Professor Erdal first discusses an innovative research collaboration between Volda University College located in western Norway, and Sunnmorsposten (smp.no), a regional newspaper, which introduced data journalism in 2012. The project, entitled, Situated technology – mediation, experience and journalism, sees selected students working with experienced SMP journalists and editors to develop new forms of digital storytelling; the news content is then co-published on both the newspaper and students’ websites. The next phase of the project includes experimenting with locative content for mobile devices.
In the second part of the presentation, Associate Professor Erdal examines recent conceptualisations of locative media, and journalism for mobile devices, by a range of scholars (Goggin et al., 2015; Westlund, 2013; Campbell, 2016) before sharing some preliminary ideas about his own proposed model. This theoretical inquiry is informed by recent empirical research on the journalism for mobile devices published by Scandinavian and English-language legacy media in Norway, and, in particular, efforts to classify this output in terms of locativeness.