Melissa Wall
California State University, Northridge, Journalism, Faculty Member
- Journalism, Internet Studies, International Communication, Participatory Media, Social Movements, Middle East Studies, and 13 moreTwitter as a News Source, Twitter as Medium and Message, Youtube, Refugees, Syria, News Analysis, Newspapers and online journalism, Online Journalism, Citizen Journalism, Social Media, Digital Journalism, Sociology of Journalism, Media Research, and Protest Movementsedit
- I’m a journalism professor at California State University – Northridge and the author of "Citizen Journalism: "Practi... moreI’m a journalism professor at California State University – Northridge and the author of "Citizen Journalism: "Practices, Propaganda, Pedagogy," (2019), the edited volume, "Citizen Journalism: Valuable, Useless or Dangerous" (2012) and “Mapping Citizen and Participatory Journalism in Newsrooms, Classrooms and Beyond” (forthcoming).
My research focuses on refugees and their uses of communication technologies: "Syrian refugees and information precarity" published in "New Media & Society" and the forthcoming volumes, “Sage Handbook of Media and Migration” and “The Handbook of Diasporas, Media and Culture.” Summaries can be found in “The Washington Post” Monkey Cage blog, “E-International Relations,” USC’s CPD blog and “The Hill.”
I also study participatory and citizen media (see key articles including a retrospective of citizen journalism published in "Digital Journalism;" a book chapter published in the "Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies," and articles focusing on Syrian citizen journalism published in "Digital Journalism" and in "Journalism.")
I am also the creator of the Pop-Up Newsroom, a temporary, virtual newsroom for citizen and student journalists. Pop-Up Newsroom has collaborated with universities around the world to produce collective coverage, including topics such as global poverty and the refugee crisis with university journalism programs in Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Lebanon Netherlands, Taiwan and UK. I have published several articles/book chapters about this project.
My research has been published in journals such as New Media & Society; Journalism; Media, Culture and Society; Journalism Studies; Journal of Communication Inquiry; Journalism Practice; International Communication Gazette; International Journal of Communication; Popular Communication; Rhodes Journalism Review; Journal of Development Communication; Javnost: The Public; Journal of Middle Eastern Media.
My photographs of protests and civil disobedience have been published in the books, "Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance" and "From Act Up to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization." along with the "Washington Post Magazine," and "Wildlife Australia." My photograph of a Damascus newsstand is the cover for an Arabic textbook, "Al-Kitaab Fii Ta'Allum Al-'Arabiiyya," published by Georgetown University Press.
I have reported from and conducted research in Lebanon, where I was a Fulbright scholar. I was also an Open Society International Scholar to Ukraine. I have also taught journalism in Lebanon and in Ethiopia, studied township newspapers in Zimbabwe, and produced a radio documentary about the media reform movement in Taiwan. I was selected for a Berglund Fellowship for internet studies and a Poynter fellowship at Indiana University for journalism professors.
My PhD is from the University of Washington.
Please email me if you want any of my papers.edit
The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society,... more
The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society, this essay assesses the ways such a system came into being, finding a dearth of professional journalism, rapidity of its formation, and assistance by external “connectors” as key factors. This case study provides a potential model for the ways pop-up news ecologies may form in other authoritarian countries.
This chapter examines an effort to rethink how journalism is taught through an exploration of a university-based initiative, the Pop-Up Newsroom. Many of the most highly touted projects said to reimagine journalism education urge... more
This chapter examines an effort to rethink how journalism is taught through an exploration of a university-based initiative, the Pop-Up Newsroom. Many of the most highly touted projects said to reimagine
journalism education urge educators to have their students take on professional journalism responsibilities, filling the gaps of the shrinking
professional world. Yet tying journalism education to the news industry’s needs and values may hold journalism education back from developing truly different visions of what the discipline could be. The Pop-Up Newsroom offers a different possible direction.
journalism education urge educators to have their students take on professional journalism responsibilities, filling the gaps of the shrinking
professional world. Yet tying journalism education to the news industry’s needs and values may hold journalism education back from developing truly different visions of what the discipline could be. The Pop-Up Newsroom offers a different possible direction.
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The ways the New York Times has incorporated citizen videos from the Syrian conflict into its live blog, The Lede, is explored in this article. The analysis reveals the creation of a new journalistic element-the Collaborative News Clip-in... more
The ways the New York Times has incorporated citizen videos from the Syrian conflict into its live blog, The Lede, is explored in this article. The analysis reveals the creation of a new journalistic element-the Collaborative News Clip-in which ordinary people are now producing immersive, emotional, multidimensional self-created videos that news outlets cooperatively incorporate into online content. The Collaborative News Clip is created through joint framing and shared gatekeeping by a tier of citizen-activists working with a professional news organization.
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ABSTRACT
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World issues and news organizations’ operational realities have become so complicated that journalism professionals realize collaboration is the only solution to quality reporting on global issues. Journalism schools need to train their... more
World issues and news organizations’ operational realities have become so complicated that journalism professionals realize collaboration is the only solution to quality reporting on global issues. Journalism schools need to train their students in the key elements of global collaboration so they can prepare them to stay relevant and cover as many aspects of global events and their implications as possible. This syndicate discussed these issues and new ways in which journalism schools can teach international reporting.
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This reflection considers the thematic issue “Refugee Crises Disclosed: Intersections between Media, Communication and Forced Migration Processes” through the lens of social navigation which takes into account the fluidity and uncertainty... more
This reflection considers the thematic issue “Refugee Crises Disclosed: Intersections between Media, Communication and Forced Migration Processes” through the lens of social navigation which takes into account the fluidity and uncertainty of the refugee and forced migrant condition whether in flight, emplaced, or at a temporary stopping point. Refugees who are able to “read” their social environment will be more successful in developing practices to navigate through unpredictable migration processes, including responding to information uncertainty. Yet even as some of the displaced adapt, other actors—particularly those part of the refugee regime—are also operating in unstable conditions such that the actions of refugees/forced migrants may in turn keep the circumstances of those purporting to help also in flux.
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Elite British news media such as the BBC,The Economist and the Guardian have experienced large increases in US audiences in the post-September 11 media environment. This article explores the nature and extent of this... more
Elite British news media such as the BBC,The Economist and the Guardian have experienced large increases in US audiences in the post-September 11 media environment. This article explores the nature and extent of this new ‘‘British invasion,’’ outlining key institutional, cultural and journalistic factors distinguishing mainstream US media from their UK counterparts. In particular,the British are seen as stepping into a void created by shrinking US international news coverage aswell as providing a broader range of liberal political views that may contribute to expanding the US news agenda. The possible perils of the increased flow of their journalism into the United States for UK-based media are also considered
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... Political disputes in Thailand reflect a long-standing power struggle among the country's elites representing different social and ethnic groups that crystallized during Thailand's 19th century ... This gave rise to the... more
... Political disputes in Thailand reflect a long-standing power struggle among the country's elites representing different social and ethnic groups that crystallized during Thailand's 19th century ... This gave rise to the anti-coup Red Shirt movement seeking immediate elections. ...
American media traditionally have created one-dimensional portraits of intracountry conflict in Africa. Worldwide changes since the end of the Cold War have given many media observers hope that African violence might be covered more... more
American media traditionally have created one-dimensional portraits of intracountry conflict in Africa. Worldwide changes since the end of the Cold War have given many media observers hope that African violence might be covered more insightfully. To see whether this was true, news magazine coverage of the 1994 Rwanda crisis was analyzed. Findings suggest that some patterns such as viewing African events through an East-West frame have disappeared, but other types of simplification prevail.
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Abstract This article examines whether participatory media such as Flickr, with its seemingly unfettered tools for mapping citizen-created photographs, offers a means for a more comprehensive representation of minorities in a non-Western... more
Abstract This article examines whether participatory media such as Flickr, with its seemingly unfettered tools for mapping citizen-created photographs, offers a means for a more comprehensive representation of minorities in a non-Western country. Assessment of geotags–markers designating longitude and latitude on an online map–associated with photographs of Thailand's Muslims suggests that by replicating common stereotypes, user-generated content may be limiting rather than opening up discourses about minorities and ...
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One of the most noted communication phenomena that grew out of the second war against Iraq has been soldiers' use of social media such as blogs and photo/video filesharing sites to distribute their own grassroots, unsanitized views... more
One of the most noted communication phenomena that grew out of the second war against Iraq has been soldiers' use of social media such as blogs and photo/video filesharing sites to distribute their own grassroots, unsanitized views of the conflict. The rise of this form of media content and dissemination represents a window for seeing into the social relations of the military arena as it responds to a new communications environment in which an agreed upon set of practices has not yet been reached (Andén-Papadopoulos, 2009; Christensen ...
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Providing a nice overview of the competing definitions of 'network journalism', Heinrich argues that this is not simply citizen or participatory journalism. Just as Castells suggests that our social systems have changed in... more
Providing a nice overview of the competing definitions of 'network journalism', Heinrich argues that this is not simply citizen or participatory journalism. Just as Castells suggests that our social systems have changed in structure, becoming decentralized and more densely interconnected, so, she posits, has journalism. Thus, network journalism is a 'structural concept', referring to the modes of connection 'within the whole sphere of journalistic work', whether online or offline (p. 61). The heart of the book is the second part, ...
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(2002). In Eytan Gilboa (Ed.) Media and conflict: Framing issues, making policy and shaping opinions (pp. 25-43). Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers. ... Publication Name: Media and Conflict: Framing Issues, Making Policy and … ...... more
(2002). In Eytan Gilboa (Ed.) Media and conflict: Framing issues, making policy and shaping opinions (pp. 25-43). Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers. ... Publication Name: Media and Conflict: Framing Issues, Making Policy and … ... Sorry, the author hasn't uploaded a copy yet. Please check back later. ... Thank you! Your feedback has been sent. ... Want an instant answer to your question? Check the FAQs.
(2003). In K. Kawamoto (Ed.) Views from the horizon: Perspectives on digital journalism (pp. 113-122). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ... Publication Name: Digital journalism: emerging media and the changing … ... Sorry, the author... more
(2003). In K. Kawamoto (Ed.) Views from the horizon: Perspectives on digital journalism (pp. 113-122). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ... Publication Name: Digital journalism: emerging media and the changing … ... Sorry, the author hasn't uploaded a copy yet. Please check back later. ... Thank you! Your feedback has been sent. ... Want an instant answer to your question? Check the FAQs.
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Since the turn of the century, Thailand, dubbed as the “Land of Smiles,” has been racked by internal political instability, turmoil, and violence. This study assesses how an ongoing political crisis in Thailand is deconstructed via blogs.... more
Since the turn of the century, Thailand, dubbed as the “Land of Smiles,” has been racked by internal political instability, turmoil, and violence. This study assesses how an ongoing political crisis in Thailand is deconstructed via blogs. A qualitative content analysis of 45 blogs (838 posts) about Thailand indicates that during a peak period of massive anti-government protests in the spring of 2010, blog posts about the crisis tended to fall under three categories:(a) creating a partisan view of the political conflict, which largely mirrored ...
The type of news that gets published about Africa is influenced by the general values and organizational demands of the Western media. News is not merely the random reporting of events, but is rather constructed and shaped by reporters... more
The type of news that gets published about Africa is influenced by the general values and organizational demands of the Western media. News is not merely the random reporting of events, but is rather constructed and shaped by reporters and editors who determine what is worthy of coverage and what is not, and how events will be presented (Chang and Lee 1992; Gitlin 1980; Tuchman 1978; White 1950). Because the media tend to value conflict and crisis, especially when the news is coming from foreign countries, that is the type of ...
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This study compares US news magazine coverage of conflict occurring in Bosnia and Rwanda. Bosnia's violence was characterized as an aberration for Europeans, while Rwanda's violence was presented as typical of Africans. Coverage... more
This study compares US news magazine coverage of conflict occurring in Bosnia and Rwanda. Bosnia's violence was characterized as an aberration for Europeans, while Rwanda's violence was presented as typical of Africans. Coverage suggests that in Bosnia, participants made a logical, albeit evil, decision to commit violence in an attempt to seek revenge for past grievances. In contrast, Rwanda's violence is depicted as having no logical explanation and is portrayed as irrational and so alien from Western understanding as to ...
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Citizen journalism: global perspectives/edited by Stuart Allan, Einar Thorsen. p. cm.(Global crises and the media; vol. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Citizen... more
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Citizen journalism: global perspectives/edited by Stuart Allan, Einar Thorsen. p. cm.(Global crises and the media; vol. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Citizen journalism. 2. Online journalism. I. Title. PN4784. C615 ...
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The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society,... more
The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society, this essay assesses the ways such a system came into being, finding a dearth of professional journalism, rapidity of its formation, and assistance by external “connectors” as key factors. This case study provides a potential model for the ways pop-up news ecologies may form in other authoritarian countries.
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This article reviews the state of research on citizen journalism over the past decade. The key areas covered include the ways traditional journalism has responded to this phenomenon from its early criticisms and later clumsy embrace of... more
This article reviews the state of research on citizen journalism over the past decade. The key areas covered include the ways traditional journalism has responded to this phenomenon from its early criticisms and later clumsy embrace of citizen content; the promises and perils of hyper-local citizen journalism; the intersections of social media tools and individual citizen content creators such as those on blogs and Twitter; citizen journalism in the hands of activists; and the conditions for citizen reporting in authoritarian contexts. The article ends with recommendations for future research.
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Compares US news magazine coverage of conflict occurring in Bosnia and Rwanda. Bosnia’s violence was characterized as an aberration for Europeans, while Rwanda’s violence was presented as typical of Africans.
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American media traditionally have created one-dimensional portraits of intracountry conflict in Africa. Worldwide changes since the end of the Cold War have given many media observers hope that African violence might be covered more... more
American media traditionally have created one-dimensional portraits of intracountry conflict in Africa. Worldwide changes since the end of the Cold War have given many media observers hope that African violence might be covered more insightfully. To see whether this was true, news magazine coverage of the 1994 Rwanda crisis was analyzed. Findings suggest that some patterns such as viewing African events through an East-West frame have disappeared, but other types of simplification prevail.
Research Interests:
"The ways the New York Times has incorporated citizen videos from the Syrian conflict into its live blog, The Lede, is explored in this article. The analysis reveals the creation of a new journalistic element – the Collaborative News... more
"The ways the New York Times has incorporated citizen videos from the Syrian conflict
into its live blog, The Lede, is explored in this article. The analysis reveals the creation
of a new journalistic element – the Collaborative News Clip – in which ordinary people
are now producing immersive, emotional, multidimensional self-created videos that
news outlets cooperatively incorporate into online content. The Collaborative News
Clip is created through joint framing and shared gatekeeping by a tier of citizen-activists
working with a professional news organization. Visit this site for free download: http://connection.sagepub.com/blog/communication-media/2014/05/13/syrian-citizen-journalists-response-to-citizen-produced-videos-incorporated-into-online-content/
into its live blog, The Lede, is explored in this article. The analysis reveals the creation
of a new journalistic element – the Collaborative News Clip – in which ordinary people
are now producing immersive, emotional, multidimensional self-created videos that
news outlets cooperatively incorporate into online content. The Collaborative News
Clip is created through joint framing and shared gatekeeping by a tier of citizen-activists
working with a professional news organization. Visit this site for free download: http://connection.sagepub.com/blog/communication-media/2014/05/13/syrian-citizen-journalists-response-to-citizen-produced-videos-incorporated-into-online-content/
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Discussion of the Pop-Up Newsroom project bringing together journalism students from around the world to cover poverty for 24 hours. Available online as part of the Civic Media Reader Project, MIT Press Link:... more
Discussion of the Pop-Up Newsroom project bringing together journalism students from around the world to cover poverty for 24 hours. Available online as part of the Civic Media Reader Project, MIT Press Link: http://civicmediaproject.org/works/civic-media-project/pop-up-newsroom
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The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society,... more
The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society, this essay assesses the ways such a system came into being, finding a dearth of professional journalism, rapidity of its formation, and assistance by external “connectors” as key factors. This case study provides a potential model for the ways pop-up news ecologies may form in other authoritarian countries.
Research Interests:
This article describes a collaborative, multinational project (India, UK and USA) that trained university journalism students to become more critical when reporting on issues of income inequality. We describe how three universities... more
This article describes a collaborative, multinational project (India, UK and USA) that trained university journalism students to become more critical when reporting on issues of income inequality. We describe how three universities created 24 hours of live mobile media coverage about low-income and other marginalized communities. We began by sensitizing students to issues around traditional misrepresentations of poverty. This was approached differently at each school according to the local context. However, professors also shared their approaches, so that students in one country could learn more about how income inequality is viewed in others. Students then reported for The Pop-Up Newsroom, a temporary, virtual news space, live with cellphones from key places where poverty is being challenged. Their primary distribution tool was Twitter. We believed that changing the reporting structures would change reporting practices and bring students closer to grassroots voices. Thus, the conventional newsroom was replaced with structures ranging from makeshift gatherings of students with laptops who curated others’ content to student labs turned into community spaces.
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This paper explores the results of the introduction of the Pop-Up Newsroom, a virtual, temporary citizen journalism-style mobile news operation, to university student journalists. The results revealed two categories of response: those who... more
This paper explores the results of the introduction of the Pop-Up Newsroom, a virtual, temporary citizen journalism-style mobile news operation, to university student journalists. The results revealed two categories of response: those who embraced change and began to develop networked journalism identities; and those who advocated for the traditional brick-and-mortar newsroom and accompanying practices as preserving professional journalism identities.
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Abstract This article examines current events weblogs or blogs that were particularly active during the second US war with Iraq, in the spring of 2003. Analysis suggests that these blogs are a new genre of journalism that emphasizes... more
Abstract This article examines current events weblogs or blogs that were particularly active during the second US war with Iraq, in the spring of 2003. Analysis suggests that these blogs are a new genre of journalism that emphasizes personalization, audience participation in content creation and story forms that are fragmented and interdependent with other websites. These characteristics suggest a shift away from traditional journalism's modern approach toward a new form of journalism infused with postmodern sensibilities.
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This study focuses on three email lists used in the Seattle World Trade Organization protests. Each group’s list employed at least one of three processes identified here as key to collective identity. Yet overall,none of the lists was... more
This study focuses on three email lists used in the Seattle World Trade Organization protests. Each group’s list employed at least one of three processes identified here as key to collective identity. Yet overall,none of the lists was entirely successful as a vehicle for expressing movement identities, suggesting that while the internet may facilitate certain organizational activities of social movements, it appears to have less impact on their symbolic ones.
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This essay assesses how the intersection of blogging and journalism is changing the nature of news. An economic concept, the informal or black market economy, is introduced as a metaphor for understanding the ways in which blogs are... more
This essay assesses how the intersection of blogging and journalism is changing the nature of news. An economic concept, the informal or black market economy, is introduced as a metaphor for understanding the ways in which blogs are different from and similar to mainstream or "formal" journalism and what these differences tell us about the future of journalism.
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Blogs are a new genre of journalism that emphasizes personalization, audience participation in content creation and story forms that are fragmented and interdependent with other websites. These characteristics suggest a shift away from... more
Blogs are a new genre of journalism that emphasizes personalization, audience participation in content creation and story forms that are fragmented and interdependent with other websites. These characteristics suggest a shift away from traditional journalism’s modern approach toward a new form of journalism infused with postmodern sensibilities.
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"In this essay, we consider the ways the YouTube videos of Egyptian youth activist, Asmaa Mafouz, may be contributing to the development of a new political language for Egypt, providing a space to create an individual public political... more
"In this essay, we consider the ways the YouTube videos of Egyptian youth activist, Asmaa Mafouz, may be contributing to the development of a new political language for Egypt, providing a space to create an individual public political self, and modeling a new form of citizenship and activism for Egyptians.
Free download: http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1238/608 (.pdf) "
Free download: http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1238/608 (.pdf) "
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Overall, bloggers worked within existing discourses about the war, primarily employing pro-war and anti-war frames. The blogs also promoted blogging itself as a solution to the problems of reporting on war as some bloggers saw themselves... more
Overall, bloggers worked within existing discourses about the war, primarily employing pro-war and anti-war frames. The blogs also promoted blogging itself as a solution to the problems of reporting on war as some bloggers saw themselves as improvements on mainstream media.
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(2002). In Eytan Gilboa (Ed.) Media and conflict: Framing issues, making policy and shaping opinions (pp. 25-43). Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers.
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This chapter responds to these calls by aiming to further develop the concept of the tem- porary or pop-up news ecology, a term that seeks to take into account the rapid changes and liquidity in journalism . . . as well as the move to... more
This chapter responds to these calls by aiming to further develop the concept of the tem- porary or pop-up news ecology, a term that seeks to take into account the rapid changes and liquidity in journalism . . . as well as the move to rethink the ways research has tended to limit itself to examining news within individual organizational structures.