Archive for November 2013

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[ecrea] Statistics in Journalism Practice and Education: A Cross-Atlantic Comparison of best practices and approaches

Mon Nov 04 08:16:31 GMT 2013





Statistics in Journalism Practice and Education:

A Cross-Atlantic Comparison of best practices and approaches



January 31st and February 1st, 2014

Arts Tower, Lecture Theatre 7,

University of Sheffield, UK



This event is sponsored by

    * HE Academy,
    * The Faculty of Social Science, University of Sheffield, UK,
    * Royal Statistics Society
    * Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, UK
    * Association of Journalism Education, UK


This one-day seminar will discuss and examine different approaches to teaching journalism students how to gather, interpret and communicate statistics. The seminar will bring together academics and experts from Europe and the US to discuss and exchange pedagogical experiences regarding teaching statistics in the field of journalism studies. The event aims at allowing the participants to exchange experiences and approaches in the teaching of statistics in journalism studies. In so doing, it will facilitate the examination of existing provisions in the European and US curriculum among HE institutions that teach journalism at an UG level. The seminar will also allow us to explore methods of assessment and evaluation as well as other pedagogical practices from a cross-national comparative perspective. The idea is to learn from these experiences and provide common ground from which journalist educators can develop and improve existing provisions for the teaching of statistics to journalism students.


Proposed programme



Day One

09:30 am – Registration and Coffee

10:00 am – Welcome, Ralph Negrine, HoD of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield

10:10 am – Ethics and Statistics in the News, Professor Chris Frost, Chair of the Association of Journalism Education (AJE).

11:00 am – Teaching Numbers to Journalism Students, Paul Voakes, School of Journalism, Indiana University (USA).

12:00 am – Statistic in Science Communication. An Nguyen, Bournemouth University (UK)

13:00 pm – Lunch

14:00 pm – The National Statistics Training Programme for Journalists - Scott Keir, Head of Education and Statistical Literacy, Royal Statistical Society (UK)

15:10 pm – Panel/Papers – Round 1

16:10 pm – Days closes



Day Two

09:30 am – Coffee

10:00 am – Why statistics should be part of the methods of inquiry for all journalists? Professor Saviour Chircop, University of Malta.

11:00 am – Teaching stats to people who don’t like maths. Jairo Lugo-Ocando, University of Sheffield (UK)

12:00 pm – 15:10 pm – Panel/Papers – Round 2

13:00 pm – Closing of the Event





Speakers



Professor Chris Frost, Liverpool John Moores University and Chair of the Association of Journalism Education (AJE)

Professor Chris Frost, the Head of Journalism at Liverpool John Moores University, was a newspaper journalist and editor until he moved into education more than 15 years ago. His research interests include media ethics and he has considerable experience in this field having served on the UK Press Council and as a long-term member of the National Union of Journalists Ethics Council. He has served on the NUJ’s National Executive Council for many years and was NUJ President in 1992. He chairs the Union’s Ethics Council which debates journalism ethics and has a role in educating NUJ members. He has given evidence to the UK House of Commons select committee on press regulation on several occasions, and also at the high-profile Leveson Inquiry. He is immediate past chair of the Association for Journalism Education, which represents most schools of journalism in UK and Ireland HE institutions. He has published widely and regularly speaks at international conferences.



Professor Paul S. Voakes, Journalism and Mass Communication University of Colorado at Boulder (USA).

Paul S. Voakes has been a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at CU since 2003. He served as dean of the program from 2003 to June, 2011. Voakes came to CU after nine years on the faculty of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and his research and teaching specializations are in digital media law and ethics, digital news writing, reporting and editing, and math/statistics for journalism. Before entering academia in 1990 he had been a journalist for 15 years at newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area, most recently as an op-ed columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. In the summer of 2000 he was a political reporter at the Portland Oregonian as an American Society of Newspaper Editors Fellow. He has published his research in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Mass Media Ethics, The Newspaper Research Journal, Communications Law & Policy and other academic journals. He is the author of The Newspaper Journalists of the ’90s (ASNE, 1997), a co-author of Working with Numbers and Statistics: A Handbook for Journalists (2005), and a co-author of The American Journalist in the 21st Century, which received the 2007 Book Award from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). He was the winner of the 1995 Nafziger-White Award (top doctoral dissertation in journalism/mass communication) and won numerous teaching awards at Indiana. He is currently Faculty Director of CU’s Digital News Test Kitchen.



An Nguyen, Bournemouth University (UK)

An Duc Nguyen is an internationally recognised scholar with research expertise in online journalism, news audiences, citizen journalism, science journalism, and the globalization of news in developing countries. An has authored a book, The Penetration of Online News, and two dozen papers in prestigious journals and books. He is in the final stage of a second book, Numbers for the News: Statistics for Journalists (with Jairo Lugo) and the early stage of another, Science News and the Public (with Steve McIlwaine). He is among the most cited authors of the world's top two journalism journals, Journalism Studies and Journalism, according to Google Scholar Metrics. An has taught in five British and Australian universities. Prior to Bournemouth, he led journalism at the University of Sussex. Before Sussex, he taught journalism and media at the University of Stirling, where he co-founded and co-directed its successful Vietnam-based MSc in Media and Communications Management. A former Vietnamese journalist and an Australian-educated journalism scholar, An has been an examiner of journalism output, draft policy, journal articles, book proposals, research dissertations and grant applications for academic, industrial and governmental organisations around the world. Among recent non-academic users of his expertise are the Broadcasting Board of Governors (US Government), Radio Free Asia, and the World Federation of Science Journalists. An serves on the Editorial Board of Journalism Education, the journal of the UK Association for Journalism Education. He is the External Examiner of the MSc in Science Communication at the University of Sheffield. An also frequently engages with non-academic audiences on media and development issues, having been invited to deliver many public and industrial lectures in various countries. He appears in expert interviews and writes commentary pieces for news outlets, especially those in Vietnam.



Professor Saviour Chircop, University of Malta.

Professor Saviour Chircop is head of the Department of Media & Communications and Dean of the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences. He specialises in the areas of communication, instructional design, and media evaluation. Prof. Chircop has designed and directed a number of research projects both locally and internationally in the areas of education, broadcasting and evaluation. He has presented and published research in the area of methodology and evaluation primarily in the USA. Among his research interests he includes human communication, instructional design, facility design, corporate reputation, and perspective-taking. His current research focuses on knowledge inquiry and journalism, looking at the use of statistical data in the development of news stories.



Scott Keir, Royal Statistical Society (UK)

Scott Keir is the Head of Education and Statistical Literacy at the Royal Statistical Society. He has oversight of public event programme, scientific conference programme, awards, book prizes and media and communication skills courses. His responsibilities include financial and staff management, sponsor liaison, developing and maintaining relationships with project partners and special projects. He has a Bachelor of Science (BSc) (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh (UK). Scott Keir has been working in science communication since 1997, covering a wide range of subjects and styles, to a variety of audiences. Current projects include: assisting in the Royal Society Science in Society programme, project-managing the Aventis Prizes for Science Books, and providing administration support to the R&D Society. Previously, Scott has worked for Copus, Maths Year 2000 Scotland, and was a freelance writer and website developer. He is also currently a trustee in The Dennis Rosen Memorial Trust that promotes science in the UK.



Jairo Lugo-Ocando, University of Sheffield (UK)

Jairo Lugo-Ocando has worked as a reporter, staff-writer and chief sub-editor for several newspapers in Venezuela. He has also been correspondent for newspapers, magazines and radio stations in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and the United States. He sits on the advisory board of the Asylum Positive Image Project run by OXFAM-GB. He has been invited to lecture at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bellos (Venezuela), IQRA University (Pakistan) and the University of Columbia (USA) among other institutions. His research interests include media and democratisation in South America and digital technologies in the developing world and statistics in the construction of news stories. His current research specialises in the use of statistics by journalists in their reporting of crime, poverty and development. He is author of several publications and developed two years ago what is currently the only undergraduate module on statistics for journalists in the United Kingdom.





Call for papers:

Statistics in Journalism Practice and Education:

A Cross-Atlantic Comparison of best practices and approaches



January 31st to February 1^st , 2014
University of Sheffield, UK

This two-day seminar will discuss and examine different approaches to teaching journalism students how to gather, interpret and communicate statistics. The seminar will bring together academics and experts from Europe and the US to discuss and exchange pedagogical experiences regarding teaching statistics in the field of journalism studies. The event aims at allowing the participants to exchange experiences and approaches in the teaching of statistics in journalism studies. In so doing, it will facilitate the examination of existing provisions in the European and US curriculum among HE institutions that teach journalism at an UG level. The seminar will also allow us to explore methods of assessment and evaluation as well as other pedagogical practices from a cross-national comparative perspective. The idea is to learn from these experiences and provide common ground from which journalist educators can develop and improve existing provisions.

Speakers include

* Teaching Numbers to Journalism Students, Paul Voakes, School of Journalism, Indiana University (USA). * Ethics and Statistics in the News, Professor Chris Frost, Chair of the Association of Journalism Education (AJE). * Why statistics should be part of the methods of inquiry for all journalists? Professor Saviour Chircop, University of Malta * Statistic in Science Communication. An Nguyen, Bournemouth, University (UK) * Teaching stats to people who don’t like maths. Jairo Lugo-Ocando, University of Sheffield (UK) * The National Statistics Training Programme for Journalists - Scott Keir, Head of Education and Statistical Literacy, Royal Statistical Society (UK)


Possible topics include but are not limited to;
1) Statistics in science news
2) Reporting crime statistics
3) Reporting polls and surveys
4) Economic and business statistics in the news
5) Uses of statistics in investigative journalism
6) Ethics, statistics and news
7) Qualitative methods and journalism
8) Precision journalism

We expect to be able to publish the best papers in an academic publication by 2015. Abstracts should be no longer that 350 words and should be send to: (j.lugo-ocando /at/ stir.ac.uk) before the 30th of November 2013. The event is free and open to the public.



Free registrations for this event at:

http://onlineshop.shef.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=21&prodid=215











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