Leaning on a class to make sense

Every fall semester I teach one of my classes in English, with about 20-30 foreign students visiting our university for a semester. We had our first meeting yesterday. And as always I wonder before class starts whether there is enough in the chosen lecture theme to get them out there on the floor, debating. They …

The future and the future of journalism

Understanding the globalization of journalism entails reflection on a wide range of factors – not just factors shaping journalism as such, like the coming of social media and the so-called “sharing economy”, with Google stealing alle the advertising with a smarter scheme. Discussions are found everywhere concerning these aspects of the future of journalism and …

Terrorism, attention and the media

What determines news coverage and how does it apply to terrorism? The idea that terrorism is PR and journalism has a dramaturgical quality is an idea with a long history, but also a history made extraordinarily relevant with the attacks in the US on September 11th 2001, resulting in the epic, metaphorical – and also …

Globalization – a challenge for journalism

  What is the idea of global journalism and the critical discussion all about? Why spend time researching and critiquing something that seems both inevitable and general, vast complex and subject to a myriad of interpretations? Journalism has been going global for centuries – it has been in the DNA since invention: Yet, it seems …

On the life and death of innovation

Listen to Robert Gordon talk about the future of growth and innovation – or the lack of it. This TedTalk, from February 2013, presents an argument that the US economy has been expanding wildly for two centuries, but is now slowing to a halt, if not a stop. Are we witnessing the end of growth? …

Artificial Intelligence; a journalism issue

  •• MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. “In its quest to maintain a United States military advantage, the Pentagon is aggressively turning to Silicon Valley’s hottest technology — artificial intelligence.” This is how an article in the New York Times begins, on May 13th 2016. And there is a lesson here, for those of us with an interest in …

What is global journalism?

A few years back, there was much talk about global journalism. Academic programs came to life, and they looked like one another: There were references to a new globalist mentality. There were references to the rise of new social media. There were, in short, a signal of some sort of change to come. And in …

Education´s digital future?

As we are nearing the World Learning Summit June 14th – 16th; a few thoughts on how technology impacts on education and learning. We are all familiar with the debate on Massive Open Online Courses, and the history of MOOCs ascending, subsequent worries, commercialisation issues and more. We are familiar with the accelerating research and …