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Media literacy education
Total journalism in developing media competence among youth
Dr. Anna Andreeva
Tyumen State University Tyumen (Russia), 9 Respubliki St. 625003 aaandreeva@yandex. ru
Dr. Olga Petrova
Tyumen State University Tyumen (Russia), 9 Respubliki St. 625003 petrova-o-a@yandex. ru
Dr. Irina Belyakova
Tyumen State University Tyumen (Russia), 9 Respubliki St. 625003 i.e. belyakova@utmn. ru
Abstract. In the modern information society the importance of education in the field of mass media cannot be denied as it helps develop the skills everyone is required to have nowadays. The article tackles the issue of media education and underlines the significance of the search for new approaches in the light of information risks, an unstable position of professional journalists and an increasingly important role of horizontal communication. The authors of the article study the models of media educational activity by contemporary foreign and Russian researchers and give an overview of the most effective techniques.
The article provides an example of implementing a new teaching technique in the shape of a number of youth projects under the title Medianavigator. As for total journalism, its potential, efficiency and limitations in forming media competence in young people are examined. The authors present results of the preliminary research into media demands among high school students, as well as their awareness of an information agenda, their ideas of journalism as a profession and their abilities to solve ethical problems. It can be inferred that their level of media competence is rather low. The article analyzes results of the change in media competence that happened after the event that gave the students an insight into the professional activity of a journalist. The questionnaire survey of the participants shows that they acquired a better and altogether more realistic understanding about journalism. They recognized the importance of instrumental competence related to the target audience, information dissemination and the social function of a journalist. The students worked out a scale of true-false information and learned to work with respondents. They also acquired some skills in journalism ethics, critical thinking, and data processing. The article summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the genre of total journalism as an interactive model technique in the sphere of media education.
Key words: Media education, media competence, total journalism, Festival Medianavigator, project, media
literacy.
Introduction
The talk about professional journalism education has long been a matter of heated debate for those working as journalists and those studying journalism, which, to a certain extent, signals important issues in the media itself. Digitalization, globalization, technological progress, and artificial intelligence are the notions that determine the post-industrial society where educational activity has to adjust both content-wise and format-wise.
Western scholars and journalists actively discuss the notions of contemporary journalism and journalists. More and more often, journalism is viewed as a "liquid", "dynamic set of practices and expectations" [Deuze and Witschge, 2017] much affected by rapid economic and cultural changes and development of new communications technologies all over the world and "without a clearly defined educational curriculum or even distinct pedagogically enforced style of thought" [Anderson, 2014, p. 64]. "The digitalization of content has radically transformed the media industry. Now that every Internet user can commit acts of journalism, professional journalists are in dire need of a redefinition of their work and purpose" [Kayser-Bril et al, 2016].
We can identify a number of difficulties that modern Departments of Journalism face these days both in Russia and abroad.
In our country, the first problem is the attitude to journalism as practical media activity that seems to have ceased to be an elitist institution due to the development and easy access to communication technologies. There is obviously little or no correspondence between a deep scientific background and an underprivileged status of a journalist on the global arena.
Secondly, multiple attempts to enter the international arena result in almost total negligence to the valuable regional component, whose study might in fact specify the local identity of the community and the regional journalist. Besides, the Soviet concept of journalism is still predominant in Russian universities and is based on the idea of exclusive qualities of journalists, their moral responsibility and their function of educators and mentors. However, the reality of the current media system and students (the so-called online generation) proves that they do not feel the need for supervisors and are quite content with horizontal communication despite the potential risks it may bring. Some of them include being susceptible to manipulation, being unable to verify news and other propagated content and having a vague understanding of what is true and what is false. The teacher is presented with a serious choice: to either follow the tried and tested principles or enhance his/her media competence, preferably sooner than students do theirs, before actually teaching them these new skills. One question that is still open to debate is how to deal with the fact that although modern students and applicants are technologically literate, they are incapable of being critical and cannot detect manipulation with information or control communication.
Similar problems are observed in the west.
Semi-structured in depth interviews with journalism students, professional journalists and educationalists were conducted and published approximately at the same time in Australia, Turkey, and the USA [Ferrucci, 2017, Ercan, 2017, Lynch, 2015]. The interviews focused on the current state and future of the journalism education and the journalism profession in the era of "digital transformation, with news provision moving from institutionalized settings to other pathways of communication" [Josephi, 2017, p. 469].
The findings of the interviews testify that all of the respondents are highly critical of journalism education nowadays. Their criticisms concerned the following:
• "universities should prepare students to work in all media, whether it be print, broadcast, audio or, especially, web, and help them understand the similarities and differences between the media" [Ferrucci, 2017, p. 6];
• "universities need to do a better job preparing prospective journalists to tackle complex stories and to understand how context matters and news tends not be an isolated event... and to meet deadlines [Ferrucci, 2017, p.7];
• "the rigidity of an academic system inadequately designed to provide and support the flexibility, immersion, iteration and professional currency that are such necessary attributes of the professional preparation of 21st-century journalists" [Lynch, 2015, p. 33].
In the Proceedings of the Russian applied research conference "Media education: What to teach modern journalists and media professionals?" [Media education and career guidance: What
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to teach modern journalists and media professionals, 2016], the authors, some of them practicing journalists, introduced their idea of future journalism education. Thus, [Amzin, 2016, pp. 7-11] in trying to work out "what the basic journalism education lacks", Aleksey Amzin says that all trainees learn how to work with sources of information, find what is newsworthy and write texts rather quickly. He notices that there are still a number of skills students do not acquire while studying at Departments of Journalism, which eventually leads to a professional crisis. The first crisis is linked to no experience of editing, which is highly important for adjusting the text structure to better express the author's viewpoint. Other predicaments are the ignorance of media management and lack of leadership skills, little support from the professional community and so on. ArtemGalustyan believes that a student has to perform the function of a micro-manager and take part in the process of creating new material and its edition [Galustyan, 2016, pp. 16-17]. In this relation, many people mention the ethical component of the profession that can only be felt in practice.
All specialists and researchers in the field of journalism advocate that the system of education should be based on a multiplatform solely for the reason that the target audience is now all there, on the internet and in social networks. Not surprisingly, the authors of the Proceedings underline the importance of developing skills for using cutting edge technologies. Some researchers, including K. Nigmatullina, focus on the need for making use of technology in order to make regional media just as modern and up-to-date as federal media, which is what technological effectiveness is all about [Nigmatullina, 2016, pp. 46-52].
Therefore, the activity aimed to form media competence and media literacy has to, first of all, meet the requirements of the media field and, secondly, the peculiarities of participants, especially their age, expectations and awareness of journalistic work.
In line with the above-mentioned claims, two common approaches to journalism education were developed in the western world. They are: the teaching hospital model and the entrepreneurial model. The first one was introduced by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education and modeled by universities in the USA, Europe and Australia. The teaching hospital model "offers a mix of technical skill and conceptual and ethical acuity by offering journalism students a curriculum that integrates them and their coursework into a working newsroom staffed by professional journalists but housed in a university. Proponents argue that this curricular model offers "real-world connection" and an educational experience that creates individuals aware of the crisis afflicting journalism, the technical tools available, and the organizational realities and obstacles that determine the deployment of these resources" [Creech and Mendelson, 2015, p. 153].
An example of the teaching hospital model is the Integrated Journalism teaching news platform at the University of British Columbia described in [Joung and Giltrow, 2015]. The course publishes an online news website three times a year focused on Vancouver issues and events with the faculty members, all former journalists, acting as hands-on editors.
The second model is entrepreneurial journalism. It demonstrates the shift in the industry to "individual traits, skills, attitude, and mindset" necessary to "monetize content in innovative ways, connect to publics in interactive new formats, grasp opportunities, and respond to (and shape) its environment" [Deuze and Witschger, 2017]. Such courses and degrees exist in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Colombia, Mexico, and The Netherlands.
Anderson discusses both approaches and finds them faulty. Ferrucci's as well as Creech and Mendelson's findings support his opinion. Introduction of digital innovations in journalism and wider use of the Internet can also mean a disruption in the existing educational models, the same as in business [Creech and Mendelson, 2015, p. 142]. Putting too much emphasis on "doing a good job teaching technology, there is too much focus on it to the detriment of traditional journalism skills" [Ferrucci, p. 1] such as critical thinking and media and news literacy as well as social responsibility and ethical standards [Jolls and Wilson, 2014, Dalton,
2017, Gasher, 2015, Press, 2015]. According to Young and Giltrow, "much of the curricular discourse over the past decade around innovation in journalism education in North America has focused on developing and expanding learning outcomes related to digital media and online journalism environments. These developments, while generally fruitful for students' ability to recognize, know, reproduce, and apply journalism technologies, have occurred against a backdrop of deinstitutionalization of news and mainstream media organizations" [Young and Giltrow, 2015, p. 46].
According to Anderson and Press, journalism education should reach out both for the amateur, "part-time or momentary journalist - the citizen who occasionally, but not always, engages in media production or dissemination of information of great public import" as well as "the smaller but by no means intellectually diminished crop of full-time journalists with the set of new and traditional skills that are increasingly required of them in the rapidly shifting job market" (Anderson, 2014, p. 67; Press, 2015, p. 111). Journalism schools should provide hands-on knowledge about the journalistic process enhanced with the study of news media across the university campus, and bringing some realworld practice to theories of news media production from different academic disciplines [Press, 2015, p. 116].
Thus, a need in new learning outcomes is stated. These new learning outcomes must "help students become resilient, adaptive learners, researchers, and journalists on the leading edge of the profession, with the capacity to deal with real world innovation... through "situated," "authentic" teaching and learning [Young and Giltrow, 2015, p. 47]. The previously taught "replicative" journalism skills should give way to the "applicative" to "interpretative" [Young and Giltrow, 2015, p. 60].
Materials and methods
The Festival of journalism projects Medianavigator has come as an effective solution to educating teenagers and youth in the field of media that the Chair of Journalism, Tyumen State University, has worked out. The Festival is meant to discover and support creative initiatives on the part of the local youth in the media field and to help them acquire and develop their expressive skills and ability to understand the role and importance of the media. As for participants, many people are welcome to contribute to the event: students with Journalism as their major, students of other majors, high school students, young journalists, and experienced media professionals.
All participants are divided into several groups. The biggest of them is made up of freshmen, sophomores and high school students, who function as civil journalists. Their task is to collect information, process it, produce texts and post them on platforms - on the website of the festival "Medianavigator" (https://medianavigator.utmn.ru/non-stop/2017) and in social networks (the official page of "Medianavigator" in "VK": https://vk.com/medianavigator_utmn)
This group has to be able to work with e-texts, have an account in "VK", post content, have basic photo- and videographer's skills, have experience of registering on websites and other media skills.
The other smaller groups are managers and experts who are supposed to be senior students majoring in journalism. Some of them are editors; they assess the quality of materials, edit and correct texts. Some are supervisors who do preliminary work, i.e. search for spots and organize the work of school students. Another important duty of the supervisor is to help create and format the material delivered by the students. It should be noted that the supervisors are not to interfere in the work of the "non-stoppers", but they might provide assistance if needed. It can be done only by giving tips or offering their own options in the worst-case scenario. Thus, the group should have the knowledge of editing, managerial and organizational skills, communicative skills and empathy.
The third group is teachers-organizers, coordinating supervisors' and editors' activity, and university administration. They do the final editing (editor-in chief) and provide technical support.
Every year the festival "Medianavigator" has a new slogan determining the locations the civil journalists will head to. In 2016, the slogan of the festival was "Change the city with Tyumen State University!" and ensured news coverage from the university departments or city spots that are in some way related to the university. The locations themselves had to be of interest to school students, too (for example, a scientific laboratory "FabLab" or a city bookstore for friends "No one is asleep").
A day before the event, professors together with master's degree students organized a workshop on creating texts and technical skills necessary for working under pressure of a deadline. The information was followed up in social networks and on the festival website.
All the participants who had already signed up had to show up for a briefing at the time and place designated by the supervisor. They had to then head to the allocated spot in the city, collect the necessary data and return to the computer class to process and post the material.
By the end of the day more than 100 articles (information items) of various formats (notes, photos, posts, and videos) had been posted on the website of the festival and in social networks.
Medianavigator has encompassed a number of formats to meet the media objectives. In the competition part of the festival, participants present their projects before a panel of judges and get an expert opinion. Contestants are invited to attend workshops, get a glimpse in the workings of the media centre of the Festival and even get a chance to produce and promote content with the help of various media platforms (TV, radio, social networks). The crucial part of the Festival is non-stop media in the total journalism format. In our opinion, this kind of format has a rich media potential. Thus, setting a rigid deadline and ensuring there is non-stop broadcasting make contestants of the Festival raise their awareness of what a fact is and how to work with it. Besides, the participants find themselves in a situation where the accustomed assumptions about news are reviewed and the information agenda is overhauled.
Thus, we have studied media-educational practices, namely the Festival of journalism projects Medianavigator, and one of the many techniques called non-stop journalism.
To meet the objectives, a poll, an experiment, and a focus group research had to be employed as research techniques.
Discussion
The issue of the most effective ways and techniques in terms of media education has always kept both scholars and practitioners baffled. In the West, it resulted in the fact that journalism education is now considered to be at a transition stage. New degree and non-degree programs are evolving highlighting "different kinds of immersive professional experiences, from internships at professional journalism outlets to campus media outlets... tacit accumulation of knowledge" [Young and Giltrow, 2015, p. 54], "better citizen interaction through participatory services, tools, and new ways of making Journalism, and "Total Journalism", which makes better use of social research techniques, technologies, and automation models for a high quality Journalism - watchdog and accurate, offering a public service, added value, and socially useful tools" [Lopez Garcia and Rodriguez Vazquez, 2016, p. 57].
Russian researchers I.A. Fateeva and I.V. Zhilavskaya have analyzed fruitful empirical material and identified the techniques that are of methodological importance to our research.
I.A. Fateeva suggests that the media-educational concept should be rooted in the theory of media activity rather than the theory of communication. Thus, the practical approach will serve as a basis for media pedagogy and mean "a complex acquisition of practical skills of using the media and creating various media texts"; it is the approach used "to determine the choice of
this or that pedagogical technique" [Fateeva, 2007, p. 26]. The scholar names forms of activity that media education has to be based on, including the mastery of creating media texts through active participation in media education projects of varying scopes [Fateeva, 2007, p. 34].
In some articles, I.A. Fateeva is developing the notion of media educational project and defines it as "a unique media educational activity of an active type, having a beginning and an end in time and aimed at creating a certain unique media product" [Fateeva, 2015, p. 50]. The scientist mentions the high efficiency of the technique and its system-building role that it plays for all types of modern education.
A media educational project, in I. A. Fateeva's understanding, is a particular case of pedagogical techniques, namely the method of projects. "The major learning outcomes of this technique are skills of media production that students (also known as project participants) are to acquire [Fateeva, 2015, p. 41].
I.V. Zhilavskaya, the author of "the interactive model" of media education believes that effective techniques are those that meet the strategies of dialogue-type communication, interaction between the audience and the media [Zhilavskaya, 2009, p. 118]. She is convinced that a media educator can implement different methods, but "a media educational project has to be viewed as a core educational technique in the media field" [Zhilavskaya, 2009, p. 161]. A media educational project is studied within the framework of media-related activity and can be attributed the following features: "In this case, we consider a media educational project in the media field to be a limited in time, intellectual and technologically advanced activity of actors of media activity, aimed at creating unique information product, having social value and forming a media environment" [Zhilavskaya, 2011, c. 110].
The above-mentioned definition is used both by scholars and practitioners of different media educational models. Representatives of A. Fedorova's scientific school emphasize the importance of implementing interactive methods and productive forms in the educational process that can develop critical thinking and a new educational environment [Chelysheva, 2009; Bondarenko, 2008; Fedorov, 2001; Fedorov, 2007]. Professional journalists unanimously agree that this technique is highly effective in meeting the objectives of media education and in developing media competence of the younger generation.
The review of works on this subject-matter has revealed that media projects can take numerous shapes: professional media (corporate and educational media, pages for kids and youth etc.)[Zhilavskaya, 2008], educational unions (media schools, schools of journalism, workshops, clubs and studios under federal and regional newspapers and magazines) and creative events and actions.
The technique of non-stop journalism that has become an integral part of Medianavigator implies the usage of these types of activity. The technique comprises the principles of total journalism developed by the journalists of Russian reporter ("Russky reporter"). "The total journalism format means broadcasting news from different parts of the city 24 hours non-stop. A constant stream of content provides coverage of people from all walks of life whether it be academicians or bums, opposition figures or designers, doctors or police officers", says one of the inventors of the format [Tarasevich, 2013]. The information received from different parts of the city in the form of text messages and photos is then posted on the website in real time. One of the features of total journalism as a method is its incredible impact value. R. M. Granovskaya in her book Elements of practical psychology[Granovskaya, 2010] points out that the method of immersion is mostly based on compulsion, which makes it different from the method of persuasion, thus capable of overcoming resistance and eventually the obstacles it creates for teaching. The author of the book also associates the method of immersion with pleasure, relaxation, play, involuntary increase of attention span and discovery of creative capacities. The method of immersion is traditionally used in pedagogy, psychology and teaching languages. We can trace its origin to Ukhtomsky's theory of the dominant [Ukhtomsky, 2002]. It is essentially
about inhibiting other stimuli and directing a person to a certain goal, completely and for a long time. A more or less stable focus of attention can form a dominant (of thinking, of perceiving). Immersion, just like in the case of total journalism, is both a genre and a method.
Thus, the technique of a non-stop media project based on the principles of total journalism has a number of features.
Results
1. The preliminary stage of the research.
Right before the Festival we conducted a survey of media competences among Tyumen high school students aged 13-17 so as to narrow down the types of the target audience (it was done as part of the graduation work of a graduate student in journalism A. Nechetova). A poll, an experiment and focus group research helped identify the peculiarities of media consumption, the informative map of the world (an agenda), a level of information satisfaction and a stereotypical image of the journalist and the profession of a journalist, all based on the current experience.
The results of the poll and the survey show that teenagers do not have a need in the media as a source of news; they seem to exaggerate their increased awareness of the "agenda"; moreover, they have a vague idea of other sources of information, have difficulty differentiating between journalism, PR and advertisement, and have a hard time verifying sources of information. Thus, some rank social networks and internet-editions as their primary sources of information, while failing to name exact media sources or names of journalists. What interests teens the most is accidents and criminal news, least of all politics. Watching teens' behavior (an experimental class of Tyumen school no. 49), studying their accounts, reposts, links to groups, friends-oriented content indicate that the content of public groups is not age-appropriate. The groups some school students are subscribed to often contain violence-related posts, erotica, cruelty etc. Undoubtedly, these results, backed up by numerous studies, cause much concern among teachers, parents, media professionals and society in general (see Knizhnikova, S.V. Media production and propensity for deviant behavior of children and youth. Media education. 2017. no. 3, pp. 91-103).
The experimental games the school students played (business role-playing games Press conference, Talk show and Media texts analysis) made it possible to conclude that teens have a distorted image of a journalistic profession. According to their beliefs, a journalist is a scandalous liar who readily crosses the moral line to get hold of some information. On the whole, as far as the classification of media literacy suggested by O.A. Baranov [Baranov, 2002] is concerned, the majority of respondents are at a "low than average"level, with two thirds of them having a position of a passive observer.
2. Results of the survey of the Non-Stop participants. While planning the media educational event, the organizers decided on the genre related to civil journalism. It was supposed to facilitate immersion and involvement, bring about entertainment and pleasure, and stimulate creativity to get some insight into the profession of a journalist. In 2016, more than 100 people signed up to this event. All the Non-Stop participants were then asked to fill out a questionnaire, 36 of which were selected for consideration, 20 of them were filled out by school students (aged 14-17), and 16 - by university students (aged 18-22).
The questions were open as it was highly important for the pilot research to get as many comprehensive answers as possible in order to identify some key issues and to understand what media competences Non-stop develops in participants and how having been plunged into journalistic work changed their idea of journalism as a profession and how it influenced their media literacy.
The questionnaire included some questions for unveiling the reasons and motives that influenced their choice of a future career: "Would you like to become a journalist? Why/Why not?" Twelve out of twenty school students were positive, one was having second thought, and
the other seven said they would not. Worthy of note is that the teens attribute numerous characteristics to the profession and those who chose it as a future career seemed to a little over-romanticize it: "Being a journalist is one of the most exciting jobs as you always keep up-to-date with important news"; "This profession helps you constantly develop yourself as a personality, interact with interesting people, become famous and be aware of the latest news"; "It is an interesting and creative job meaning you have to always contact with people. A journalist is always in the center of an event, which means an active lifestyle"; "The profession of a journalist helps you develop your eloquence" etc. Judging by the comments, creativity and communication are considered most important, whereas prestige, public nature and self-improvement are given a much lower position. The school students were expected to focus on themselves and their character, which is why some of the answers mentioning an audience and a reader seemed quiet out of the ordinary.
Those who chose not to be journalists mostly produced one-word responses, and some said that they had already chosen other professions. One of the odd answers though was the following: "I do not want to be a journalist. Total journalists only need the respondent's speech". The reaction makes us ponder over the key issues of total journalism as a genre: deep immersion and involvement into the process; besides, the educational nature of the electronic edition does not imply a certain live audience or their expert opinion or feedback. It is remarkable that only one person out of 36 pointed this out. Luckily, it is the only person who gave a categorical answer due to the real difficulties of the journalistic profession.
Some other profession-related questions were asked in the questionnaire: "Why have you decided to take part in the Non-stop?"; "Has your image of the journalistic profession changed after theNon-stop?' What is the essence of the profession of a journalist?" Some school and university students said they were interested in the event itself and wanted to try themselves in journalism and in total journalism as a new format (with a strict deadline); they wanted to get new impressions, flaunt their talents, test their abilities, interact with other students etc. Most of them admitted that they had not changed their image of the profession (32 people), however, some said they now had a better idea of what it was like to be a journalist.
The answers reflect major goals and objectives of journalism, and some answers contained certain details that respondents found worth mentioning: "After the event I changed my opinion of journalism for the better. The main idea of a journalist is to relay necessary and trustworthy information to the reader"; "The meaning of such profession is to be constantly searching for current interesting information, to understand it correctly and to provide proper coverage"; "The main thing is to quickly convey a message, a fact, by all means. What is more important is access to information"; "To cover ongoing issues and collect information about current events and burning issues of today"; "Finding a press event to entice the reader and writing about it in such a way that the reader does not fall asleep reading it are things a journalist has o master"; "It is of course about choosing the right words and making a text easy to digest" etc. To find a press event, to use good language skills and meet deadlines are abilities that help a journalist look at information at a different angle. The students supposedly found it rather difficult to use an instrumental competence: "My idea of a journalistic profession has not considerably changed. All I have realized from my own experience is that it is not as easy as it seems because such work takes a lot of free time, patience and perseverance".
8 out of 36 questions were devoted to the social mission of journalism. The respondents used the concepts of truth, honesty and authenticity: "The main idea is telling reliable information to the audience and being true to yourself and to people around you"; "As I see it, journalists have to provide reliable information in a clear way"; "A journalist is the one who makes a difference in the world of justice and injustice, focusing on problems and trends, analyzing them and providing full coverage of the current situation in order to change it by deed not just by word". By mentioning special skills a journalist should have, the students expressed
the whole idea of what journalism is. To their mind, a journalist is responsible to the society, s/he has to confirm to its rules and be an expert in social problems, i.e. perform the function of a teacher or a mentor. To be a good journalist, one has to be aware of the true-false (truth-lie) opposition, manipulative maneuvers and the need to verify information. Reflecting on justice issues had reportedly helped the students recognize the real standards of the profession (the importance of factual information, accuracy, reliability), which the Non-Stopsupervisors had always set. The supervisors were surprised when students started complaining when they were not allowed to write a whole essay or change some last names, they were also not happy about having to look up some extra information on the Internet.
There was a cluster of questions in the questionnaire aimed at finding out exactly which journalistic skills school the students and freshmen gained in the practice, including the abilities to:
1) selecta topic
2) find sources of information
3) acquire communicative skills when talking to other people (starting a conversation, getting acquainted with other students etc)
4) manage their own time (learn about the timing, find a location etc)
5) create a text of a certain genre (finding the right words, organizing a text etc)
6) be prone to self-reflection, self-assessment, and self-criticism (assessing oneself and one's work, value of one's work and its relevancy)
22 out of 36 participants faced difficulties selecting a topic. The most common replies were: "I was struggling when trying to put my ideas into words, there was so much extra information in the original text that most of it had to be discarded after all, which was actually more than just a half of the text". Some even complained that all they could do was write some discursive essays, while what they were asked to do was supposed to be clear-cut and concise.
The Non-Stopparticipants also noted it was quite difficult to work with informants; it was especially hard for them to extract key information and keep the conversation going; some felt embarrassed when getting acquainted and establishing communication. Concentrating was another obstacle. Five of the contestants had a hard time focusing, as well as collecting their thoughts and concentrating. It was mostly due to too many people in the computer lab. Four of the participants found it challenging to organize their work, manage their time and follow their plan of action.
Out of all the first-year students only two doubted they would want to become journalists in the future, while the other fourteen had not changed their mind and remained content. Their answers were not particularly different from those given by the school students though more detailed and verbose as the students used terms to describethe basic journalism skills.
To sum up, the results of the survey could partially be explained through texts posted on the website. According to the editor-in-chief's opinion, the drawback of Non-stop texts was triviality in epytitles (quite often similar titles), clichés, and superficial information about either a character or an event. The good thing about them was that almost all the texts were in the form of notes and met professional requirements.
A survey was also conducted among the groups of editors and supervisors, and 4-year students. They took note of certain details as they watched school students and freshmen working. Being new to the profession, they did not fancy the genre of notes much and the limit of 1000 words it imposed. As it turned out, what they did want to write was texts in publicist and analytical styles i.e. feature stories, essays, and extended interviews and so on. School students complained of being tired, they also found it difficult to work with texts and got upset when their supervisors had to correct serious factual or other mistakes. The supervisors, who were only a little older than the applicants, were greatly surprised at some school and university students' arrogance and a slight "star dizziness" that they suddenly got.
Conclusions
Thus, Non-stop is said to have influenced the level of media literacy, made a difference in shaping an image of a journalistic profession and helped develop media competence of school students and first-year students. They learned how to work with sources of information and texts and what standards and rules to refer to, they became aware of the responsibility for credibility and objectivity before the audience. Their understanding of journalism as a profession had become considerably more complex. The comparative analysis of the preliminary research into the image of a journalistic profession (as described by school students) and the results of the questionnaire among the Non-stop participants, the discrepancy is apparent. Although most students have stereotypical, destructive, discredit perceptions about the profession (a journalist is an amoral brawler and stops at nothing to get information), the participants of Non-stop seemed to have shown that they did not have rose tinted glasses on as for what role a journalist plays in the society. They managed to see the good side of that job (a journalist is hardworking, creative, outgoing and capable of working with information quickly).
By verifying information, students gained experience of how to use journalistic etiquette and what to do with facts, thus developing their critical thinking. Senior students practiced editing and managing other journalists, which also increased their media competence.
It is only natural to assume that there are a number of advantages and disadvantages of such a media educational event that immerses students in an environment with strict editing deadlines.
The disadvantages are the following:
- The press event is for a very limited circle of people and can even be called 'private'; nonetheless, it means such an event attracts a certain group of people (some school students taking part in the event might be future applicants), motivates all contestants, but is not meant to evoke a grand-scale response;
- Journalistic works produced during the event are not aimed at raising social awareness or reflect controversial or social conflicts;
- Being sometimes ignorant of certain journalistic standards may lead to problems with ethics.
- A relatively low level of amateur work;
- Texts that students create are often subjective, biased and based on their own cultural experience; it is especially hard for school students to become more open-minded in this connection and get rid of their stereotypes;
- If all the texts that have been produced were to be viewed as a single "total" texts, it would be obvious that some information is either imbalanced, excessive, or redundant;
The advantages of the event are as follows:
- The conditions of deadlines are especially realistic;
- Participants feel encouraged and are excited to get their work done;
- Some tasks are highly demanding and require a constant concentration of effort; it is often challenging for students to adjust to new forms of work;
- The event helps form professional working standards and teaches how to work with data.
Implementing the technique of Non-stop within the frameworks of a media educational project helps achieve a number of goals:
- serving as a media educational tool
- providing vocational guidance (forming a pool of applicants)
- promoting the university (a hundred posts related to university appear on the website in just one day);
- creating a positive image.
School students and university students had to meet the requirements of completing all the stages in order to create professional journalistic material. Working with the website and posting news there and in VK groups, the students plunged in a new reality determined by the news agenda.
A multi-dimensional university image is being created before their eyes. At the local level, participants acquire media activity experience; they learn how to verify information and how to not be susceptible to manipulation. Such skills may also be useful in other spheres of life. Therefore, the consumer appears to be under protection when being bombarded with various sources of information. Media competence helps to relevantly use media techniques as a means of personal growth or professional development, and generally raises social awareness and social activity.
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