Anja Salzmann

This PhD-project is part of the overarching research project ViSmedia at the University of Bergen and aims to explore one of the fastest growing areas of journalistic innovation: mobile journalism. Based on applying a varied specter of qualitative methods this study focuses especially on the perspective of journalistic practitioners by investigating learning processes in new emerging as well as more traditional social arenas for learning and knowledge transfer.

A main part of the study investigates the interaction of a global pioneer community that gathers journalists, media practitioners and technology manufacturers around the world who are dedicated to share their knowledge and explore the capabilities of smartphones and related technologies for journalistic practices and multimedia storytelling. My core research interest lays hereby on the role of this global group of media pioneers for individuals who engage in this group as well as the observation of concrete processes of informal learning and knowledge-transfer that contribute to the development and dissemination of new journalistic practices and new concepts of working.

Another part of the study investigates a training and learning situation in a traditional organizational context at a German publishing house where traditional print-paper journalists are introduced and trained in audio-visual storytelling with mobile solo reporting. The focus is also here on the perspective of journalistic practitioners who are confronted with the challenge of identifying and thinking as traditional text journalists but are now demanded to enrich their skill portfolio with audio-visual storytelling and master the neo journalistic practice of solo mobile reporting.

The project gives insights into journalisms transformation from a perspective beyond and within traditional journalistic organizational settings showing how mobile technology opens the space for new organizational forms, new ways of knowledge-transfer and fosters new innovative learning cultures, which are the fundament in the 21st century for new experimental practices and part of redefining journalism and its structural foundations.