For the fourth year in a row, John Wihbey, the former assistant director of Journalist’s Resource, has polled a range of scholars, digital gurus and journalists to compile a very un-scientific “best of” list for research in the digital news/social media domain for 2015. There’s always an abundance of interesting scholarship, but the list tries to provide a sample of the broad range of topics and issues. The first item below cheats a bit — he’s recommending one whole issue of a journal. Happy geeking out! (And make sure to check out the year-end roundups John did in 2014 and 2013.)
This article was first published at Nieman Lab.
“Special Issue: Journalism in an Era of Big Data”: Edited by Seth C. Lewis, published in Digital Journalism.
This special issue contains a wealth of great papers by a variety of contributors (including a variety of Nieman Lab contributors such as Lewis, Mark Coddington, C.W. Anderson, and Nick Diakopoulos.) Topics stretch from automated journalism to algorithms, from epistemology to economics. “Whether dubbed ‘big’ or otherwise,” Lewis writes in the introductory essay, “this moment is one in which data — its collection, analysis, and representation, as well as associated data-driven techniques of computation and quantification — bears particular resonance for understanding the intersection of media, technology, and society.”