The primary interface between academia and the media is the university press office. Press relations officers – often former journalists – are tasked with repackaging academic research into bite-sized chunks that can be fed whole to hungry reporters. Their goal is both to disseminate knowledge and to increase the university’s profile among the public and, most importantly, funders and potential students.

So what could be done to rectify the situation? One option is to create a platform, most likely a website, that is staffed by experienced journalists but dedicated solely to publishing academic work. This approach is currently being pioneered in Australia, where The Conversation site, funded by universities, government and the private sector, was set up in the spring. On The Conversation, a team of about 20 journalists – led by Andrew Jaspan, former editor of The Observer - curate, commission and edit research, analysis and opinion from academics on everything from current affairs to the environment.

and what about this bit…

Although the cost of creating such a forum – even if it is hosted only on the web – may not be insignificant, the benefits are potentially enormous, as the success of a small blog set up last year by the University of Nottingham’s politics department attests. Written by staff and postgraduate students, the Election 2010 blog, which ran for five months, was estimated to have generated coverage for the university worth more than £4 million.

Read full story.

For those who care deeply about the future of journalism, the phone-hacking scandal could hardly have been less well timed. Professional journalism’s survival is threatened by the economic impact of digital technologies. The plurality and diversity of voice upon which representative democracy depends is in jeopardy. Needed urgently is debate about how well-resourced, professional news gathering can be sustained. Instead, tired 20th-century concerns about the ethics and ownership of popular newspapers are diverting attention from critical 21st-century realities.

The alleged hacking of Milly Dowler’s mobile telephone generated a moral panic that was seized upon instantly by a curious alliance of elite establishment and left-progressive opinion. At the same time, it diverted attention from a crucial debate that was beginning to gather momentum. That discussion, about whether professionally edited, fact-based journalism can continue to play the role of an estate, not just an industry, in the multimedia age will remain important after those responsible for phone hacking have been identified and punished.

There is a crisis in journalism that has nothing to do with hacking and relates directly to the conduct of public affairs. It started with recognition that the internet has weakened the authority of large-scale professional media organisations and progressed to predictions that the web will destroy it. Many thinkers in the field of journalism and media studies believe this and find the notion irresistible. They burble with delight at the possibility that the power of big media may be shattered by what laymen call blogging and they grace it with the oxymoronic title “citizen journalism”.

The essential difference between the two deserves definition. It is that much blogging is an amateur activity carried out by people with no understanding of journalism’s social purpose who operate with scant regard for facts. Like the activists who, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, published illegal newspapers seething with radical ideology and revolutionary zeal, they prefer opinion to evidence. Liberated by broadband from a free market in which their ideas have no traction because too few find them interesting, they bleat – and tweet – wild rumours, half-truths and conspiracies.

Read full story, which is largely an attack upon the ‘dumbing down’ of the press through the use of social networking… take this quote:

Citizens intrigued by events check in on Twitter and other social networking sites. But once alerted, many follow links to reliable news sites such as BBC News Online and newspaper sites.

I have just written the following blog post to summarise the project that I am working on with CODEC this year… I came on board on the 1st July, working 2.5 days a week, and after looking around at the number of other projects that existed, and knowing that the book formed a central part of this project… this is what has now exists:

The BigBible Project is an exciting new initiative tying in with the larger Biblefresh initiative for 2011. This ecumenical project is produced by CODEC (‘Christian Communication in the Digital Age’, St John’s College, University of Durham), funded by The Methodist Church and Methodist Evangelicals Together, and supported by Premier Christian Media, SPCK and Twelve Baskets.

As the project develops, you can get first hand updates through the blog: http://bigbible.org.uk, Twitter http://twitter.com/bigbible and Facebook http://bit.ly/bigbiblefb.

What is The Big Read 2011?
Over Lent 2010, the people of Durham got together for “The Big Read“, working their way through Luke, using the first of three texts to be written by Tom Wright, using events, podcasts and housegroup materials. This was such a success, that for the second text, Matthew, the activity is going national in The Big Read 2011.

The book, published by SPCK, will be available in the shops/in Kindle in January 2011, and a subscription option will allow you to receive the materials daily. The project will then offer further opportunities for Bible Engagement: Online and Offline.

How is this different?
The BigBible Project will provide housegroup materials to accompany the daily readings contained within the book, offering items for reflection and discussion within your local group. There is also, however, the opportunity to participate in national discussions with those partaking online, whether individually or with their own housegroups, and also to upload your own material produced in response to the issues raised. Podcasts and Vodcasts will also be made available.

Why should I be using social media?
There are already millions of Christians online (note, we talk online/offline, rather than virtual/real), and there’s no need to feel that you need to join every online service! One of the joys of social media is that it tends to encourage transparency and authenticity, so if a part of your life is your Christian faith, that is likely to come through.

The more genuine indicators of our whole lives that we can give to those inhabiting online worlds, the more positive indicators of a Christian faith we can give.

A number of those Christians already online may qualify as those who are “ranty” offline, and therefore also will be so online… allow the wider world to see the range of viewpoints and the common purpose that all Christians hold.

Contribute your voice to social justice and other campaigns, such as the anti-burning-of-the-Qu’ran Facebook group and SuperBadger.

Save re-inventing the wheel by sharing ideas and inspiring and encouraging each other. Once you know how to use some of the social media tools, you can join in deeper with the housegroup materials…

Bex, who is project managing this project, has found it a real joy and encouragement to make contact with others online who challenge and encourage her in her faith journey.

I’m scared of/don’t get/don’t know how to use social media?
We see this project as a wonderful opportunity to help more Christians to experience being a part of the ‘online’ world within the context of something that most already understand – the Bible, and also to encourage a rise in Bible reading – those who spend the most time zooming around tend to be those who have smartphones – so can take opportunities to check in with online materials!

The BigBible Project is involved in the New Media Conference co-hosted by Premier and CODEC, to be held in central London on 16^th October 2010, which will allow both ‘newbies’ and experienced new media practitioners to learn – both practically and theologically.

How can I help?
The blog is intended to become a ‘crowdsourcing’ space, a term which simply means to use the ‘wisdom of the crowds’, allowing us to share our different levels of expertise (and in both the Bible and social media, there’s no one that ‘knows it all’), and our responses to the materials that we are engaging with. We are therefore looking to draw upon the experience and expertise of all.

If you are having your first go at using a form of social media, especially for Bible engagement, we’d love to hear your experience- what you enjoyed, what you learnt – and feel free to indicate those things you didn’t like as well.

If you have lots of experience in new media, or are interested in the debates surrounding theology and new media, we would love you to contribute your thoughts and your practical tips in order to allow others to get past their fears and feel confident online – no tip too small.

For now, please feed through bex.lewis@durham.ac.uk, although we are anticipating using BuddyPress shortly to provide community functionality.

Where can I find you online & how can I join in?
Remember, you don’t have to join all platforms, and can join as little or as much as you like::

• Follow the Blog: http://bigbible.org.uk, and help feed in content.
• Join the Facebook group: http://bit.ly/bigbiblefb
• Follow us on Twitter (and update your avatar): http://twitter.com/bigbible, where we are also building lists of interesting Christians that we can link up with online.
• Let us know good videos that we can favourite on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/mybigbible
• Upload responsive materials (visual, audio) to Twelve Baskets (after October): http://www.twelvebaskets.co.uk/
• Start to learn about Geocaching as we have some interesting ideas for that!
• We may also identify other social media platforms, for example, we’re in discussion with Tole-rants, and these will be advised on the blog.
• Spread the word about the project.

What will happen afterwards?
This project is excitingly new and experimental, but even in its early weeks, has already attracted a lot of attention and support. As we continue through Biblefresh for 2011, we are already identifying further texts for Autumn and Christmas, and the material deposited in 12Baskets will provide great resources for others to share.

Curious as to how SleepTalkinMan suddenly took over Twitter yesterday – apparently his wife has been keeping a blog of his weird nightly sleep-ramblings since April 2009, so why now. Partly, I guess to do with the press coverage (we keep talking about the death of the newspapers, but online newspapers…), including Daily Mail and the Sun. If something’s funny it either goes viral and/or generates debate!

There seemed to have been rather a lot of discussion in 2009 about whether the VLE or Virtual Learning Environment was alive or dead (including the ALT-C 2009 debate), and the rise of the PLE (Personal Learning Environment).

I’m very interested in PLEs and informal learning and have blogged and vlogged about the concept.

I’ve perhaps been less interested in VLEs. They seem to serve an institutional purpose, but always seemed to constrain the means students use to express their learning and, therefore, the learning process itself.

However, I’ve recently had cause to look at the area of VLEs. Doing this process I asked myself, “What if you wanted to use VLE technology to provide an environment for open learning?” Well, two things have caught my interest in answering this.

Read full story (it started to get a bit technical after that for me…, but thought the PPT link at the end was also interesting.., and the next entry on using blogs/wikis for student assessment even more interesting)

Earlier this year I trained a life coach with Serenergise, run by Deborah Kerslake and her team (I’ve seriously been encouraging Debs on Twitter!), so I have had the privilege of meeting Camilla (one of the nicest people ever), and have watched with baited breath as this all came together, and am now fascinated to see how Camilla is using social media to build her brand/profile before her album launch: she seems to have had some good advice. The following video for ‘Rule the World’ (originally by Take That, and Camilla has been taken on by Gary Barlow’s record label) was posted onto YouTube on 24th September, and on 30th September was the most watched music video on YouTube (not surprising, I’ve listened to it multiple times, and today it has had nearly 57,000 views!)

• Camilla Kerslake: Website (beautifully fresh and simple, looking forward to the rest of the content appearing)
• Camilla Kerslake: Facebook (great use of the fan site, and simple leads into other areas of social media)
• Camilla Kerslake on Twitter (if you retweet “@camillakerslake I WANT to meet Camilla & Gary Barlow on Monday! Please RT x“, you may get to meet both on Monday evening – just got to get yourself to London. I love the fact that it is clearly Camilla sending the tweets – her personality is shining through)
• Camilla Kerslake on YouTube (SUCH a beautiful taste of what she’s singing, and a beautifully personally channel!)

I watched carefully to spot Debs at 3.37

The video below is taken from Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 show: this I think is from the 19th September, although he’d already played the song once, and had so many requests for it, it was added to the playlist again.