Heading towards the Mexican presidential elections on July 1, voting surveys are done on Facebook; candidates have cell phone 'apps' and YouTube channels, and citizen journalists are the protagonists of new digital media that have refreshed electoral coverage to meet the demands of a younger and more informed public. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas interviewed the directors of Mexican digital and independent media about this tendency.
The Bolivian Senate has proposed a bill that would regulate social networks, and would be attached to the Law to Fight Against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination, reported the news site Eju TV.
About 40 journalists, media executives, and academic researchers from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal met in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, April 22, for the fifth annual Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism, organized by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
With the recent increase in popularity of mobile technology, the percentage of people getting their news from mobile devices such as iPads, tablets, and e-readers, is also on a steady incline.
With more than one million followers, the Mexican newspaper El Universal has more Twitter followers than any other newspaper from among the top 100 dailies in Latin America, according to a website that ranks newspapers' popularity.
Pinterest, the social media curating site that allows users to "'pin' (bookmark) things you like -- photos, recipes, crafts, design ideas, photography, art, etc., and silo those items into 'boards,'" as MediaShift described it, might just be the next big thing for journalism, as cliché as that sounds. After all, TechCrunch just reported on Tuesday, Feb. 7, that Pinterest gets 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, having hit the 10-million mark faster than any other standalone site ever. And as Poynter pointed out, "it's time for journalists to pay attention to Pinterest."
On Wednesday, Feb. 8, CNN indefinitely suspended commentator Roland Martin for homophobic tweets he sent during the Super Bowl, reported the Washington Post.
The Venezuelan hacker group N33 took over the Twitter accounts of two journalists critical of President Hugo Chávez, reported the weekly magazine Sexto Poder. The group is also responsible for other cyber attacks against opposition members, and is considered a growing threat to freedom of expression in the South American country.
Since it launched in September 2011, thousands of journalists have signed on to use the Facebook "subscribe" feature, which allows users to subscribe to the news feeds of journalists and public figures without having to befriend them. And since November, the average journalist has seen a 320 percent increase in the number of subscribers, Facebook is reporting.
In another example of news organizations jumping the gun as false information spreads like wildfire across Twitter, U.S. media outlets prematurely reported the death of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, driving home the lesson that "social media tools do not need to force news organizations to compromise their standards," according to The New York Times.