Journalism students cover #GE2015
Journalism students used Periscope, Skype and Whats App to broadcast live from election counts across the UK.
Birmingham City, Bournemouth, Leeds Beckett, Salford, Sunderland, Westminster and Winchester were among the universities who had journo students covering election night. Brunel journalism students were perhaps the luckiest of the lot with the Uxbridge and South Ruislip count occurring on campus.
BJTC accredited courses shared multimedia content (search #BJTC for examples) and did live two-ways via a dedicated election hub. Sky and ITV recruited students from journalism courses to help out with their broadcasts.
Thank you to our 116 #bjtc reporters at counts and the hundreds back in newsrooms for helping with our Election Hub! pic.twitter.com/ygxAAWTMy0
— BJTC (@BJTC_UK) May 8, 2015
A lot can be done using cheap or free apps and many universities experimented with mobile journalism. As always, the main problem is access to bandwidth (mobile broadband and wifi) which was a key challenge at some election counts.
A few highlights:
In no particular order….
Bournemouth University students covered the run up to the election (including live bloggging the leaders’ debates), election night and the resignation of the Labour and Lib Dem leaders the following day. It has a particularly strong section aimed at young voters.
Winchester University went for it in a big way and provided some of the most comprehensive coverage throughout the election. In the run up to the election it included a weekly ‘south decides’ slot as part of the WINOL news bulletin. On election night students produced no less than ten hours of coverage and used Skype and iPhones to broadcast live from numerous local counts across the south. It also offered plenty of post-election analysis over the following days. See the The Guardian – How to broadcast a general election for £100.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJSjgXV5gE#t=15
@TheAJEUK In the run up we had a weekly ‘south decides’ as part of WINOL bulletin with one-on-ones with A-listers: https://t.co/Rn9elOEX4L
— WinchesterJournalism (@WJournalism) May 18, 2015
Westminster University journalism students and the student radio station Smoke broadcasted throughout the night. Students reported from all the key marginals in North West London, including Brent Central (a Labour gain), Hampstead & Kilburn (the UK’s most marginal constituency – just 42 votes in it) and Watford. At Uxbridge and South Ruislip students were in the media scrum to live stream Boris Johnson on Periscope.
Birmingham City University used technology including WhatsApp in its election coverage. Paul Bradshaw blogs about this experience.
Journalism students at Leeds Beckett broadcast throughout the night with students at the count at Leeds Arena. A sample of the work…
Sunderland University students produced election content as part of its student news site SR News.