Session 3: Democracy, investigation and the power of journalism in a world of disinformation. Papers from #AJE25 on journalism education

The afternoon session kicked off with Sean Dodson from Leeds Beckett University, who has analysed Elon Musk’s Tweets (X posts) before and after he purchased the platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter.

For example, do you know how many times Musk mentioned ‘legacy media’, one of his apparent bugbears, before he bought the platform? NONE. No times.

Next up was the University of Northampton’s Kate Ironside who explained the many and complicated election night coverage events she’s organised for journalism students over the last decade, the importance of collaboration between universities, and the enormous paperwork task involved.

You can see the video of the huge behind the scenes operation here from the 2024 General Election.

Barbara Longo-Flint and John Price, above, presented on their book on investigative journalism [written with co-author Neil MacFarland] which features chapters from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and public interest investigations, as well as interviews with journalists like writer David Conn, who worked on investigations about Hillsborough, Michelle Mone and Fifa ,

And wrapping up the session University of Leeds’ Adrian Quinn, whose title Making a Difference: Spoken Word accounts of the power of Journalism, was looking at the literature of journalism, citing a vintage piece by veteran Charles Wheeler, work by Adrian’s former tutor Nick Davies [Flat Earth News and Hack Attack] and others.