Nikki Usher

Brought to you by the Media + the Public Interest Initiative, the the Social Media and Society Cluster, and the SC&I Ph.D. Program…

Professor Usher will speak about her forthcoming book, which focuses on the rise of interactives in the news. Interactive journalism and the people who create it goes beyond the kind of journalism we have seen before, as practitioners and the work they create introduce new forms of knowledge and ways of thinking to the newsroom. Interactive journalists offer practical and abstract knowledge that add new complexities to journalism and expand the potential for journalism, in part due to their close association with programming culture. The talk will review these contributions and discuss how we can think of journalism differently thanks to interactive journalists.

Professor Usher’s research and teaching interests focus on the transforming world of digital media, from journalism to big data to information and communication technologies (ICTs). Her primary area of research focuses on how journalism is adapting to change. For much of this research, she has traveled to newsrooms across the world and the U.S. to learn about how journalists do their work and the decisions facing these news organizations in difficult times. She is considered an influential voice in the future of news conversation, and has been asked to weigh in on annual news round ups for the past few years on topics such as social media to the rise of niche news.