Final Honors Thesis

I’m graduating in exactly 9 days. I finally finished my Honors Thesis last week, the product of 2 semesters and a summer of research and work. I’ve created a website for it, www.maxwellkruger.com/thesis09. I encourage you to take a few moments to read it and share it with anyone who might be interested.

Abstract:

How can traditional media change to embrace an evolving readership and provide a news product that readers find useful and media corporations can make profitable? Newspapers are facing tough times because of the internet news revolution – news is available instantly, anywhere, and for free. It’s a no-brainer for consumers to get their news online. It no longer makes sense to wait a whole day to see the news, and even less sense to pay for it.

At the same time as readers going online for their news, they have also become capable of creating their own reporting; and at times doing a better job of it than trained professionals. This revolution has emerged from the ubiquity of camera and smart phones. In essence, every person with a camera phone (which is most everyone) is a reporter. The difference is that these reporters no longer have to be dispatched to the scene when something happens. They are already there and capable of capturing and uploading content before a traditional reporter has time to get there.

Through this thesis, I will explore this question of how traditional media can change to embrace new technologies and the concept of citizen media interactions. Although I will focus on newspapers because they are in the most trouble, these concepts can be applied to all forms of media to increase readership and become a more active member of the local community.

As a result of the research I conduct, I will create a prototype to demonstrate many of these concepts. The prototype is a multi-device platform that focuses on community involvement with news media. There will be a web interface and a fully featured mobile phone interface to allow photo, video, audio, and text contributions, discussions, and collaboration.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL TEXT THESIS