Global interaction as a learning path towards inclusive journalism

Abstract

Journalism faces new and serious challenges against the backdrop of attacks on the political notion of an inclusive pluralist society based on internationally and locally accepted fundamental rights frameworks. These frameworks build on recognition, respect and inclusion of difference, based on individual or collective rights, and a critical stand towards constructing difference. The immediacy and potentially massive global reach of digital communication has dramatically changed the information order and given the concept of inclusiveness new meanings. Journalists will have to cope in new ways with extended networks and skills feeding into their understanding of inclusive society. In 2013, four journalism schools in New Zealand and the Nordic countries formed a joint project based on the EU initiative Promoting the drivers for inclusive & sustainable growth. The article offers a conceptual elaboration of inclusiveness that deals with sensitivity to diversities, power and reporting. Collaborative forms of inclusive pedagogy with multimodal qualities are presented that show how a combination of personal mobility and net-based pedagogical tools can establish a genuinely interactive relation between the teacher-as-student and student-as-teacher in online learning environments.