The 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) generated a record 50 submissions of academic papers from a variety of universities and countries, confirming the growth of ISOJ’s reputation as a world-class conference. Twenty-two papers were accepted for presentation April 1–2, 2011, at the event hosted by the University of Texas at Austin.

The ISOJ has become one of the most competitive and prestigious international conferences in the field of online journalism for researchers from around the world. The papers submitted are selected in a blind review process by judges from different universities and countries.

This year’s research papers reach across a variety of topics to show the impact of online journalism around the world from the United States to Spain to Egypt to Mexico.

Topics to be presented at this year’s ISOJ will include:

• the investigation of the evolution and implementation of newsroom innovations such as APIs, mobile devices and tablets;
• examination of levels of public engagement and participation with the news media;
• the role of Twitter and its use in the profession; and
• analysis of the evolving characteristics and elements defining online journalism today.

Scholars who will present their research at the ISOJ come from these 19 universities:

College of Staten Island (CUNY); Complutense University of Madrid (Spain); Drury University; Lehigh University; Orebro University (Sweden); Rowan University; Southern Methodist University; Texas State University; Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera (Spain); University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; University of Coimbra (Portugal); University of King’s College (Canada); University of Memphis; University of Minnesota; University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication; University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication; University of Tennessee; University of Texas at Austin (host institution); and Virginia Commonwealth University.

One of the 22 papers will be recognized at ISOJ as the top research paper.

Abstracts for each of the following papers will be posted on the symposium website soon. Full papers will be available for download on the website beginning April 1.

• Public APIs and News Organizations: A Study of Open Innovation in Online Journalism, Tanja Aitamurto, visiting researcher at Stanford University and Ph.D student at the University of Tampere, Finlandand, and Seth Lewis, University of Minnesota
• Public Broadcasters Venture into Online Hyperlocal News: A Case Study of Newsworks.org , Mark Berkey-Gerard, Rowan University
• The Active Recipient: Participatory Journalism Through the Lens of the Dewey-Lippmann Debate, Alfred Hermida, UBC Grad. School of Journalism (Canada) David Domingo, Ari Heinonen, Steve Paulussen, Thorsten Quandt, Zvi Reich and Marina Vujnovic
• Wikileaks and the Globalized Public Sphere: Refocusing the journalistic lens, William Moner, University of Texas at Austin
• Experiments in location-based content: A case study of Postmedia’s use of Foursquare, Timothy Currie, University of King’s College
• Friends Who Choose Your News, Brian Baresch, Dustin Harp, Lewis Knight, Carolyn Yaschur, University of Texas at Austin
• Opening the Gates: Interactive and Multi-Media Elements of Newspaper Websites in Latin America, Ingrid Bachmann and Summer Harlow, University of Texas at Austin
• The Knight News Challenge: How it works, what wins, and why that matters for the shaping of journalism innovation, Seth Lewis, University of Minnesota
• Stopping the Presses: A Longitudinal Case Study of the Christian Science Monitor Transition From Print Daily to Web Always
  Jonathan Groves, Drury University and Carrie Brown, University of Memphis
• The Place For Creativity in Routine in The Online Newsroom, Nikki Usher, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication
• Educating the new generation journalist: from Moodle to Facebook, Carla Patraoand Antonio Dias Figueiredo, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Intrigued, But Not Immersed: Millennial Students Analyze the iPad’s Performance as a News Platform, Jake Batsell, Southern Methodist University
• Knitting Together A Public: The Hyperlink, News Aggregation and the Cultures of Digital and Analog Evidence in Web-Era Journalism, C.W. Anderson, College of Staten Island (CUNY)
• Shoveling tweets: An analysis of the microblogging engagement of traditional news organizations, Marcus Messner, Virginia Commonwealth University, Maureen Linke, and Asriel Eford
• Journalists in Network Society: Utilization of ICTs inside Three Egyptian Newsrooms, Ahmed El Gody, Orebro University, Sweden
• Is the Medium the Message? Predicting Popularity of Top U.S. News Sites with Medium-Specific Features, Angela Lee, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
• Twitter First: Changing TV News 140 Characters at a Time, Dale Blasingame, Texas State University, San Marcos
• News on New Devices: Examining Multiplatform News Consumption in the Digital Age, Hsiang Iris Chyi and Monica Chadha, University of Texas at Austin
• See you on Facebook or Twitter? How 30 local news outlets manage social networking tools, Elvira García de Torres (Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Spain) and others
• Love it or leave it?  The relationship between polarization and credibility of traditional and partisan media, Larissa Williams, Kang Hui Baek, Maegan Stephens, Mark Coddington, Tom Johnson and Jennifer Brundidge, University of Texas at Austin
• Map of the blogs in Spanish newspapers, Juliana Colussi Ribeiro, Complutense University of Madrid
• New Opportunities For Diversity:  Twitter, Journalists and Traditionally Underserved Communities, Carrie Brown, University of Memphis, Elizabeth Hendrickson, University of Tennessee, Jeremy Littau, Lehigh University.