Global interaction as a learning path towards inclusive journalism

Journalism faces new and serious challenges against a backdrop of attacks on the political notion of an inclusive and pluralist society, an idea 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 the construction of difference. The immediacy and potentially 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 feeding into their understanding of inclusive society. In 2013, four journalism schools in New Zealand and the Nordic countries launched a joint project linked to the EU initiative ‘Promoting the drivers for inclusive & sustainable growth’. This article offers a policy centred elaboration of inclusiveness and university teaching aimed to raise awareness and sensitivity towards diversities, power and reporting. Collaborative forms of inclusive pedagogy with multimodal qualities are presented. Perspectives of combining personal mobility and net-based pedagogical tools that establish a genuinely interactive relation between the teacher-as-student and student-as-teacher in online learning environments for education of journalists are discussed against our first experiences from this joint development work.