Georgian Journalism Educators: Implementing Innovations

• In Event: News and Journalism in Authoritarian, Postconflict, and Emerging Democracy Regimes

Abstract

Rapid developments of technology in the past decades disrupted the traditional media role as a main informer of citizens and challenged journalism schools to experiment and reinvent journalism education. Despite of local context, journalism educators around the world are trying to embrace the possibilities presented by new technologies. This study employs a census of journalism educators in Republic of Georgia to explore adoption of innovations in journalism courses in the educational institutions across the country. Applying diffusion of innovations framework, findings of this research suggest that although larger journalism programs adopt more innovations, at least one innovation is adopted even by the smallest programs. This study also found that observability of an innovation is mostly positively related to adoption behavior. In addition, findings suggest that Georgian educators most frequently teach multimedia skills, social media and digital storytelling, while the least taught are basic programming skills and entrepreneurship.

Author

• Ana Keshelashvili, Georgian Institute of Public Affairs