This study explicates and explores the concept of “vibe coding,” or the use of AI platforms to teach relevant programming skills in a communication context. By integrating flow theory, the research presents a student-centered model for AI-augmented coding education, applying flow traits to achieve desired outcomes. Using student feedback from a mobile application development course, the study demonstrates how AI tools can enhance coding education by providing code samples, explanations, and troubleshooting assistance. The findings suggest that vibe coding can make coding more accessible and useful to a broader audience by applying the model in digital development education and practices.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the forefront in discussions of the future of media and education. Although there are valid concerns, AI has the potential to be useful in learning new skills, particularly those related to computer programming. This case study depicts the ways AI was introduced to assist in teaching coding, specifically in a mobile application development course. Applying transformational teaching theory, this study assesses student perceptions of AI as it affects the acquisition and mastery of key concepts, strategies for learning and discovery, and the attitudes and mindsets associated with using AI for learning to code.

Computer programming, or what is commonly known as coding, is an emerging skill supporting the development of digital products in news media organizations. Through the application of practice theory-a hybrid approach that includes elements of field theory, actor-network theory and structuration theory-we examine the ways in which coding competencies are practiced within and across different roles, for different purposes. This exploratory study uses online interviews with 19 news product managers and leaders-or those who are tasked with the management, development, testing, and launching of digital news products-offering unique insight on coding practices across functions. Results highlight the usage, value and nuances of coding skills, providing insight into the activities, materiality, and reflexivity of computer programming as it emerges across roles in a news organization.

The modern news industry demands a continuous stream of products ready to meet audience needs; the emergent newsroom role of product manager serves to prioritize them by providing a holistic perspective on an organization’s goals. Product professionals bring in new skill sets and help to bridge the divide and align the priorities among editorial, business, and technology functions, serving as a locus of change in journalism. This sets the stage for institutional complexity where actors struggle to make decisions due to competing logics, which are socially constructed rules created to normalize behavior. This article thus focuses on the dynamics of change in a complex environment by examining news product professionals as institutional arbitrageurs, which are actors who bring competing logics together to create value during a time of complexity. This framing raises questions regarding the locus of change in journalism and aims to further understand the tactics used by actors in a complex environment such as the field of journalism. A qualitative study using interviews with digital journalism’s product professionals is used to address this phenomenon, which allows for a theoretical contextualization of the dynamics of change in journalism and specifically, how product managers act as a locus of change using their roles to manage complexity by bringing incompatible logics together to leverage differences between them.

The news product ecosystem has quickly grown to encompass a range of offerings, including interactive editorial products, mobile applications, newsletters, podcasts, games, immersive storytelling and artificial intelligence applications, social media strategies and tools to support journalism functions. Product practices more commonly associated with software development have become necessary in creating and launching digital properties, but these approaches need to integrate the special case of journalism, reflecting the speed of news, particular ethics, responsibilities to the audience and role in democracy. This commentary considers three areas that unite design and product related to media: shifting professional roles, emerging product culture and the relationship between product and engagement.

As news organizations continue to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by engagement with audiences across digital and social media platforms in the creation and sharing of news and in the development of news-oriented products, they also offer up uniquely personal investment pathways and emotional ties for their audiences. This commentary considers conceptualizations of emotion and individual agency in engagement with journalists, news organizations, and the process of newsmaking. We suggest that exploring more forms of engagement and accepting them as part of the news process can encourage the sharing of emotion and the development of positive emotional connections to journalists and news content and products. This is important to consider as audiences move from influencing the profession of journalism to becoming one of its indispensable creators.

New roles in news organizations have emerged supporting media products demonstrating a range of digital features. Along with the requirements of these products come a new set of skills and competencies to coordinate, develop, manage, and support them. Thus, product-related roles, previously considered on the periphery of a media organization, become more central and introduce challenges in their integration within traditional roles, processes and culture. This study identifies those performing in product and product-adjacent roles, the networks and boundaries across which they work, and the ways in which they make meaning across functions. Perceptions of those in product roles highlight a field of contradictions, in need of career development, respect within organizations, and role standardization, while maintaining the professional flexibility and agility that is necessary to drive innovation.

INTRODUCTIONExperiential learning has always been an important aspect of a university education. On the most basic level, the experience of going to college provides learning in the form of being on one's own for the first time, making friends, and finding one's way around a new campus and community. More is often learned outside of class than in, and experiences provide the opportunity to reflect upon and assimilate classroom learning. There is a growing trend to more formally introduce educational experiences in which students can participate, innovate, and influence the processes and work flows. Social media tools offer efficient and cost-effective ways to engage students that allow them to publish their work, promote events, and enhance their professional networks.There are many ways to engage students by getting them involved in conferences, seminars, and workshops. Rather than simply attend an event, students can actively engage the event by providing extensive coverage via a blog and other social media tools. The event can be covered by an entire class or a recruited group of students, or as an activity for a student organization, or one that is engaged by student media. Typical media coverage of an event may include one story using few sources, photos, or a short video package. However, web and social-media tools provide a much larger news hole for more extensive coverage that a large-scale event often merits. A team of reporters can extensively cover a conference, engaging an external audience, often on a national or international level, and providing a permanent archive of the activities. Students can use tools and technologies in their reporting to cover the event in innovative ways.Experiential learning has been discussed in journalism for the past two decades. Most recently, the teaching hospital model, where journalism students receive practical experience as an integral part of their education, has been proposed and promoted (Knight Foundation, 2013). However, few case studies exist that illustrate innovative ways to add student media experiences into journalism curricula. This study outlines one such endeavor, the SXTXState.com project from Texas State University, in which students cover the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Since 2008, this project has put students in contact with professionals and cutting-edge communication topics, allowing them to use the most current technologies and media platforms. Internships, traditional student media participation, and classroom exercises can qualify as experiential learning, but this analysis describes a course-level experiential activity. A rubric is introduced that can provide an assessment tool for judging the level of experience provided by any experiential learning environment.LITERATURE REVIEWExperiential learning is a process during which a person experiences an event, acquires competencies and then compares the knowledge gained with that gleaned in similar situations (Brandon, 2002, p. 62). Bloom (1956) developed a taxonomy of learning that is applicable to experiential environments. He identified three domains: cognitive, or mental skills; affective, or emotional and attitudinal areas; and psychomotor, or manual and physical skills. Each domain had a series of categories that reflected the level and type of learning, thus demonstrating learning as a series of phenomena that can each be exercised and measured in different ways. Bloom's Taxonomy was later synthesized by Lorin Anderson into the following categories: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating (Pohl, 2001). These categories represent a hierarchy moving from passive learning (remembering, understanding) to active learning (applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating) and highlight the role of experiences in the process.Various theorists have defined approaches to experiential learning. Dewey discussed experiential learning in regard to the agency it creates. …

The World Wide Web continues to grow closer to achieving the vision of becoming the repository of all human knowledge, as features and applications that support user-generated content become more prevalent. Wikipedia is fast becoming an important resource for news and information. It is an online information source that is increasingly used as the first, and sometimes only, stop for online encyclopedic information. Using a method employed by Tankard and Royal to judge completeness of Web content, completeness of information on Wikipedia is assessed. Some topics are covered more comprehensively than others, and the predictors of these biases include recency, importance, population, and financial wealth. Wikipedia is more a socially produced document than a value-free information source. It reflects the viewpoints, interests, and emphases of the people who use it.

Although access to the Internet in the United States has reached parity among males and females, over time gender differences in terms of usage, agency, and representation with technology are becoming evident. Early thinking about the Internet indicated a more liberating and equalizing effect than previous media because of its decentralized nature, reduced structural barriers to entry, and potential for diversity of voices. But over time, mainstream sites that have been developed for women are primarily interested in their value as consumers. Many sites have adopted a women's magazine model, using essentially feminine stereotypes to promote and position their content. This includes the ways in which these sites represent the ideas of technology and the Internet. This study compares two gendered spaces, iVillage and AskMen.com, and analyzes the differences in the ways that technology is framed and discussed.

* Jenkins, Henry (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, pp. 336. * Poster, Mark (2006). Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 303. The Internet, now driven by Web 2.0 technologies that enable collaboration and sharing, has fostered a new age of participation. Blogs, social networks, photo and video sharing sites, and online virtual worlds provide unique opportunities for individuals to communicate and contribute to the creation of culture. Consumers are producers, and traditional media companies are searching for ways to capitalize on the production of the masses. The rights and responsibilities of citizens of this new digital world are the premise of two recent books. In Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins studies the themes of media convergence, participatory culture, and Driven by digital technologies, Jenkins describes a world that is bound not by a particular medium or industry, but one in which consumer and producer are merged, and culture is created by means of sharing and participation. With the Internet as the primary driver, consumers of culture are able to participate in ways that are both sanctioned and non-sanctioned by powerful media industries. Jenkins provides examples relating to reality television, film, book publishing, and video games, and explains the ways in which these models both support and supplant capitalism. Mark Poster's book, Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines, is an ambitious merging of cultural theory and new media implications. Engaging the works of cultural theorists including Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Felix Guattari, Karl Marx, Gayatri Spivak, and Pierre Levy, this is a dense and comprehensive project that seeks to identify opportunities as well as limitations in using existing cultural theory to articulate the important questions of the digital age. Much of this work requires an understanding of the cultural theories Poster invokes, which he explains in great detail. It is in the denseness of the theories he conveys that the messages regarding new media become somewhat muddled. One must sit through a lesson in postcolonial theory before one can comprehend the effects on global media. In the same regard, a comprehensive explanation of theories of identity is engaged before a discussion of identity theft can be fully articulated. But this level of detail is necessary to fully appreciate Poster's arguments. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a much easier read. The two books have several common themes, and these intersections are fascinating. Both deal with Pierre Levy's idea of collective intelligence. According to Jenkins, consumption has become a process (Jenkins, p. 4). Pooling resources and combining skills are the characteristics of the knowledge generation. In his chapter Spoiling Jenkins tells of an active and engaged fan community that is dedicated to unearthing secrets about the CBS television show Survivor before it airs. Fans work together in online forums to uncover the next location, potential contestants, challenge twists, and, ultimately, the winner. The level of engagement with this text is of a high magnitude, elevating certain fans to respected status in the communities. Requiring time and dedication, this level of participation is something that many companies would be pleased to have associated with their brands. But, at the same time, CBS and Mark Burnett, the producer of Survivor, do not want the active fan community to spoil the ending, to reveal the answers to questions before they are ready to reveal them. Poster generally speaks of this phenomenon in regard to capitalism. A new contradiction of capitalism emerges in digital culture whereby the urge to sell commodities comes into conflict with the need for private information (Poster, p. …