science

Liveblogging

Liveblogging is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Liveblogging rather than just read about it. In short: A liveblog is blog posting intended to provide coverage of an ongoing event in rolling text, similar to live television or live radio. Liveblogging has increased in usage by news organizations and blogging establishments since the mid-2000s, when it was initially used to broadcast updates of technology conferences in the absence of or alongside streaming video captures, and like microblogging, has gained currency as…

Key takeaways

Liveblogging belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Liveblogging to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Liveblogging from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A liveblog is blog posting intended to provide coverage of an ongoing event in rolling text, similar to live television or live radio. Liveblogging has increased in usage by news organizations and blogging establishments since the mid-2000s, when it was initially used to broadcast updates of technology conferences in the absence of or alongside streaming video captures, and like microblogging, has gained currency as an online publication format which performs the same function as live television news coverage. The term "live text" is also used, for example by the BBC.

Operation Incorporative of microblogs (which are continuously updated but are also used widely as a short-form liveblogging platform), a liveblog is a single post which is constantly updated by one or more authors (usually on-location correspondents) with up-to-the-minute logs of the goings-on, and are usually performed during specific types of events rather than as regular features. Furthermore, during longer-running events beyond the length of twenty-four hours (such as civil, political or military events), a liveblog post will be ended after a 24-hour period and followed by a successive liveblog post for the next 24 hours.

Content and appearance A live blog is a single post which is continuously updated with timestamped micro-updates which are placed above previous micro-updates. During liveblogs, a wide number of media, including video, audio, images and text, can be incorporated in order to explain what is going on at a specific location. Such content may be posted from external sources, such as other press agencies and non-employees, if such content is only available from those sources (i.e., a live blog of an event by Al Jazeera English may post embedded video from CNN or YouTube if such video is centrally relevant to a recent occurrence within the scope of the event and is credited to authors affiliated with such organizations). Live blogs are usually ordered from top-to-bottom so that the most recent updates appear at the top of the post. Posts may also be automatically updated using JavaScript-based auto-refreshes (by the minute) which do not reload the entire webpage.

Relevance

Comparison with live broadcasting Because of their synchronous nature, live blogs have been compared to live broadcasting on television and radio in their immediacy and currency. However, such blogs are almost always used for coverage of, and commentary on, one-time or specialized events, and live blogging is not yet widely considered a regular section-specific feature for most online news services, while news specialty channels tend to provide almost 24-hour live studio broadcasts in audio and/or video format without necessarily focusing dedicated coverage on specific current events except when necessary.

Usage The format is most regularly used for blow-by-blow coverage of concurrently-occurring events, such as sports competitions. Other events which are increasingly regularly live-blogged are:

Elections Ceremonies Conferences, conventions and gatherings Protests and conflicts Natural events and disasters Politically-restive countries The format was originally devised by Gareth Owen for the BBC's coverage of the 2001 UK parliament budget and Owen and the BBC continued to pioneer the format for many years after. The format was later applied by websites such as Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch and Macworld in 2003-2005 for coverage of technology-related events (such as the Macworld Expo's series of Stevenote's and the WWDC) first gained notoriety among news organizations during the coverage of the 2009 anti-government protests in Iran. Further enhancement of the medium by the BBC and other media organizations accompanied later events such as Cablegate and the Arab Spring. The Guardian had been publishing "minute-by-minute" reports of local (and later locally-involved global) sports events since April 2001, but didn't first begun to publish official "minute-by-minutes" in the Politics blog until June 2007 (posts titled as "LIVE" or formatted to give time-stamped updates on events extend to as far as 2003), followed by more Guardian blogs adopting minute-by-minute formats for special events afterward. News organizations have become increasingly adoptive of such platforms as Livefyre, CoverItLive, and ScribbleLive which allow for a dedicated box in which to publish short-form and mid-form updates with automatic, dynamically-generated appearances of the most recent posts. A recent peer-reviewed publication outlines the utilization and perception of live blogging coverage at a physical therapy conference. The authors concluded that live blogging extended the viewing audience and facilitated viewer engagement. Survey respondents found the coverage educational, of high quality, and would participate again in the future.

Impact on journalism The live blogging format is controversial for readers of news websites in that the presentation is a clear departure from more traditional methods of news gathering and presentation, both on- and offline. Matt Wells, blogs editor for The Guardian, contended that live blogs, rather than being the "death of journalism", will actually be the "embodiment of its future".

References

Further reading Bruno Giussani; Ethan Zuckerman (2007), Tips for Conference Bloggers, s.n., OL 25009475M Matt Stempeck, Ethan Zuckerman (12 April 2012). "How to Liveblog Events with a Team". MIT Center for Civic Media.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Liveblogging

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Liveblogging claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Liveblogging before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Liveblogging ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Liveblogging

In research: Liveblogging appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Liveblogging in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Liveblogging is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Blogging, Live broadcasting, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Liveblogging outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Liveblogging in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Liveblogging means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Liveblogging out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Liveblogging in simple terms?

Why does Liveblogging matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Liveblogging?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Liveblogging.