Taneli Heikka is a Finnish journalist, journalism researcher, author and entrepreneur. In his talk, he explained how he understands the notion of dialogue and how he has used it in various journalistic and research-related situations. Watch the video of Heikka’s talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBPggivBcEo.
In recent years, Heikka has studied and developed the concept of dialogic journalism in his research articles and his PhD thesis “Dialogic Journalism: How can journalists participate in the networks of social innovation?” (2017, https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/55417). He has also collaborated with the Timeout Foundation (https://www.timeoutdialogue.fi/), who have developed a practical methodology for planning and generating social dialogue; Heikka has studied this methodology as a tool for journalists.
In the discussion part, we talked about the various roles that dialogue opens up for a journalist; the different contexts where dialogue has been useful (e.g. schools and post-conflict situations); how to find participants (representation); the possibilities to use dialogue as a tool in the news flow; and how to argue for the “newsworthiness” of dialogues.