Journalism students in the North-East have taken part in a groundbreaking 24-hour digital project reporting about deprivation and poverty.

Postgraduate students from Newcastle University joined young reporters from the USA, India and Taiwan to investigate critical themes of austerity, poverty and deprivation for 24 hours on Saturday.

With UK participants only using their smartphones and social media to report live from the streets of Newcastle, colleagues reported in the same way from Los Angeles, Chennai and Taipei.

The project was expected to draw in a community of contributors on social media around the world, bringing new insights and understandings to a set of issues that affect millions of lives.

Journalism students in Newcastle explored big issues both locally and globally

Newcastle University journalism lecturer David Baines said: “These are complicated issues and our students and their colleagues overseas have been working for weeks to get past the simplifications.

“They are using now-commonplace equipment in innovative ways to produce high quality journalism which explores these complexities, makes them transparent, and offers opportunities for those people who are often spoken about, to speak for themselves.”

The Pop-Up Newsroom was developed by Dr Melissa Wall, of California State University at Northridge, who wanted journalism students to highlight the voices of ordinary people rather than institutions and organisations which often dominate much mainstream media coverage.

It is the first time it has been extended internationally to explore global and local perspectives and the first time the approach has been applied to reporting on major social themes such as poverty, deprivation and austerity.

“This is an experiment. We are exploring new ways of doing journalism, using tools that appeal to younger audiences who get most of their information online, and it might help to point towards new directions for journalism in the digital age,” added David.

Anyone wishing to follow the project on Twitter could search for @popupnewsUK  and @popupnewsroom, while contributors were also invited to visit www.popupnewsroom.net  and www.popupnewsUK.net.

The project was assisted with research undertaken by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in York into the reporting of UK poverty, while the guidelines for good practice were drawn up with help from the Society of Editors and the Media Trust.