5/18 Berkman Lunch: Social Media Journalism and the Changing Roles of Journalists
Tuesday’s (5/18) Berkman Center for Internet & Society lunch discussion about journalism and social media should interest quite a few of you. Tune into the webcast or attend in person: 12:30 pm ET, 23 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA.
“Topic: Social Media Journalism and the Changing Roles of Journalists
Guest: Miriam MeckelTechnologies of participation empower everyone to engage in producing content on the web but also change the roles of professional journalism. By being able to explore these technologies, by establishing an individual personal brand and by combining traditional journalist’s work with online research and contributions a new model of social media journalism is arising that has some substantial impact on agenda setting processes and opinion leadership on the web. The outline of the model is substantiated by a case study about journalists on Twitter during the period of protests in Iran 2009.
About Miriam:
Prof. Miriam Meckel, PhD., holds a professorship for Corporate Communication at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and is the Managing Director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management (since 2005). She is also an adviser for Public Affairs and Business Communication.
This event will be webcast live; for more information and a complete description, see the event web page.”
To attend in person, please RSVP ASAP to Amar Ashar at ashar [at] cyber [dot] law [dot] harvard [dot] edu.
Addendum 5/18: Notes: Prof. Meckel examined journalist Robert Mackey’s use of Twitter as sources and general information for his reporting.
She looked at his blog, The Lede, and his Twitter feed and noticed direct relationships between what he blogs and what he tweets, especially since he often tweets about new blog posts. He used Twitter a lot while studying Iran and its elections.
She shared a visual depiction of how he connects Iranian sources to his readers. A number of people began going to his sources themselves without going through him first. Many people don’t necessarily use journalists as mediators or brokers for information anymore. However, he seems to still be the intermediary for many of his journalist colleagues.
Out of 480,000 Iranian Twitter users, they chose the 100 most relevant sources. Mackey chose twelve folks from Twitter. Almost 60% of his blog posts on the topic refer to Twitter. His Twitter followers interested in Iran seem to have a very high level of interest in Iran.
Researching social software presents many challenges. Open software to analyze social sites is lacking. Studying several tools simultaneously is tricky. It’s not always easy to map, say, Twitter to what’s happening on Facebook. [And, of course, different services and sites are popular in different countries, as we learned from a discussion Ethan moderated at MIT a few weeks ago.]
Journalists can expand their audiences through social media platforms, but they have to develop them. They aren’t just “there,” like newspaper subscribers might be.
In social media, connections and interaction are more important than in traditional media. Instead of the journalist “feeding” an audience in a unidirectional kind of way, the journalist can get ideas from and react to things from his online audience.
Journalists can’t always rely on the reputation of their parent organization when they’re out there on Twitter. It’s one thing to read someone’s column in The New York Times. Social media raises the importance of individual reputations. Journalists are more exposed when interacting with their audience online on sites disconnected from the media outlet’s site. Meckel calls it “personal branding.” (Sound familiar, librarians?)
[I wonder how much of this reputation change (individual journalist versus news organization) has to do with how individual consumers, particularly younger, web-savvy folks, get their news. A few decades ago, there was the daily newspaper and folks would read what was in it and not necessarily seek out other newspapers. Now, I know very few people who just get news from one place or source. The Web makes it very easy to read new stories from many sources or to follow a specific topic or story through various outlets. XML really simplifies that sort of thing. Why venture to various news sites when it can all arrive on a computer automatically?]
Influence becomes interesting in social networks, as does errors and such. When someone is operating on their own, how does accuracy and fact checking change? When someone’s reputation is on the line instead of the reputation of the entire organization, does that alter perception or the risks someone might take when sharing speculative or somewhat unconfirmed news or information from shady sources?
Ethan shared the situation last year where Robert Mackey reported a rumor that the blogger commonly known as Hoder might be working for Iranian intelligence services. (Aside: I know about Hoder as a blogger. I’m certain I’ve written about him in this space several years ago. He did very important work early on in blogging by writing in Persian and about Iran. He’s one of the people who really showed the power of blogging by sharing information about a part of the world often ignored by mainstream media unless something bad or big is happening. His imprisonment is dismaying. But, I digress.) Ethan details the situation on his blog and criticizes Mackey for using the rumors in his article. Mackey responds publicly online. During today’s meeting, Ethan praised Mackey for doing that—it shows an encouraging level of professionalism and integrity. But it also highlights some dangerous implications. What happens when someone might forget they’re not writing for social media or their own personal blog when something gets published under the masthead of a reputable source? Not that I’m saying I think Mackey did that. I’m just asking the question in general.
(It’s very tempting to keep writing about Hoder and the situation between Ethan and Mackey, but I should focus on the presentation and encourage you to read what Ethan writes and the exchanges in the comments.)
There was also discussion in the room about the importance of properly trained, serious journalists—perhaps even ones who are truly dedicated to a beat. Journalists covering the Middle East, for example, miss a lot if they do not read or speak any languages from that area of the world. How much richer could coverage in the US be if the reporters could integrate Arabic or Persian or other sources in local dialects? Besides the language issues, having people who know bits about information dissemination, analysis, gathering, research, and so on is quite important. [News librarians can certaily add to this process.]
What happens when gatekeepers to information are the most enthusiastic ones instead of the folks who are the most knowledgeable or unbiased?
Meckel seemed surprised when she asked near the beginning of her talk whether folks knew what Twitter was when no one in the room of about 30 people admitted being unfamiliar with it.
