Social Media and the News Revolution

Sue RobinsonSpring 2014

Before we begin...•Sign up for the class presentation? Missing four people!

•Sign up for the Final Project?•Turn your FIND MY IPAD and location

services ON?•Can watch Page One anytime before the

end of Spring Break•Second Extra Credit (worth THREE points) is

a focus group about news and social media•A tip about Presentations: Get that

interview for an A!

One more thing: The person with the most

interesting, significant comments/tweets today will get a grab bag of goodies. MUST pull directly from the

readings to be selected.

Interactivity: -- Publick Occurrences (1690)-- Bulletin Board Systems (1980s)-- New Jersey Online’s Community Connection(1990s) and Madison’s own thedailypage forums (1994)

Distributed content/reporting ---------> Self-publishing

(prosumers)

Online Journalism Story trajectory

First Wave: 1972-1994 (ARPAnet-videotext, BBS, Viewtron -- too expensive, tied up both TV and phone, end users taken for granted, world not

ready)

Second Wave: 1990-2001 (Web browser, Shovelware, digital newsrooms, Matt Drudge --

Recession; Dot.com crash; innovation too spread-out)

Third Wave: 2001-2006 (Convergence, widespread broadband, multimedia, interactivity

-- Business models failing; user expectations; YouTube/Facebook)

Fourth Wave: 2007-present (Twitter, Pinterest, SOCIAL, semantic web, dynamic content, J-

entrepreneurs)

Enhanced Experience, ImprovisationFusion of data from variety of sources

into one web application

Information anywhere, anytime

Melding of media formats into 1 interactive platform

Communal, spatial, temporal, private-public blend

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Twitter Question via #socialj: How do you get your news? Do you like to use your phone to

check news?

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First, we’ve got:New Platforms:•Of course: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Storify, FourSquare

• Television Internet Streaming• Some funky new stuff

AND ESPECIALLY• MOBILE: smart phones, ipads, tablets

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What does this mean for STORY?

• Multimedia: text, audio, visuals, animation, combinations

• Interactivity: Ability for the user to manipulate or modify the product or engage with the author, or create product themselves

Use print to explain * Use multimedia to show, emote

* Use interactivity to engage, connect

and build relationships

JOURNALISM AS PROCESS

News Event

JournalismAudiences

Cyber-NewsroomSources

Individual Reporters

CitizenContributors

Cyber-Newsroom: Reporters, sources, and local/national audiences come together in cyberspace. News as first gathered by journalists is negotiated by

individual sources, reporters, and citizens, who add to the reporting. Such contributions influence the narrative formation, content, and impact, as well as its

very unfolding at times.

Corporate Media Groups like Yahoo, AOL and other Pro-Am (Patch, Public Insight Network, The Local)

Entrepreneurial Journalism (Spot.Us) (firedoglake)

Non-Profit Journalism (WisconsinWatch)Community-based Media like blogsFreelance Marketplaces like eByline

• Live Blogging • Online diaries, forums

• Games: Plan your park (or school, road, house, festival)

• Learning in New Formats: Understanding budgets

• Earning “badges” and a rep

Interactive Examples in News

None of these would be around without digital

capabilities, the capacity for distributed

reporting, and the increasingly

networked society.

Q1: Are citizen blogs and tweeting

of news journalism? Who’a right? Jarvis or Fox?

Can you think of an instance where what YOU blogged/Facebooked/tweeted reached level of journalism? What would Kovach & Rosenstiel or Fox say about what you did? Jarvis?

Discussion Break via #socialj

•Q2: Do you think the Nieman piece attributing the Egyptian revolution to social media was accurate or overblown? Is this what Jarvis thinks about in regards to journalism as process?

Detecting Online Bull

Discussion Break via #socialj

•Let’s talk about Blur: Name some specific ways in which we can use social media to “skeptically know.”

• Tunisia, Egypt, Madison, Britain: recent uprisings that depended on social mediated organization. Let’s watch how one NPR journalist covered the Egyptian story via social media.

Accuracy•Check the validity of the tweets,

posts before you retweet or storify them

•Make it clear in your tweets and copy when you don’t know for sure about the accuracy

•Correct your mistakes, often and quickly

•Check how long the person has been active on Twitter via http://howlonghaveyoubeentweeting.com/

•How frequent are updates?

•Is there a photo with their account?

•Who are their friends/followers? Any suspicious Bots?

Step 1: Check the person’s credibility

Direct message them and:

•ask for a phone number, ask if they witnessed the event and interview them privately

•ask them to describe what happened

•ask if they have other photos

•ask if there are other witnesses or if they were with anyone you can talk to

Step 2. Follow up on the tip

•Check the earlier information. Do tweets leading up to the tweet in question seem logical?

•Do follow-up tweets and updates make sense?

•Does it read “authentically?”

•Is there a photo attached? Check geolocation and exif data.

Step 3. Check the credibility of the information

•Check police scanners; call the cops, etc.

•Do a Twitter/Google/YouTube search to see if others are capturing same information

•CrowdSource (the Andy Carvin method)

•Call around the tweet/photo by looking up nearby businesses, for example, and asking if they see the same event happening, etc.

•Go to the scene.

Step 4. Corroborate the story

• Check exif data: regex.info/exif.cgi

• Check for edits to photos: fourandsix.com. Tineye.com is a reverse image search site that can help determine if photos have been used before elsewhere.

• Reference locations against maps, weather reports, other images from the area

• Do the vegetations, shadows, sun/rain, etc. all correspond to the photo’s exif date and time?

• Check other information such as the clothes/license plates/language/structures against the photo

• Are there other photos they can share (typically more than one is taken; be aware of the amazing shot)

Verifying Images

•When was the domain registered? (WhoIs.net)

•Check out page rank by Google (PageRank)

•Go to the Internet Archive: how long has the site been there? Has it been radically changed recently?

•Is there: About, activity, clear ownership,

Verifying Web Sites

HW due Feb. 4: νNetworked, Chapters 1 (The Triple Revolution) and then SKIM Chapters 2-4 (The new Social Operating System of Networked Individualism, The Social Network Revolution, The Internet Revolution, and the Mobile Revolution); Also Ch 5 and ch 9,νAnderson, C., Bell, E., and Shirky, C. (2012). Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present. Tow Center for Digital Journalism: http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/ SKIMo (OR you can watch Shirky talking about this here in a half an hour video: http://buzzmachine.com/2006/07/05/networked-journalism/)νPlease read Wellman’s work and be ready with two questions (@barrywellman) before Tuesday at noon.νBLOG POST No. 2: The SuperBowl in a Networked World