Tag Archives: social media platforms

Jon Slattery: NUJ ‘out of date’ for new media journalists, says mag branch

Jon Slattery reports on a motion put forward by the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) magazine branch, which suggests new media journalists see the union as ‘out of date’ in its attitude towards online journalism and social media platforms.

“This ADM instructs the NEC [National Executive Council] to address this problem by working with the blogging community and Twitteratti to bridge this gap and create a framework that embraces the NUJ’s journalistic principles while maintaining the press freedom enjoyed by bloggers and twitterers,” the motion reads.

Full post at this link…

Ethan Zuckerman on hashtags, breaking news and disinformation

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There have been discussions previously on accuracy vs speed when it comes to breaking news on social media platforms such as Twitter (see the debate around the reporting of the Mumbai terror attacks), but Ethan Zuckerman’s recent blog post raised some interesting points relating to the recent Moldova protests.

The #pman tag used to report the protests was also used to spread disinformation, says Zuckerman, who references Jon Pincus’ post on the hashtag as an open channel.

“[I]n the same way that the #skittles tag, promoted by the company as a form of viral marketing ended up being used for NSFW posts, it’s hardly surprising that #pman would attrack trolls and disinformation,” writes Zuckerman.

“On the other hand, participatory tools may be particularly effective at debunking this form of disinformation.”

A commenter on Zuckerman’s blog tested this out during the protests by posting fake, hashtagged updates, and seeing if these were seized upon by the media. The ‘troll/experiment’ was quickly rumbled however.

Zuckerman says he will be looking into whether Romanian speakers will challenge the information spread in English-language updates, as well as whether good or bad nuggets of information spread more quickly.

Thomson Reuters gets social with Gordon Brown

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Thomson Reuters went all out this morning in its coverage of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech at the company’s London office.

First off the organisation’s own coverage: the Newsmaker event was twittered by Reuters journalist Mark Jones, whose updates were fed into a special microsite.

There was also video of the PM’s announcement originally livestreamed on Reuters’ website – including a handy dropdown menu that lets you skip through the clip to different key moments.

A full transcript and text article of the speech have also been published on the site.

But in addition to Reuters’ own reporting on the event was live footage streamed using mobile phones and hosting service Qik by social media bloggers Documentally and Sizemore.

“With Gordon Brown due to start talking on the present economic crisis what can two beardy blokes with a few laptops and small cameras possible hope to add?

“Well nothing directly on what is about to be said. I have as much interest in current politics as I did in marketing movies. I’m here with Christian [Documentally] to start conversations around the NewsMaker event that are currently not part of Reuter’s remit,” wrote Mike Atherton aka Sizemore in a blog post.

Below is Documentally’s mobile video of the Newsmaker:

The pair also used social media tools such as online site Phreadz, which builds multimedia forums around content submitted by users, to generate discussion around Brown’s speech.

“I sincerely hope that following today the idea of getting these events discussed on social media platforms such as Twitter, Seesmic and Phreadz becomes a natural part of the news media’s roadmap,” added Atherton.