Tag Archives: social media

NPR publishes results of extensive survey on Facebook

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News organisations and journalists wanting to make better use of Facebook to promote and share their work would do well to read NPR’s findings from its survey of more than 40,000 of its Facebook fans.

While NPR admits some of the responses will be skewed because the questions were asked via Facebook, the news organisation does have more than one million fans, so it must be doing something right.

Some important points:

  • “Users don’t think the number of ‘likes’ on a Facebook post will make them more likely to click it”;
  • “The vast majority (84 per cent) of NPR Facebook fans regularly read the links we post”;
  • NPR’s Facebook fans “are more inclined to consume NPR content on Facebook that other news sources”.

Full round-up of results at this link…

And if you fancy befriending Journalism.co.uk on Facebook, our fan page is at this link.

Nieman: French journalists experiment with social network newsgathering

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A radio journalist who took part in a week-long social media experiment – confining herself and four other journalists from French-speaking stations to an isolated cabin where their only news sources would be Twitter and Facebook – has detailed her findings on the Nieman Journalism Lab (originally posted in June).

Janic Tremblay documents the highs and lows of following events via the two platforms whilst trying to build a strong network of reliable news sources.

On our first night in France, I went online and came across tweets from a man who had been arrested during a demonstration in Moscow earlier that day. He had been jailed for many hours and was tweeting about what was happening. I did not know him. Clearly we lived in different universes, but it turned out that a member of his social network is also part of mine. When my social networking friend retweeted his posts, he showed up in my Twitter feed, and there we were—connected, with me in a French farmhouse and he in jail in Moscow.

(…) With the traditional tools of journalists, the odds of me finding this man would have been close to zero. However, I believe situations like this one happen rarely, as best I can tell from my experience and that of my colleagues.

See the full post here…

NMA: Reactions to Italy’s ‘blog-killing’ new bill

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Reputation Online’s Vikki Chowney rounds up the reaction to a so-called “blog-killing” clause in Italy’s new Wiretapping Bill.

As Journalism.co.uk reported last week, the revised bill will allow the publication of transcripts “relevant to an investigation”, but campaigners remain concerned by a clause in the new version which, according to European Digital Rights, requires anyone “responsible for information websites” to publish corrections within 48 hours of a complaint of inaccuracy being made, or else face fines of up to 25,000 euros.

There’s a huge amount of convergence within the reputation industry at the moment. the New York Times, FT and Guardian have all run lengthy features in the past two weeks on the issue of “managing your brand” as an individual. Just last week we saw a Facebook user sued for posting defamatory comments on a friend’s profile.

We’re yet to see a UK brand put a law like the one proposed in Italy into action, but as the courts start to impose stricter rules and the idea of managing personal reputation becomes more mainstream, these types of regulations will become more commonplace.

Full post on New Media Age at this link…

Facebook on how news organisations can best use the social network

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The main man behind media partnerships at Facebook, Justin Osofsky, has posted a blog detailing the social network’s recent analysis of how news sites currently use Facebook.

A Facebook team conducted the independent analysis of the “100 top media sites”, assessing their user engagement through social plugins.

We recently set forth to learn how news organizations can best use Facebook to (1) drive growth in audience and traffic, (2) increase engagement, and (3) gain valuable customer insights.

We also analysed the pages of several top media organizations and the stories they posted, including their content, types of status update, and time of day.

The findings have been shared today on a Facebook and Media page, with an overall aim to improve news organisations’ use of Facebook media in the future.

Examples include the use of Facebook Insights to better understand user interests, and placement of the ‘Activity Feed’ and ‘Recommendations’ social plugins on both the front and content pages to gain up to ten times more clicks per user than on the front page alone.

See the full post here…

PRs reluctant to turn to Twitter will ‘die out through natural seclection’

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Computer Weekly’s Mark Kobayashi-Hillary looks at the use of Twitter by trade journalists and trade PRs – or, more specifically, some trade PRs’ reluctance to take advantage of the communication tool.
If your focus is on a list of topics, and the writers at a group of specific titles, then what could possibly work better than having a window on what they are saying about their stories?
This works both ways – how many trade hacks really pay attention to the sea of press releases anymore when they can talk directly to the people they are writing about?
Some PR agencies have realised this. There are many now with strong digital and social expertise, but there are so many that are just riding on an existing contract. They will ultimately die out through natural selection

Full post on the SocialITe…

‘Apptop publishing’ technology targets bloggers and independents

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London-based Publisha has launched a new product and coined a new digital media term in one fell swoop – the company is targeting bloggers and independent digital publishers with its ‘apptop’ publishing device, designed for distributing content across a range of mobile devices and social networks.

Essentially it provides one content management system to create a basic website, Facebook ‘articles’ tab on your fan page, an iPad and smartphone application and is developing analytics, Twitter integration and an ad-serving platform.

“Publisha offers a new way of bringing content to readers. Unlike PDF readers, we’re not trying to replicate print magazines, but rather focus on offering a service to bloggers, writers and publishers who don’t want the constraints of a traditional magazine layout. Publisha allows even small teams to easily publish across multiple digital platforms, gain readers effectively and monetise their work in a complete ecosystem,” says Publisha’s CEO Ian Howlett in a release.

But the company is particularly interested in Facebook applications – it sees these as a way for specialist and more niche publishers to find readers with common interests and open up a network. Creating news feeds to Facebook fan pages is at present rather unintuitive and clunky – tools like Publisha could offer an easier way around this, though more customisation would be a plus. See it in action on the Facebook page for US bridal magazine Bodas USA:

Currybet.net: Will social media’s influence on political engagement continue post-election?

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The Guardian’s Martin Belam has produced a great summary of the panel debate at the launch of Nic Newman’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) paper on social media and the election, on his site currybet.net.

The research document, titled ‘UK Election 2010, mainstream media and the role of the internet’, outlines the significant role social media, in particular Twitter, played in informing the public during the election process.

One of the big questions which emerged from the panel debate was whether this social media engagement would continue now the election is over:

People need something to be engaged with. It remains to be seen whether the major parties will continue with digital campaigning, or whether, rather like leaflets, we will see a lot of them at election time and not much in between.

Outlining the main findings, Newman reportedly told the audience that Twitter became a “political newswire” as well as having a direct impact on the behaviour of politicians.

Reports Belam:

The best of the social media – jokes, spoof posters, reaction on Twitter – was reflected and amplified by the mainstream media. This ultimately influenced the behaviour of the politicians. David Cameron, for example, toned down his habit of citing anecdotal stories of people he met after it was spoofed online.

(…) William Hague announcing he was about to go back into negotiations with the Liberal Democrats via Twitter suggesting the service was beginning to be used as ‘a political newswire’.

See Martin Belam’s full post here…

Michigan news organisations join together to create aggregation site

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News organisations across Michigan have joined together to launch an online aggregation site.

According to a report by Editor&Publisher, Michigan.com features content provided by more than 30 companies from the Detroit Media Partnership, which includes the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News.

The site pools information across a range of categories from news and sport, to traffic and weather updates, as well as a Twitter stream of relevant comments.

Users can reportedly customise topic boxes to suit their needs.

See the full post here…

Twitter is most-used social network to login to news sites

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A Twitter ID is the login of choice on news sites that allow users to sign in with their profiles from other email and social networks.

While Facebook logins dominate amongst users of business-to-business websites and entertainment sites, the social network accounts for just 25 per cent of news site logins, while Twitter IDs make up 45 per cent.

The full statistics and graphics can be viewed on Gigya. As more news sites get ‘connected’ – see the Telegraph and Independent’s recent moves to Disqus and the likely Facebook integration of the new BBC News site – the login patterns that emerge could throw up some interesting insights into how online news readers are interacting with and consuming news sites.

Women are taking over world of media, says Digitas chief creative officer

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Social media has done more than change the way we interact, claims Digitas chief creative officer Mark Beeching.

Speaking after the Digital Content Newfront conference, Beeching said the biggest issue to take-away from the event was the realisation that new media was helping women take over the media world.

At the first Digital Content Newfront, my main concern is that we had a lot of middle men on the stage, very few women if any, a lot of men in sports jackets. This year, women are taking over the world of media. In 30 years time I think we are going to be making a show called Mad Women. Mad men was the macho, mass media world, Mad Women is the social media, the nurturing, the conversational world.