Tag Archives: social media

Frontline Club debate: social media is important, but not a kingmaker yet

MPs, Westminster hacks and activists might be addicted to expressing themselves in 140 characters or less, but don’t expect this year’s general election to be decided on which party has the best social media strategy.

Then again, politicians and the media shouldn’t dismiss voters’ digital engagement, according to a panel at a Frontline Club debate on the importance on social media for the upcoming election.

You can watch a video of the whole thing here…

Twitter certainly has the potential to land politicians in mini-media storms; the panellists agreed: if David Wright MP had merely told a reporter verbally that Conservatives are “scum” it’s unlikely to have got much coverage, such is the continued novelty of Twitter to many news editors.

Paul Staines, better known as mischievous Westminster blogger Guido Fawkes, argued that no matter how well connected parties are, with Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems towing similar centerist policy lines there was little to differentiate them for the ordinary voter: “If they are all marching in the centre ground, there’s not much to market, is there?”

And as for reporters, they’re “not going to get a scoop from Tweetdeck”, he warned. “There are about 500 of us (in the Westminster village) listening to each other aren’t there?”

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy said social media buzz doesn’t determine what C4 leads its 7pm bulletin with – but Twitter got the network’s reporters in touch with someone in the audience at Nick Griffin’s notorious Question Time performance.

But all this is missing the point, according to Chris Condron, Press Association’s head of digital strategy:

If you ask any journalist what they think about a phenomenon like Twitter (…) they tend to think about what it means for journalists, but where its potential really lies is for audiences.

The “disintermediation” of news – where readers can go straight to the source of news, such as an MP’s Twitter stream – was a challenge for the media, but Condron is confident that “the reporters’ gathering and filtering of raw news was still essential.”

More events coming up at the Frontline Club:

Reflections with Richard Sambrook – a one-to-one conversation with the BBC’s outgoing director of global news. He’s headed for a new role as vice-president of PR firm Edelman, but how does he look back on a rich career and what is his view of journalism today?

Iraq: The Media Inquiry – a special panel discussion to examine the media’s reporting of Iraq since the invasion in 2003. With Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News; Patrick Cockburn, The Independent’s Middle East correspondent and journalist David Rose. Moderated by Paddy O’Connell, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

Insight with Timothy Garton Ash – the columnist and Oxford professor will be in conversation with Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow will be in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. Garton Ash will be talking about his career, the transformation of Europe over the last thirty years and what Barack Obama will mean for the United States and the world.

On the Media: Is the age of celebrity-obsessed media coming to an end? We discuss whether the ubiquitous presence of pseudo-famous faces on newspapers and news bulletins is here to stay. With comedian and journalist Jane Bussman; Popbitch founder Camilla Wright; Heat magazine editor and broadcaster Sam Delaney. Chaired by Robin Morgan, former editor of the Sunday Times magazine. This event is in association with the BBC College of Journalism.

This post also appears at the Frontline Club’s Forum blog.

Poll: What social media is used by journalists in UK and Europe?

Do we need rules for journalists’ use of social media?

2 Replies

This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on KristineLowe.blogs.com. Kristine Lowe is a journalist and blogger based in Norway and president of the Norwegian Online News Association (NONA). Read her last post on Journalism.co.uk: ‘Twitter mishaps and netiquette for journalists‘.

Interested in social media in the newsroom? Come to news:rewired, 14 January 2010. Tickets on sale now. Follow @newsrewired on Twitter (#newsrw).

Are you a journalist 24/7? Does the company you work for own you? Does it harm your credibility as a journalist if you share personal opinions online? Are some opinions more appropriate to share than others?

These are just some of many questions raised by the recent debates on journalists and social media. Some companies, such as Bloomberg, have very strict policies on how journalists may or may not use social media, but in Norway such rules have been absent until now.

However, it was recently brought to my attention that several of the country’s biggest media organisations are working on social media rules for their journalists, which caused The Norwegian Online News Association (NONA), an organisation I’m heading, to host a debate last month.

The reason? We thought it was much better to get such a debate out in the open than have it confined by the walls of each individual media company. If Norwegian is not Greek to you, you’ll find video and notes from the debate over at NONA’s blog, but as these are questions many media organisations are discussing these days, I’ve also translated some key quotes and questions here:

‘The home alone party is over’
“The home alone party is over, now the adults are back and they want rules,” said Jan Omdahl, internet and technology commentator for Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet. He said Dagbladet’s journalists had been playing around with social media from an early stage, but now the media executives had entered the arena, demanding rules.

“It’s very typical that those who don’t use social media, or have started using it very recently, want rules, whereas those who have used social media a lot take the contrary view,” said Nina Nordbö, a social media advisor at Norway’s public broadcaster (NRK) and NONA board member.

“It is perhaps our smallest problem that we lack rules for social media. At the same time one of our biggest problems is that we are part of a tradition for one-way communication that makes us ill-equipped for exploiting the social web,” said Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of VG.no and NONA board member.

Grey areas
He felt it as important that we learned how to utilise this arena, and make our mistakes now rather than later. He also emphasised that VG.no had strict rules on ethics and he couldn’t see that they needed any more rules than these.

However, Omdahl also pointed out that journalists encounter a whole new set of challenges online. “Even if I as a social media user think we can just continue as we always have done, I do see that we can benefit from raising awareness about these challenges. For instance: should I reply when I get questions on Twitter about why Dagbladet has used five different angles on that sex podcast on NRK.no? Should I confer with my bosses before I reply? Is it appropriate that I share my opinions on one of our most heavily criticised front pages?”

Guidelines or rules
Hanne Kirkenes from ABCNyheter.no pointed out that in her organisation it was not the editors but the journalists who had asked for rules.

“In my experience, our journalists are divided: those who take to social media very naturally and those who think journalists should not be using social media at all,” she said, explaining that as a result of this they had a few simple guidelines on social media. They also had held internal discussions on this and would continue to do so.

John Einar Sandvand, a digital strategist with Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record, explained that his company was in the process of implementing rules for how their journalists use social media, but suggested three very simple ones:

1) The media company should be genuinely positive to its staff being active in social media

2) Social media activities must be done in a way which maintains the professional integrity of journalists

3) Stay loyal to your employer

You can read more about Sandvand’s thoughts on this on his excellent blog Beta Tales (in English).

Impartiality, sources and PR
We touched on several other issues which tend to come up in one form or another whenever journalists’ use of social media is up for discussion, hence I’ll just mention three of these briefly here:

Impartiality: Can a blogger with a strong political agenda or view on a particular issue work as a journalist? Or would it be more useful to ask if a journalist or commentator can do more credible journalism once we know his our her agenda? Espen Egil Hansen suggested that bloggers were blurring the lines between reporting and commenting; that commentators like Omdahl could still do credible journalism; and that in the future we would see more journalists becoming individual brands.

Consensus: Is it a problem that journalists and commentators mostly talk to their peers online, therefore exacerbating media’s herdlike behaviour? A Norwegian editor recently argued this was the case and argued that discussing ideas on Twitter created a consensus among the country’s commentators, and therefore we need rules to regulate media’s use of social media. To this it was pointed out that hacks and columnists have always associated mostly with other media folks, but that at least on Twitter they do so openly and not behind closed doors in the press club . On Twitter they also have (an opportunity) to engage with their readers and can make an effort to expand the network of people they talk and listen to.

PR: Somebody asked whether it was problematic that marketeers and academics got to know a journalist’s interests so well on Twitter that they would know exactly which journalist to choose for pitching a certain issue. My answer? No, no, no: I would LOVE more targeted pitches, if all PRs and marketeers would make the effort to figure out what my beat is and what issues I’m likely to write about I would be absolutely delighted….