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Using new media for current affairs reporting. Lecture given to Sri Lanka College of Journalism.
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Current affairs reportingLeveraging new and social media
Sanjana Hattotuwa
TEDGlobal Fellow 2010Editor, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org)
what is social media?
• Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. (Wikipedia)
what is new media?
• New media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies.
• New media is not television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications. (Wikipedia)
• But increasingly, old media is leveraging the web, Internet and mobiles in generating and disseminating news and information.
new media and foundations
• Blogs
• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook)
• Google Maps
• Mobiles: SMS, mobile photography and video
• VoIP: Skype, Google Chat
• And making this all possible is ADSL + 3G wireless broadband
what’s new
• Ubiquity of two way communications
• Addressable peoples, even those who IDPs or refugees
• Both news generation and dissemination leverages new media
• Disintermediated models vs. traditional media model
• Citizens as producers
• Low resolution content broadcast on high definition media
old media model
Event / Issue
Journalist
Consumer Mainstream
media
new media models
Event / Issue
Journalist
Consumer Citizen media
Mainstream media
Consumer
the revolution
Journalist Consumer
Journalist Consumer / Witness
News as a conversation
News as a package
What is out there?
readership and reach: web media
From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of commentary. Tens of thousands more have read and commented on this content since.
online video: Vikalpa YouTube Channelwww.youtube.com/vikalpasl
alternative politics in Sinhala: Vikalpa www.vikalpa.org
kottu: blog aggregationwww.kottu.org
sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregationwww.sinhalabloggers.com
sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregationwww.sinhalabloggers.com
Facebook for work
social networking: facebook
social networking: facebook reach with $0
social networking: facebook reach with $0
Avg. FB account: 130 friends
Updates featured on 208,000+ FB accounts. Instantly.
Groundviews FB page has 1,600+ fans
Managing content: Pulling in
essential email: gmail / google account
google search: updates from social media
google news: thousands of sources
google alerts: thousands of sourceshttp://www.google.com/alerts
google reader: a web based RSS reader
podcasts from BBC: news and current affairshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts
podcasts from BBC: news and current affairshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts
podcasts from NPR: news and current affairshttp://www.npr.org
audio podcasts from Apple iTuneshttp://www.apple.com/itunes
video podcasts from Apple iTuneshttp://www.apple.com/itunes
iTunes universityhttp://www.apple.com/itunes
curated content
curated content = selecting the best produce
curating news
• Buying fruits of vegetables
• Check price
• Weigh it in one’s hands
• Look at it from all angles
• Look at it in context
• Look at a few, not just one
• Discard if old
• Be suspicious if it looks too good
• Ascertain location where it was produced
• Curating news
• Check authorship
• Check for veracity, quality
• Is it accurate, fair, topical?
• What is the bias? Is it progressive?
• Select a few from many sources
• Discard if out-dated information is presented
• Be cautious of unverified information and breaking news
• Is the producer local or foreign?
curated twitter content on sri lanka: newshttp://twitter.com/groundviews/sl-news
curated twitter content on sri lanka: blogshttp://twitter.com/groundviews/sl-bloggers
twitter desktop clientseesmic.com/seesmic_desktop/sd2
Managing content: Pushing out
wordpress.com: blogging
wordpress.com: blogging via phonehttp://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-voice
ustream.tv: broadcasting via a PC
bambuser.com: mobile phone broadcasting
ustream: mobile phone broadcastinghttp://www.ustream.tv/mobile
flickr: posting images via mobileshttp://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile
enduring challenges
• Impartial, accurate coverage still vital, increasingly hard to ascertain
• Torrent of information, trickle of knowledge
• Veracity and verifiability
• Eye-witness accounts are partial, subjective
• New media / technology illiteracy even amongst journalists
• Apathy and animosity against citizen journalism
• Licensing and attribution of online content
key points: recap
• New technologies potentially give voice to all citizens
• Be sceptical of new information, but use new media to push and pull content
• Develop media literacy to embrace new technologies
Thank you
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