My semester-long study of social networking and the media is coming to an end, and I’ve learned a lot about both what’s already happening and what the future holds.
As I mentioned in my last post, my conversation with Mark Briggs, social networking is blowing up in terms of media use. More and more, news companies are turning to social networking for several reasons. Some are using sites like Twitter and Facebook as an outlet for their news. One quick Twitter post with a link can get more mouse clicks for a story. And companies must realize how viral Twitter is. With “re-Tweeting” and posting @ replies, a link can make it’s way to thousands of Twitter home pages — many more than if the only way to reach that link was through the news organization’s Twitter page.
News outlets are always using Twitter as a means to communicate with readers or viewers and users and even start conversations of their own. That aspect of social networking — not just throwing information at people, but engaging them — is a very important tool for journalists. Another way Twitter is being used is as a news tip-off service. Journalists can find bits of information on the site that can be parlayed into stories.
Dr. Bill Silcock, a Cronkite School professor who teaches media ethics and broadcast news courses, said Twitter is “extremely powerful,” but has many implications. The microblogging site, he said, should be treated like a scanner in a newsroom. “Lots of stuff on police scanners tips you off to news stories,” he said, but journalists must further investigate what they heard, or in the case of Twitter, what they read. One of the site’s most powerful features, he said, is its ability to link to Web sites, which offers content users may have never discovered before.
“People that I follow are people that are smarter than me and reading in different places,” Silcock said. Essentially, creating a list of followers who he respects allowed him to build a “research team” — a group of people who can give him information worth checking out. Silcock said he has been on Twitter for about six months and Facebook for about two years. Facebook is more about fun, he said, and Twitter is a better tool for journalists. As one of his colleagues of students said (Silcock couldn’t remember exactly who) Facebook is for the friends you have now, and Twitter is for the friends you hope to have.
Twitter is also more professionally oriented than Facebook. Facebook is a place to share photos, talk about weekend plans and talk to your friends. It started as a social networking site for college students, and I doubt it will ever really lose that association. Facebook is the social network of choice for countless college students, and with such a strong market, it doesn’t make much sense for Facebook to waste energy and resources trying to convert a whole new segment of the population.
Twitter, though, is where the older crowd is going. Users in the 45-54 age bracket make up 36 percent of Twitter. (18-24 year-old users only make up 10 percent of the site’s users.) Mark Briggs, a Web 2.0 blogger and author, said those statistics make sense to him. “[Twitter] is being used in a much more professional capacity than MySpace or Facebook ever was,” he said. Twitter is used largely for professional reasons, and more people with established careers are users, he said.
Briggs speaks in classrooms about new media and said up until a few months ago, few hands would shoot up when he asked the class who used Twitter. “More of them, I think, couldn’t figure out the difference between a status update on Facebook and using Twitter,” he said. But older people recognize that Twitter more about the power of networking and collaborating. The site has an entirely different mindset — one that the media can successfullyutilize to its advantage. Since Twitter users are looking for more than just casual socialization that other social networking sites offer, it makes sense to think of the microblogging site as a handy tool.
Using social networking (whether to interact with the community, find sources or get information) is becoming more prevalent and accepted within the journalism world because the practice is such a part of people’s daily lives, Briggs said.
“Most technology takes a while to become taken for granted, and once it is, you start doing things with it without thinking about it,” he said. Accepting new technology as a credible tool has always been a slow process, he said, citing the initial aversion to using e-mail and even telephone quotes, if you look back far enough. New media tools “happen to be new forms of that,” Briggs said.
Briggs said the use of new technology is just beginning in journalism and for news Web sites. “Web 2.0 traits that have been brought onto mainstream news sites are going to evolve and get a lot better,” he said.
I completely agree with Briggs. Traditional journalists (print journalists, in particular) are often slow to adopt new technology. But as these technologies become a huge part of all our lives, no one — even journalists — will be able to convince themselves that not using those resources is a sound choice.
One place in which Web journalists still seem to be looking for a solution is with online commenting. Commenting sections often turn into forums filled with slander and immaturity instead of the intelligent banter sites hoped for when they turned commenting on. “Most news sites simply turned them on and expected them to be self policed and high quality … and they were pretty much the exact opposite of that,” Briggs said.
Much of that less-than-savory content will filter itself out as people become more enamored with social networking. Because people want to create a positive identity for themselves on the Web, Briggs said, it makes sense that they will want to be a part of insightful conversation. As social networking evolves, he said, screen names will go away and more people will use their real names to build an identity on the Web — a factor in improving discourse on the Web.
But in the mean time, technology definitely can help. “The more sophisticated your system, the more you can build into it.” One system that seems to be improving online discourse is that in which commenters can build a reputation by the things they post.
“People really have to earn their way up to a position of helping and becoming a full collaborator on a Web site,” he said. This model gives users a reason to respond thoughtfully and intelligently to articles or posts, and also gives the site’s community a way to self-moderate.
One site that uses this is Newsvine, which was founded in 2006 and purchased by MSNBC in 2007. The site’s community is part of what led to the purchase, Briggs said. The site has a Code of Honor, and allows users to rate stories and other comments.
Filed under: Uncategorized, convergence, Facebook, future of journalism, journalism, journalists, microblogging, social networking, Twitter
