Social Media in the Newsroom

According to the latest annual Digital Journalism study published by Oriella PR network, social media are infiltrating the newsroom. The report showed significant increases in the use of social media by journalists to both source and verify news. Also evident is an increase in the use of social media for distributing news, with a rising number of journalists using Twitter, blogs, and online video for this purpose. Perhaps this is a matter of technology dictating change, but then perhaps it is that newsmakers are merely following the consumer. Google News, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are currently the most visited sites for news on the Internet.

The ability of these sites to share information with others instantaneously has made them a contender when it comes to spreading the news. The mobility of social media through the use of mobile technology has made it a force for breaking the news. When Osama bin Laden was assassinated by American troops, the news first broke via Twitter, twenty-one minutes ahead of the television networks. It is estimated that this news was spreading at a rate of 5,000 tweets per second. The killing of protesters by government forces in Libya and Bahrain last year was documented by eyewitnesses and posted to YouTube. The uprisings in Egypt that lead to the downfall of the dictator Mubarak were first organised via Facebook. These are three of the reasons newsmakers are increasingly collaborating with social media. They each demonstrate the abilities of social media to break news as it happens and spread news at a rapid rate.

Some would argue that this ‘participatory journalism’ annihilates the need for the journalist altogether. However, the role of the journalist is still imperative in producing accurate news. While any individual can now document a news event from their smartphone it is still the role of the journalist to contextualise this event. Journalists today have to engage with content, they have to investigate what people are sharing, where and why and allow for greater collaboration with audiences. Social media has brought the audience into the newsroom. Journalists are no longer just sitting in an office discussing what events they visited, what should be investigated and how it should be reported. Journalism no longer ends when a story is published. Social media in the newsroom means public interaction. Stories are commented on, criticised, discussed, and dissected. While there were always platforms for the public to react, criticise, debate and discuss the media’s ideas, these were mediated and measured avenues. Forums such as talkback radio and letters to the editor are all subjected to editing. Today if a journalist makes a mistake, they can expect to be called to task both immediately and publicly.

An example of this new level of accountability occurred during the 2010 election campaign. A blogger under the title ‘Grog’s Gamut’ posted that journalists following Gillard and Abbott on the election campaign were doing nothing more than “…having a round-the-country twitter and booze tour”. The blog named individual journalists, rated their performance, and suggested that editors remove the majority of reporters from the trail. The blog went viral and journalists were assailed with messages from the public, giving a range of views from empathy to condemnation. The methods of the media in covering election campaigns had been brought in to question, and the likes of Mark Scott, CEO of the ABC, began to rethink these methods. All this from one blog post.

While journalists are now more scrutinised in their work, they are also open to criticism for personal comments. In May 2010 columnist for The Age, Catherine Deveney attended the Logies awards night and tweeted. Deveney claimed her comments were satire revealing “celebrity raunch culture and the sexual objectification of women, which is rife on the red carpet”. The public thought otherwise. The following day the online site for The Age was flooded with criticism of Deveney, and the paper cited these posts as the reason for her termination. It seems that use of social media for today’s journalists is both essential and potentially dangerous. It can also be unavoidable. Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt was offended when he discovered a Twitter account had been operating under his name for over a year. He responded angrily in his blog, accusing the Twitter account holder of identity theft. Within 24 hours the fake Andrew Bolt account had gained 800 followers, a further 33 fake accounts had appeared, and the owner of the original fake account had an article published on independent news site Crikey. What the real Andrew Bolt failed to notice was that this fake account made constant references to his blog and was actually directing traffic towards his work. Even without his input, Andrew Bolt was a part of Twitter and Twitter a part of Bolt’s work.

This interaction between those formerly known as the audience and the newsmakers is not always so scathing. When the expense files of English MPs were released online in June 2009, The Guardian newspaper decided to utilise its online audience by putting them to work. They asked the public to help sift through the 458,832 documents to assist in finding any suspicious or interesting content. At the time of writing over 33,000 people had aided The Guardian in examining 225,867 documents. This revolutionary and innovative method is an example of how social media can be harnessed to assist in the newsroom and lighten the workload of journalists.

As social media is still relatively new to journalism, its methods, uses and consequences are not yet fully understood, and the boundaries are not yet set. Many media organisations have now introduced social media policies including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters and New York Times. There is still much debate over which policies are effective, and which are appropriate. The BBC has issued a policy insisting that every post to Facebook or Twitter related to news reports be reviewed before publishing which some argue over-steps the mark. Stephen Ward, Professor of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests social media policies be general ethical principles rather than restrictions. The use of social media within the newsroom continues to grow with new sites such as Pinterest being incorporated into online news sites.

New tools specifically to aid journalists in their use of social media are now being devised, such as the SRSR (Seriously Rapid Source Review) which assists in locating sources on Twitter. Educational programs for journalists to better understand and work with social media are now the focus of the World Journalism Education Congress. Many news organisations around the world are taking steps to educate, inform and instruct their journalists and editors about social media. Such is its transformative impact.

Social media has disrupted the traditional role and methods of the newsroom, but it has also enhanced them. Social media has become a source for breaking news, for both the journalist and the reader. It has made reporting methods more transparent as with the 2010 election campaign. It has opened the doors to public involvement as with The Guardian examining MP’s expenses. Social media has effectively become a source, a method of verification, a place for publishing, and a forum for feedback. It has not only changed the newsroom, it has become one, by fulfilling all the roles of a newsroom.