Magazine

Learning lessons from social media’s new-found prominence

Away from the tumultuous streets of Deraa, Homs and Damascus, Syrian opposition forces are coordinating demonstrators and streaming information to the outside world using an arsenal of social networking tools.

As the recent upheavals in the Arab world demonstrate, social media increasingly are becoming a platform for mobilising support and shaping opinion at speeds so fast that even audacious security services are having trouble keeping pace.

So it is no surprise that policymakers elsewhere are moving to harness social media. In late April, the United Nations announced that it would expand its use of social media to improve communications and outreach, and the U.S. State Department launched “Exchange 2.0”, a project to supplement traditional exchange programmes through virtual outreach.

US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale at the Exchange 2.0 Summit at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., 27 April 2011: “Social media allow us to keep up with the speed at which our world happens. We have to be able to respond to rapidly changing environments”
(Full text)

For journalists, such developments offer a couple of lessons. First, social media give messengers, be they insurgents of diplomats, a medium for direct access to target audiences. Second, as the Arab uprisings show, social media are providing information sources that might otherwise be hard to come by.

Kristian Strøbech, an associate professor at the Danish School of Journalism, says the growing prominence of social media should be a wake-up call to news professionals—a time to “get a grip on these smart new tools” and put them to work.

“It’s fairly obvious when state departments and all kinds of organisations and authorities … are starting to use these tools, there must be something to it other than just chatter,” Strøbech says.

News organisations have struggled over how to use Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging and a host of other networking services since they began to emerge less than a decade ago. Some media have sought to train bloggers and linked-in citizens to file short reports, with mixed success. In any case, leaner newsrooms are coming to depend on social media for tips and breaking-news reports, though at the risk of inaccuracies or deliberate misinformation. (Editors have relied heavily on such reports for coverage of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in media-restrictive countries like Iran.)

Coming to the rescue?

Strøbech says his university will put social media to a test at an upcoming sporting event. During the European Under-21 Championship finals in Denmark, journalism students covering the soccer matches will be recruiting stringers to provide information through Twitter and instant messaging, to supplement what beat reporters are covering.

“There is a tendency among journalists to get confused whether we should then substitute our professional work with what’s going on in social media. That’s rubbish. What we’re trying to do here is to put it to work and to train stringers in using Twitter, taking a picture or sending off small messages. … It’s infinitely more easy than trying teach them how to write a proper article,” Strøbech said in a telephone interview.

He says social media are not a replacement for old-school journalism. “It’s a widening and broadening of the power of the media organisation that I’m talking about. It’s not substituting the central publishing tradition or central publishing channels, but I’m talking about supplementing in a smart manner.”

Teaching journalism students (and working journalists) how to use social media as sources can “save traditional journalism by making it smarter,” Strøbech says.

While social networking has been around for years, the media have proliferated with advances in mobile telephony and the rapid expansion to markets in developing countries. Corporations were quick to capitalise on social network sites to target audiences, gather product feedback and supplement mainstream advertising.

Politicians weren’t far behind. Barack Obama’s success in 2008 is owed in part to his charismatic campaign that used text messages, Facebook and Twitter to rally young people—a strategy being employed today by Arab dissidents. The Democratic presidential hopeful offered hope and hipness, while rival Republicans appeared out of touch and dowdy.

Obama’s strategy paid big dividends. In the 2008 presidential race, 66 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds voted for Obama compared to 53 percent of overall voters. It was the largest disparity in voting between younger and older generations since 1972, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

From ‘samizdat’ to social media

The Arab uprisings and demonstrations after the disputed Iranian elections in 2009 show the value of social media as communications tools that can give near-instant legitimacy to opposition movements and rights campaigners, especially by targeting young people who often are the most wired, and the most disenfranchised.

Egyptians appreciate Social Media, by Rowan El Shimi via Flickr.com (some rights reserved)

Autocrats have not been entirely aloof. Syrian authorities have used social media to counter pro-opposition Tweets and Facebook feeds. Egyptian officials disrupted Internet and telecommunications services during anti-government rallies earlier this year to block demonstrations organised through Facebook, Twitter and text messages.

More brutal methods have been used as well. The press freedom group Article 19 has called on authorities in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria to release journalists, bloggers and cyber dissidents arrested in connection with unrest in those countries. UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day 2011 theme, “21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers,” recognises the risks faced by bloggers and social network activists.

Meanwhile, the UN announced on 27 April that it would expand the use of social media to articulate its messages, expanding its presence on video- and photo-sharing sites as well as social networks.

Kiyo Akasaka, undersecretary-general for public information, says the UN was motivated by the Arab uprisings. “We are using these tools to inform and update journalists about key events at the UN, and to build better informed and more inclusive online communities and coalitions for change,” Akasaka said in a statement.

The U.S. State Department also wants to capitalise on social media with the launch of Exchange 2.0. It ostensibly will build on successful scholarship and exchange programmes by using social networking to promote ties between Americans and foreigners, but the larger purpose is to control America’s global image.

“We cannot remain wedged in a model of engagement that requires youth to come to us,” Judith A. McHale, the under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, said in a speech in Washington, also on 27 April. “If we do not enter the marketplace of ideas and join forums where youth are already active, we risk marginalising ourselves permanently.”

None of this is new for journalists. Long before the Facebook “wall” or tweeting, politicians and interest groups sought to bypass journalists through broadcasts, advertising and the soap box. But social media also provide the venue for divergent viewpoints, and thus important for journalists willing to sift through the inevitable gibberish, hearsay and self-promotion.

Strøbech recalls his own experience covering the turbulent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and “how hard it was to find good sources.” Today, the former journalist for Denmark’s TV2 public broadcaster says, “I’m following with pleasure all the Tweets what’s going on now in the Middle East, and Syria and Libya, and I find it an absolute treasure trove of information that is just out there, and it was just so much harder back when we did not have those tools.”

 

 

 

Tags: article 19, danish school of journalism, facebook, journalist, judith mchale, libya, middle east, north africa, pew research center, press freedom, social media, social network, social networking, syria, twitter, united nations, us institute of peace, us state department, yugoslavia,

Related articles

• 18DaysInEgypt: a pioneering storytelling platform to document Egypt’s revolution
• UNHRC report on Syria: “A military intervention is not an option”
• Geofeedia
• Muck Rack
• Novaya Gazeta: a new dawn for investigative journalism?
• Press freedom debate with Novaya Gazeta’s Editor-in-Chief Dmitry Muratov
• How to survive as a journalist in Somalia
• Building Bridges: U.S.-Pakistan Professional Partnership in Journalism
• Lessons learnt at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia
• Will the scramble for photojournalists to learn video be worth it?

• Home |
• Seminars  |
• Events |
• Media Landscape |
• Newsroom|
• Media News|
• Resources

Terms of service and Privacy policy.

Copyright © 1992- 2011 European Journalism Centre. All rights reserved.

Valid XHTML and CSS.

European Journalism Centre

Sonneville-lunet 10
6221KT Maastricht
The Netherlands

Tel. : +31 43 325 40 30
Fax : +32 2 400 42 20

E-mail: info[at]ejc.net