People love Social Media, so do Politicians!

In the 2008 election a lot of people said social media really won it for Obama. It helped give him the edge over McCain who wasn’t in touch with the younger generation. This year was definitely going to be interesting but instead of a focus on how social media could aid the campaign, it became much more about how social media would cover the election itself.

Showing Obama still has the upper hand in social media

Twitter had only been around for a couple of years back in 2008 and it was the first time the power of social media in communicating to the masses was really exercised for an event to this scale. By sending out a single tweet Obama would be communicating with his 23 million followers. That is more than a single TV ad would do and twitter was free!

Adrianna Huffington said back in 2008 that; “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,”

Big Bird was a trending topic after Romney’s remark in the debate

Although we followed twitter throughout, and were bombarded with many celebrity endorsements for Obama, what was interesting this year was the reporting through social media. From Big Bird to Obama announcing he’d won on twitter at 11:14pm it was social media we turned to to hear the news. What each candidate had said and who was winning on election night. Television broadcast stations relied on social media to aid their coverage. They have had to accept that simply showing video of what is going on in the debate isn’t enough. They need more to be able to pull in decent ratings because the audience no longer relies on the broadcast version. The audience can simply turn the tv off and turn twitter and Facebook on, and be kept up to date with what’s going on, what’s being said and who is winning. It’s tough for broadcast as they can’t compete directly with social media as it is a different medium.

Example of social media incorporated into broadcast

What they can do, and have done this year is incorporate social media into their broadcast. Many stations had on their debate coverage a twitter feed down the side of the screen. The idea being that you then don’t have the need to check social media as they are doing that for you. You only have to look at one screen. And without the social media running commentary, the debates would have been far less interesting. Opinion is what draws us into the social media sites and the reactions from people all across the world. It is something a simple broadcast can’t cover.

Barack Obama shares the news on Twitter

So election night. We want to watch it on TV. We want to have the cinematic experience! But how many people actually found out the results through the TV? Or if they did, was social media what they used to check it was true? With so many stations broadcasting the election there was a delayed reaction to announcing Obama as the re-elected president. A domino effect then swept through the stations as they each learned the news. But in that split second it was Facebook and twitter that became the fact checker. A broadcast station has hundreds of people working for them. Twitter and Facebook has millions. Therefore social media would know. And right enough that was what people believed. The TV is saying yes but oh wait, okay yes twitter says it is true so it must be. And that is the power of social media. Something that broadcast stations’ try to keep up with but due to sheer volume and scale, it’s physically impossible.

In four years’ time, when the next election comes around, it will be interesting to see what the new hype is. By that time we may have exhausted social media for the campaigning and reporting. There may be a new medium we are all fascinated with. Something which the next candidates will be able to use to their advantage. It’s possible, because 8 years ago, the thought of the internet or social media being able to aid a presidential campaign would have been laughable.

A Google View

Richard Gingras

Journalism is changing. We hear about it, we read about it and we well know it. There’s no shying away from the subject. Technology is changing rapidly due to the fact it is in one of the most competitive markets. Mixing these two components together has not been easy as Richard Gingras explained to the San Francisco state university journalism department.

The talk to the journalism school is coming from a man who is head of an aggregation. A process a lot of journalists are really opposed to. He is head of the news and social products at Google. Google news works by collecting all the articles from news sources on the web so that if you type a subject in to Google news it will instantly show you the articles relating to this topic. I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of aggregation at Google but it is something of a worry for only news sites.

Gingras was there to talk about the growth in technology to do with the changing media landscape. He is yet another avid supporter of the journalism digital age, someone who sees new opportunities from the internet and technology rather than a dying profession.

Young journalists have to be the leaders when it comes to trying new ways of making technology and the internet work for journalism. “Don’t be afraid of being wrong; don’t be afraid of not being perfect. It doesn’t matter you just want to get out and express and learn from that.” Said Gingras encouraging us to try new things. This is all new and the only way we are going to progress in this industry is if we leap out into the unknown. He referred to how LinkedIn creator once said “if you’re not embarrassed by the site when you launch it on day one then you’ve waited too long to launch it.”

As exciting as this all sounds, what if we just want to be journalists and write good stories as one of the audience members pointed out. And it’s a valid point. We are constantly being told how now as a journalist going out to find our first job it’s not just how we write but it’s how well we shoot, film, speak and know about social media. Someone who is an amazing writer but doesn’t know a thing about twitter or Facebook could be at a disadvantage. Gingras said however that news started becoming less competitive in the 1960s and it turned to trying to pull in the reader rather than letting the reader come to them. It’s about what we can do to make the reader happy.

The boundaries between the business side (state) and the editorial side (church) is becoming a struggle

“You do yourself a disservice as a journalist if you do not understand the business dynamics of the businesses you work for. You just have to.” another one of Gingras’ points. We clearly have to keep the boundaries between business and editorial but we have to understand what allows our business to run. In journalism readers and advertisers are our two sources of income. The way to keep them happy is to write good stories or produce new innovative online features. It is important to constantly strive for greater in the journalistic side so we can keep the business side in check.

Gingras didn’t have an answer to the problems journalists are currently facing. He believed that using technology and the internet to the best advantage possible was important. But he also issued a stark warning when it came to the internet. It’s not always our friend and it doesn’t hold great value to journalism in monetary terms but it is where people now turn to. So we have to go with that. And the people who once were our audience are now taking over journalism in a lot of ways. As Gingras said; “The old news model is in trouble because everyone now has a printing press.”

Social Media: Friend or Foe?

Social media our foe?

Social Media is not something new. It may be new in the Journalism side of things but in general everyday life it’s not new. Social media has been present in our lives for at least a decade now yet the change in direction it has established and this new power it holds has made it all seem like something that was invented yesterday.For the younger generation social media has always been a way of connecting with friends, posting pictures and finding out what people in their social group are up to – it’s all for fun. For the older generation social media is something they may try dab into to connect with their family but is generally something they associate with the younger generation – their kids or grandkids.

Now however both generations have to use social media in their journalism career, and many other careers for that matter, to survive in the industry. It is not something that is helpful to know about but instead almost a necessity.

An example of sharing Journalistic News article on Facebook

The older generation of journalists have, for a long time, seen social media as a threat and as a type of community journalism. People can tell the news, create their own stories and opinions through these sights which often contests major news organisations. It is a new way for people to find out the news. However instead of battling against it the news industry is discovering that it in fact has to adapt to this new system and a find a way to make it work to their advantage.

A lot of this knowledge comes from the younger generation, which is handy for us when looking for jobs, as we have found while using the sites for fun, there has been an increasing influx of news integrated into our news feed. Whether a freak change in the weather or a car crash blocking a road, we often find out first on social media as people experience it first-hand.

So on one side we have social media the ‘audience’ trying to intercept the news and being a part of the industry putting real journalist’s jobs at risk. And on the other hand we have social media as a platform where people can talk about news and are interested in more than just socialising with each other.

Major News Organisations are still trying to figure out how best to use Social Media

Friend or foe? It has to be friend. To start with social media is too big and too powerful to be made a foe. The people who are on these sites are our audience in newspapers, broadcast and online so we have to embrace the sites to ensure we can keep these customers. Twitter and Facebook accounts are a great way of sharing information about the station/paper to encourage people to go to them and watch/read more about it. Links to the website are also great!

By allowing people to share articles and sites on to social media it can create great discussion and interest from people who otherwise would ignore it. Social media will be used even more so in the coming years to help with revenue especially when more and more online sites start using pay walls. Social media could be a great platform to promote the organisations and encourage people to pay subscriptions because the content will be worth it.