2. 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 democratisation of knowledge and information, transforming people
from content consumers into content producers. (Wikipedia)
4. new media foundations
• Blogs
• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook)
• Mobiles: SMS, mobile photography and video
• And making this all possible is ADSL + 3G wireless
broadband
5. 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
6. old media model
Event / Issue
Journalist
Mainstream
media Consumer
7. new media models
Event / Issue Consumer Citizen media
Journalist Mainstream Consumer
media
8. the revolution
Journalist Consumer
News as a package
Consumer /
Journalist
Witness
News as a conversation
16. bombings in london
• 7 July 2005
• Within 24 hours, the BBC had received
1,000 stills and videos, 3,000 texts and
20,000 e-mails.
17. “saffron revolution” in myanmar 2007
• 100,000 people joined a Facebook group
supporting the monks
• No international TV crews allowed in the
country
• Mobile phone cameras were the first footage of
the monks protest
• Blogs from Rangoon were the only sources of
information
• The junta shut down all Internet and mobile
communications
21. the green revolution: post-election Iran 2009
• YouTube and Flickr brought multimedia out of the
distressed country. Twitter and Facebook updates
have spread videos virally. Blogs, Wikipedia, and
citizen journalism have helped disseminate and filter
this information.
• Most of all though, these tools have helped people
take action.
31. 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.
46. curating news
• Buying fruits of vegetables • Curating news
• Check price • Check authorship
• Weigh it in one’s hands • Check for veracity, quality
• Look at it from all angles • Is it accurate, fair, topical?
• What is the bias? Is it progressive?
• Look at it in context
• Select a few from many sources
• Look at a few, not just one
• Discard if out-dated information is
• Discard if old presented
• Ascertain location where it was • Be cautious of unverified information
produced and breaking news
58. wikipedia: first narratives of the attacks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26_November_2008_Mumbai_attacks
400+ edits / updates
100+ authors
Less than 24 hours after first attack
63. gmail account: email, maps, news
• Free
• Access to Google Maps (mapping)
• Access to Google Reader (RSS / web updates)
• Access to Google News (news updates)
73. creating online content
• Think beyond text. Online is not print.
• Think beyond prose. Online can be satire, verse, haiku!
• Think of photos, audio, video. Rich media tells stories.
• Think of SMS and crowd-sourcing
• Don’t suggest you know everything. Use the community to add value to story.
• Link to other stories online
74. 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
