More on Twitter and the News

Last week I blogged about the Balloon Boy fiasco and what it teaches us about Twitter and the news. Yesterday I stumbled upon this blog from Twittercism called “Like it or Not, Twitter is the Pulse of the Media.”

While the context of the blog is a British news story with which you maynot be familiar, I encourage you to go read the full post. But in short, the blogger says that “Twitter shares a circular relationship with the media,” and follows it up with this dead-on diagram.

The author points out that in some cases Twitter breaks the story, in other cases Twitter reports the story, “and when mass media can or will not report on a certain story, Twitter itself becomes the story, too.”

This is a pretty good assessment of the overall relationship between social media and mainstream media. While much of the mainstream news media has become rather stale, and our level of faith in the media is waning, the rise of social media brings about some unique checks and balances.

And perhaps, to borrow a line from a favorite song of mine, social media helps fill a void we have as we try to navigate the daily news…

I bought a crap detector
Emptied all my savings
It’s got a hair-trigger feel for the slightest provocation
Not there to spill blood or judge out of line
It’s just a modern convenience to save you some time

(from “Earth has No Sorrow, Heaven Can’t Heal” by Vigilantes of Love)

And I just found this interesting post from Jim Brady on “How Social Networks Can Help Save Media.” He makes some more very valid points.

Enjoy. And over the course of the day, think about how Twitter is a part of your news gathering/reporting/breaking world.

Tagged as: news, Social Media, Twitter

kmueller62

Jeff - in many cases we ARE the reporters. If there is an accident on the highway, I might be on the scene, so to speak, and let people know. And you're right. We are now a very fuzzy combination of reporter/editor/op-ed columnist.

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Jeff McCloud

Ken -- I would argue that we're not reporters because we're not on the scene. But we are all op-ed columnists offering our commentary and opinions on the issues and events of the day. I concur with your argument about the media being creators of stories because of their role as a gatekeeper.

I agree, as well, Jeff. Though another way to look at it, via the power of gatekeeping, is that the media in some ways does create a story by either choosing to report or not on something. Kinda like the tree falling over in the forest. If something happens, and the media chooses not to report on it, in effect, it hasn't become "news." Which of course is a shame. Conversely, the media often chooses to report on a lot of things that many of us would consider non-stories. The news media is, afterall, dependent upon ratings/readership to survive, and unfortunately that factor often dictates the shape of what is covered, and how it is covered. Money talks.

Therein lies the beauty of Twitter. We are all now reporters in that we can be the one to tell others when something happens, and it makes it harder for the media to ignore. You could certainly debate the pros and cons of that, as well. But social media is quite the equalizer.

In general, I agree. I do take issue with the "The media creates a story" label. The media wasn't out there with Balloon Boy and his family telling them what to do and conspiring to do anything. But when it all happened, of course, the media was all over the story. The media might create a bigger story out of something -- and for that it needs to take close critique and criticism of how it does its job -- but it is not the genesis of events.

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