An analysis of 43,738 tweets from 1,443 users offers some valuable insights into emerging communication norms on Twitter. The study (PDF) by researchers Paul André of Carnegie Mellon, Michael Bernstein of MIT, and Kurt Luther of Georgia Tech aimed to uncover what makes for a good message on Twitter. The team found that the most valued tweets were informative, funny and encouraged conversation. Perhaps surprising, they also found that self-promotional messages also elicited a positive response. By comparison,
PDF The most popular posts for 2011 are dominated by Twitter and social media, as this has increasingly become a focus on my academic research. But the top five are older posts from 2007, 2008 and 2009 that continue to resonate with readers. Principles of journalism as a word cloud What a word cloud says about this blog How to find out anything about anyone online The new roles for journalists
The Nieman Journalism Lab asked me to contribute to its series looking ahead to what 2012 will bring for journalism. For my contribution, I suggested that the excitement and hype over social media may start dying down in the coming year, and this is something to be welcomed. My argument draws from Roy Amara’s First Law of Technology: With every change in technology that affects consumer behaviour, We tend to overestimate the
Watch the video of our lively discussion of the impact of social media on journalism, featuring Liz Heron, Social Media Editor at The New York Times,Karen Pinchin, founding editor of OpenFile Vancouver, and Steve Pratt, Director of CBC Radio 3 and CBC Radio Digital Programming and myself. The event was held on November 7, 2011, at UBC Robson in Vancouver, sponsored by UBC Continuing Studies and the UBC Graduate School of Journalism.
The news that mainstream media organisations use Twitter as a broadcast channel is hardly surprising. The study of Twitter feeds from 13 major news outlets in the US by the Pew Research Center’s Project in Excellence in Journalism is in line with earlier academic studies. The Pew study, in collaboration with the George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, found that Twitter was mainly used to distribute news and boost
I’m honoured to have nominated as Canada’s top social media maven in the 2011 Digi Awards. Also up for the award are Erica Ehm, who set up the online magazine YummyMummyClub.ca, and YouTube personality Nadine Sykora. The winners will be announced on December 6th at the finale of nextMEDIA Toront,. The social media maven award recognizes “medialites that demonstrate innovation in creating and connecting online communities.” It goes on to explain that “the top Canadian social media mavens
Here are the slides and audio from my presentation at the Journalism Interactive conference at the University of Maryland. The title of the talk was Share, Like, Recommend: Decoding the Social Media News Consumer. Abstract: Social media is becoming ever more ingrained in the experience of news consumers. Social networking sites are evolving from being more than spaces for personal exchanges, becoming one of the mediums for sharing and recommending the
Here is the video from the emerging research panel I took part in at the Journalism Interactive conference at the University of Maryland. The three presentations were by Zizi Papacharissi of University of Illinois at Chicago, Adrienne Russell of the University of Denver and myself. The session was moderated by Kalyani Chadha of the University of Maryland. The research presented: Share, Like, Recommend: Decoding the Social Media News Consumer; by Alfred Hermida.
The Journalism Interactive conference at the University of Maryland kicks off with a panel on social media, with an introduction by Mashable editor-in-chief Adam Ostrow, @adamostrow. Jim Long, @newmediajiim, from NBC News, starts by pointing out how social media has shifted power from a few people at the top to everybody. Liz Heron, @lheron, social media editor for The New York Times, picks up on the theme. In her view, social media has
The wealth of multimedia or social media storytelling tools available can be bewildering for journalists. Often seasoned pros asked me, what is the one thing I should learn and add to my reporting toolkit? To my mind, that’s the right attitude but the wrong question. Journalists need to be open to new ways of telling stories and engaging with audiences. But it is not about adding a new tool to