Both organisations have told their journalists not to break news on Twitter first.

In a post on the BBC’s Editors blog, social media editor Chris Hamilton acknowledged the value of Twitter but concluded:

We’ve been clear that our first priority remains ensuring that important information reaches BBC colleagues, and thus all our audiences, as quickly as possible – and certainly not after it reaches Twitter.

Instead he points out that BBC journalists are able to inform the newsroom and tweet simultaneously:

We’re fortunate to have a technology that allows our journalists to transmit text simultaneously to our newsroom systems and to their own Twitter accounts.

On his Twitter stream, Chris sought to clarify the guidance to BBC News journalists:

It’s about the best way of breaking news on all our platforms – social networks, our own website, TV, radio.

— Chris Hamilton (@chrishams) February 8, 2012

Essential point is we have system that allows journalists to file and tweet at the same time.

— Chris Hamilton (@chrishams) February 8, 2012

The tensions over Twitter and breaking news result from the collision of two worlds – when a hierarchical media system in the hands of the few collides with a networked media system open to all.

The reasons for wanting to control the flow of news are understandable. Historically, news organisations have been the gate-keepers, deciding what is news, how to report it and when and how to distribute it.

In a nuanced post, BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones acknowledges that “We are all feeling our way forward through the fog of this new media landscape.” He concludes:

Some would like to turn the clock back to a simpler time, when all power resided in the newsdesk, only star reporters got a byline, and sharing information with outsiders before the presses rolled or the bulletin began was a sacking offence.

But it is almost certainly too late for that.

The guidance for journalists not to break news on Twitter is based on a flawed understanding of today’s media ecosystem. It assumes that journalists still have a monopoly on breaking the news.

Repeatedly, the first news of a natural disaster or other major news story have emerged first on Twitter.  Nicola Bruno wrote an excellent paper (PDF) for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism on the emergence of Twitter as a breaking news network.

Understandably, a journalist tweeting a breaking news event is likely to have greater impact. This is what happened when the New York Times’ Brian Stelter retweeted a message from Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the death of Bin Laden.

So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.

— Keith Urbahn (@keithurbahn) May 2, 2011

But to advise journalists not to break news on Twitter is anachronistic. It ignores the value that a journalist and their parent organisation can gain by signalling that they are across a major development.

People who’ve heard that something has happened may wonder why a journalist with BBC or Sky News hasn’t tweeted it yet.

Moreover, tweeting the news can add to their credibility as a trusted news source, especially if Twitter is awash with rumour and speculation.  A message from a journalist at the BBC or Sky News is likely to be considered as a trusted source, potentially drive audiences to the website or broadcast outlets.

This is a valuable service to their audiences, even those not on Twitter. The value of Twitter is as a distributed network,where the reach of a message can grow exponentially with every retweet.

Arguably, there is an imperative for journalists to break news on Twitter to fulfil the role as a trusted and reliable source of accurate information.

(Disclosure: I worked for the BBC for 16 years and have worked with both Chris and Rory).

This post was updated to include Chris Hamilton’s comments on the BBC technology for filing text.

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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, the worst crime someone could commit on Twitter was being boring. This was by far the most cited reason for not valuing a tweet.

Among the other bad practices identified by the researchers were repeating old news, being cryptic or using too many hashtags.

In her piece for The Atlantic, Megan Garber had a go at putting together “the Most Annoying Tweet Imaginable”:

BREAKING: Last week I had a #sandwich that was SO HORRIBLE, it made me want to #scream. Seriously, why can’t they make better #sandwiches?

— Megan Garber (@megangarber) January 31, 2012

Instead, the study suggests the best tweets are informative, entertaining and encourage a response. Quite a lot to pack into 140 characters.

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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 in a multimedia world

Create a breaking news site in minutes with WordPress

Studies find journalists use Twitter for broadcast

How journalists are using Twitter

Social networking sites challenge journalism ethics

Who owns a journalist’s Twitter account?

Social media transforming how people get the news

Thanks to all who take the time to read the blog and I wish you all the best for 2012.

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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 effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

In my post, I suggest:

Technologies reach their full potential when we forgot about the novelty. Instead they become boring and blend into the background. How often do we think about the technology behind the telephone, or the television set in our living room?

With any luck, this is what will happen with social media. Social media tools and services will be so ingrained within our everyday experiences that we forget that they are such recent developments.

Essentially, the technology will become invisible as we shape it to meet our political, social, and cultural needs.

Read the full post at the Nieman Journalism Lab.

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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.

UBC j-student Alexis Beckett wrote up the session for J-Source.ca.

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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 traffic to a news outlet’s website.

Just over 90 per cent of the tweets analysed during a week provided a link to a news story on the organisation’s own website.

Twitter was used far less as a reporting tool or as a way to filter information. Just two per cent of tweets asked for information or for eye-witness accounts. A minute one per cent of tweets were retweets from outside a news outlet.

There was a slight variation when it came to the Twitter feeds of individual journalists, rather than institutional accounts.

A study of the accounts of 13 individual journalists found that three per cent of tweets asked for information and six per cent were retweets of material not sourced from their news outlet.

Pew concludes:

“These findings reveal limited use of the institution’s public Twitter identity, one that generally takes less advantage of the interactive and reportorial nature of the Twitter.

This behavior resembles the early days of the web. Initially, news organizations, worried about losing audience, rarely linked to content outside their own web domain. Now, the idea is that being a service – of providing users with what they are looking for even if it comes from someone else – carries more weight.”

Admittedly, Pew only studied a small sample. But other research has also highlighted how news outlets have tended to use social media to try to reach a broader audience, rather than engaging in an exchange with the audience.

A study by Marcus Messner, Maureen Linke, and Asriel Eford (PDF) found that the official Twitter accounts of the top newspaper and TV outlets in the US functioned largely as an automated RSS feed of the latest news stories.

Another study found that many newsrooms automatically generated a tweet  (PDF) with a link when a story was published on the website.

The use of Twitter and other social networking tools to go beyond broadcast is still the exception in newsrooms. Yet there is potential for so much more.

In a chapter on Twitter for the new second edition of The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism, I explore how newsrooms are adopting and adapting to social media, concluding:

Twitter is affecting how news organisations respond to breaking news, how journalists go about their reporting and whose voices are heard. New journalistic genres are emerging as news outlets incorporate social media services into daily routines. A process of negotiation is taking place, as traditional ways of working bump up against social, cultural and technological practices that disrupt established journalistic norms.

The Pew study analysed one week of tweets on the main Twitter feed of 13 different news organisations, amounting to more than 3,600 tweets.

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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 will have demonstrated leadership in the field, skillfully using social tools to bring in likes, check-ins, tweets, and more to deliver an unparalleled level of community engagement.”

The Digi Awards, formerly known as the Canadian New Media Awards, are described as“Canada’s premier showcase of the remarkable digital media companies, projects, products and pioneers that are placing Canada at the forefront of the international mediascape”.

The Canadian New Media Awards were founded in 1998 as Canada’s first nationwide platform recognizing the achievements of the fast-developing digital media landscape. They were rebranded last year as the Digi Awards.

The Digi Awards are organized by Achilles Media.

(Cross-post from alfredhermida.com)

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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 news as users appropriate computer-mediated technologies for their own purposes. While the dissemination of news through social interaction has always played a role in the diffusion of media, sharing is becoming central to the way many experience the news. Research into how networked publics are reframing the news and shaping news flows suggests people are using social media to complement, rather than replace, more traditional media sources.

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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 rhythms of news storytelling on Twitter: Affective news streams, hybridity, and networked publics; by Zizi Papacharissi.
• A Networked Approach to Emergent News Media Landscapes, by Adrienne Russell.



Video streaming by Ustream

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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 been a hugely democratising force, with so much of the news played out over social media.

But she also points out that journalists have a role in identifying the news from the noise.

Lynn Sweet, @lizsweet, Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times, explains how social media has affected coverage of the White House. She checks Twitter feeds constantly, and Flickr, where the White House will often post photos.

She gives the example of how social media helped out figure out what Michelle Obama was doing. The White House now sends news out first on Twitter.

There is no substitute for entry-level, shoe leather reporting, says Sweet.

The discussion moves onto verification, a common theme in debates on social media. Heron says journalists need to use new skills by identifying signals that help to check information.

NBC is hiring a social media editor, says Long, who is going to have an overview of what is coming in and how NBC news is using social media.

At the Times, Heron says she trains journalists on how to use social media, as well as thinking strategically about the main accounts and what the news organisation should be doing on social media.

“My job will probably won’t exist in five years,” says Heron, because every journalist will be on social media. But she hopes there will still be a centralised team that will be thinking strategically about understanding and developing strategies.

Heron says you need to be a journalist to be a social media editor, not a marketing consultant. She talks about how the NYTimes is asking readers to send in questions during the GOP debates on social media so that its journalists can fact check and add context.

Heron also explains how the Times team will come up with a hashtag to pull together a conversation and crystallise the exchange on Twitter, pulling some of  the tweets into the live blogs.

The discussion moves onto whether you should break news on Twitter. Sweet says that if it is a scoop that she has developed, she will work with her editors to figure out how to break the news.

Heron notes that what happens if you see a scoop on Twitter that others have not noticed, such as the tweet about the death of Bin Laden.

Sweet says she would not retweet it, while Heron says she would, saying in the tweet “we’re hearing…”

Long also says that he would hold a scoop and instead maybe tweet that NBC has a big story coming.

Heron points out that you can add value without being first.

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