It examines how social media is changing the way scholars disseminate their research and raises questions about the way we evaluate academic authority.

UPDATE: The LSE Impact blog published a post by me outlining the ideas in my Networked Scholar presentation.

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While more users are embracing social media, they are also concerned about sharing too much information.

The 2010 Digital Influence Index Study found that more than half (53%) of the study’s respondents thought they were revealing too much online.

Canadians were the most likely to express concerns about TMI. Yet, Canadians are also the most engaged with social media, mostly through Facebook.

More than two-thirds of consumers in Canada are on Facebook, compared to around half for the other countries in the survey.

There was also another paradox when it came to microblogging services such as Twitter.

The study found that Canadians were the most knowledgeable of microblogs. They were the most likely of the Western countries to have an account, but also the most likely to have an inactive account:

• 85% have heard of microblogging
• 18% have a microblog account
• 33% have yet to microblog
• 26% microblog less than once a month on average

And Canadians showed the lowest level of trust in companies that microblog, together with Americans and the British.

There is much more in the full report, which is available as a PDF download. Gillian Shaw has a good write-up in The Vancouver Sun.

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This poses a dilemma for established news organisations that traditionally have been the ones to break news.  But as Mindy McAdams notes, “breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.”

In response, the mainstream media has sought to incorporate Twitter into its output.  The BBC has been trialing a live updates page that brings together both professional and amateur content.

The aim of this approach is to:

Provide news, analysis, description and comment in short snippets as soon as it becomes available. It is a running account, where we are making quick judgments on and selecting what look like the most relevant and informative bits of information as they come in, rather than providing the more considered version of events we are able to give in our main news stories of the day.

This marks a significant departure from established practices, particularly at an institution like the BBC that prided itself on verifying information before publishing it.

The editor of the BBC News website, Steve Herrmann, explains the corporation’s thinking in a thoughtful post on the BBC Editors blog. He acknowledges there are risks with running accounts that the BBC has not been able to check, admitting that “we’re still finding out how best to process and relay such information in a fast-moving account like this.”

But he also indicates that the established approach of verifying first and then publishing is changing.

On a major unfolding story there is a case also for simply monitoring, selecting and passing on the information we are getting as quickly as we can, on the basis that many people will want to know what we know and what we are still finding out, as soon as we can tell them.

In this digital world of breaking news, the role of the journalist is no longer just about assessing information before publication. Instead there is a role in selecting and linking to emerging information, labelling it as coming from Twitter or some other source. Herrmann explains that evaluating the nature of this information “is left to you.”

This doesn’t mean that journalists won’t still produce the traditional news story, with what Herrmann calls “the most definitive and authoritative version of events we have, as established by our own correspondents and newsgathering teams who are there.”

But he appears to be suggesting that the BBC, one of the world’s most trusted news organisation, is prepared to publish unfiltered and unverified information on its site, leaving it to the audience to decide on its authenticity.

This marks a significant shift from established journalistic practices, as it expects the audience to take an active role in the filtering of news.

It has provoked a lively discussion on the blog post, with comments such as “on its news website, the BBC must not be allowed to use unverifiable information at all” and “it’s unacceptable to use it in the manner you have in major news stories.”

The comment reflect the tension as journalistic practices adapt to a new digital environment and as the mainstream media seeks to find ways of providing a valuable service for audiences.

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Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has called for a digital kitemark for news sites, because there is a “crying need to be able to distinguish between what is rubbish and what is quality, between what is fantasy and what reliable”.

Sir Christopher talked about having “a small PCC logo will be visible in a corner of the screen on every electronic page of every British newspaper and magazine”.

This is misguided on several levels. For starters, it smacks of regulation of the media by an agency of the state. Then there is the issue of who decides and how on which sites merit this kitemark. If both the tabloid The Sun and the BBC News site have the log, does that mean both are as reliable and trustworthy? Obviously not.

Trust and reliable is an issue online, but not in the way that Sir Christopher envisages it. People tend to place an implicit trust in an established news brand, even though studies show that half of all news stories contain at least one error.

Online, trust is based not so much on the credential, as on the contribution. Without the backing of an established news brand, a new site relies on the strength of its content. If this content proves to be useful or of value, then its readership will grow.

And if the internet has shown us anything, it is that there is room for a spectrum of journalism, from quality reporting to gossip and salacious comment. Surely a reader can tell the difference? The idea of a kitemark also implies that readers can’t distinguish between a news story that is the product of research and reporting, and a rant on a blog.

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The response in the press has been outrage, with headlines such as “They’re bear faced cheats” in The Sun, or The Daily Mail talking about “The shaming of the BBC“.

There is no doubt that this is a serious issue and BBC producers were wrong to have deceived audiences. But looking at the media gives the impression that this is a systemic problem at the corporation.

According to Jeremy Hunt, the Tory culture spokesman:

Mark Thompson has uncovered a hornets’ nest of deception at what was Britain’s most trusted broadcaster.

A hornets’ nest of deception? This makes for a catchy soundbite but how far does it reflect the reality of life at the BBC.

We should step back and take a more considered look at what happened. The BBC identified deceptions at six competitions out of the many thousands across its TV, radio and online output. Perhaps other cases will be discovered in the coming weeks.

But to suggest that the organisation as a whole is rotten is just ridiculous. What is interesting is why there has been such outrage at the fiasco at the BBC.

Simply put, the BBC is considered to be the paragon of everything that is good about Britain. It is assumed to be infallible, much like the Pope. There is no scope for failure, for making mistakes.

The chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, summed up this attitude when he said on BBC Radio Four that the corporation was held to higher standards than other media outlets.

I am not arguing that the BBC should relax its standards. It should lead the way in setting the bar for quality and trust.

Instead of bashing the BBC, we should try to find out what happened. The Times TV critic Andrew Billen offered a measured assessment. In his views, the problems:

suggest that a maverick culture, already rampant in the independent sector, has spread to many corners of the BBC. Young people, barely trained and under-supervised, have made a mockery of the standards that are supposed to be uniquely held by the nation’s prime public service broadcaster.

Ironically, the communications watchdog has lambasted broadcasters for “systemic failures” for their management of premium-rate telephone competitions. It is clear that there is a major problem with the way these competitions are handled across the media, not just at the BBC.

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