33 at Media140

We had the privilege of attending Media140, billed as London’s first microblogging conference and an “independent platform for discussion, debate, workshops and press coverage of European events”. Here’s how it went, live reportage and observations by yours truly, Ben Matthews.

The inaugural event focused on ‘the future of realtime news’, bringing together journalists, bloggers, social media advocates and publishers to share and discuss the effects and impact of twitter and other social media tools on mainstream media.

I live tweeted as much of the conference as I could, which was turned into a rolling blog post by the 33 Digital team and updated throughout the afternoon so people could follow along.

I also took further notes while at the event itself, which I’ve posted below,  buteveral people and organisations have covered the event in-depth, so take a look at Joanna, Adam, Steve, Kate, Laura, Chris and Kevin’s blogs and views on the event.

All in all, it was a fantastic event. Catching up with people at the networking drinks after the event, most said that it was a genuinely insightful and fascinating view of the role that social meda and microblogging in particular play in modern day journalism.

Congratulations to Ande and the rest of the team on a great first Media140!

Introduction - Pat Kane (@theplayethic)

• Social media/Twitter lets you play at being a journalist
• Uses social media to mediate world events - Twitter / Audioboo
• In this new media environment, the practise of journalism becomes everyday
• Reading news on a street corner had become banal. Now producing media on that same street corner has become banal
• “Comforters of the afflicted, afflicers of the comfortable” - classic journalist, but now applies to new media users

Obvious uses of twitter for traditional journalism:

1. Beat reporting (use content search, geolocated)
2. Early warning (communities deciding what’s news)
3. Realtime content (Photos/Audios/Video, 1-line description)
4. Traceable sources / interviewees / leads (@punter)
5. “Can you help?” (#question at am, #answers at pm)
6. Promo tool for titiles/individual journalists/pieces
7. Expertise archive (folksonomy of knowledge, on the move)

Some other observations:

• Fear that journalism will be degraded by journalism is being disproved by use of Twitter itself, e.g. pointing towards academia and article
• Twitter becomes your personal research circle for journalists

Tough questions about Twitter/Social Media and the news

• Who verifiies the flows of information? The news organisation - or the ‘truth community’? What’s the value in claiming authority - who sorts out the cause? Who ahs the authority to frame these flaws in social media?
• Can we break out of ‘140′ as a design/content limitation for real-time media? Meso-blogging as well as micro-blogging?
• How “collaborative” and distributed are jorunalists prepared to be about their work in process? (See WSJ’s limitations on social network updating)

Twitter and the general crisis of the news business

• In Rock n’ Roll 2.0, they say ‘use what is ubiquitous to drive people to what is scarce’
• Twitter/social media makes news ubiquitous. But what is scare in journalism and can be valued/monetised? Not paywalls… but authority
• Twitter is part of the ubiquitisation of news

Panel 1 - The 140 Character Story

“How much will Twitter and microblogging change the way breaking news is sourced globally by news organisations?”

Hosted by:

• Tom Whitwell, The Times Online

Panel:

• Mike Butcher, Techcrunch Europe
• Darren waters, Technology Editor, BBC
• Nick Halstead, Tweetmeme
• John Gripton, News Editor, SkyNews.com
• Bill Thompson, City Uni / BBC
• Twitter is another news feed, another newswire
• PA isn’t a bible, but an endless source of news. Twitter is the same.
• Foolish for journalists to ignore the flow of information coming into Twitter
• Future of media is about empowering citizen journalism. Twitter has meant that the new wave is given a much wider reach, ability to be given viral effect.
• “Twitter is my weapon of choice” - Mike Butcher
• Can’t get into a world where the motto is “Not wrong for long”
• Twitter is throttling commercialism on its platform
• Danger in putting all of journalism onto one platform
• BBC doesn’t allow individual journalist to tweet on behalf of the BBC, as it needs to go through second pair of eyes
• Tweets have to be relevant, not just real time. Company that gets that right will win
• Twitter/social media has produced what would traditionally be seen as investigative journalists, who will dig for a story
• Gartner report said media industry will halve in 10 years

Panel 2 - Frontline Journalism with Twitter

Quick fire presentations by industry professionals looking at particular examples of news gathering using micro blogging

Hosted by:

• Laura Oliver, Journalism.co.uk

Panel:

• Suw Charman-Anderson, Social Technologist
• Mark Jones, Reuters
• Kevin Anderson, Guardian.co.uk
• Guy Degen, Frontline Club
• Moed Ahmad, Al Jazeera

Suw Charman-Anderson - Ada Lovelace Day

• Most awareness came from Twitter
• Easier to measure impact and awareness on Twitter than other platforms, such as Facebook
• RT enabled a viral effect
• Idea resonated with men and women
• Ended up with over 1000 blog posts on the day, most of the national and freesheets covered it
• Top 4 women in tech according to campaign:

1. Ada Lovelace
2. Grace Hopper
3. Heddie Lamar
4. Barbara Liscoth

• Not necessary high profile, more historical
• Became a learning experience of the history of computing
• Lesson is to find ideas that have their own momentum

Kevin Anderson - US Elections Coverage

• Experimental element - interactivity, cutting edge tech, opening up reporting to the audience
• 2000 - Webcasting
• 2004 - Blogging
• 2008 - Tweeting
• Worst thing is to be in the field but not be able to file a story
• Blog was the hub, but highly distributed and highly networked journalism
• Primarily used Facebook, Flickr and Twitter - all playing a slightly different role
• Real-time reporting and engagement with community wouldn’t have been possible without Twitter
• Audience added sense of encouragement, spurred journalist on to keep reporting on in an intensive way

Guy Degen - Protests in Tblisi

• Reporting from a place where mobile networks are unreliable
• Twitter is you tech partner in the field
• Used a twitter search and hashtag #tbilisi to add an extra layer of awareness to what was going on
• Only a small twitter community in Georgia, so reporting lacked community and conversation around the news
• German shooting - media used the tag ‘Amoklauf’ - meaning ‘rampage/gun spree’

Mark Jones - How Reuters uses Twitter

1. Alternative RSS
2. Live blogging tool
3. News monitoring
4. Socialising news announcements

Other observations:

• “Reuters scooped itself by live Twittering”
• Socialising of public policy speeches
• Using uStream to do social media only sessions
• Using Twitter to take questions
• Any missed questions, used Youtube videos to answer them at a later date
• Live streamed announcements using uStream.tv