social media as a trustworthy news source: exploring journalists’ working practices concerning...

REVEAL Project: Co-funded by the EU FP7 Programme Nr.: 610928 www.revealproject.eu © 2013 REVEAL consortium

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Social media as a trustworthy news source: Exploring journalists’ working practices concerning social media

Petter Bae Brandtzæg, Marika Lüders, Jochen Spangenberg*, Linda Rath-Wiggins* & Asbjørn Følstad

SINTEF, Oslo & Deutsche Welle*, Bonn/Berlin

ISMI'14, Oslo 25.04.14

[email protected]

REVEAL Project: Co-funded by the EU FP7 Programme Nr.: 610928 www.revealproject.eu © 2014 REVEAL consortium 1

2013-2016


REVEAL aims to….

advance the necessary technologies for

making a higher level analysis of social media

possible, thus enabling users to reveal hidden

‘modalities’ such as reputation, influence or

credibility of information.


Social media are changing journalism

The majority of journalists use social media

(96% in UK, Social Journalism Study 2013, UK)


Verification of social media content is challenging

4

Social media brings new opportunities, but is often difficult to determine the

truth, accuracy, or validity of content and sources……..


1#Social media are part of the "information war"

Content in social media, such as videos, photos, Twitter updates and blogs

are all new kinds of ammo in this war (e.g. interests groups, agenda setting)

Egypt

Syria

Iran

Ukraina

6

Typical working practices Monitoring Twitter continuously throughout the day.

Tweetdeck with several columns: feed from followings, mentions, searches on selected news-

cases.

Journalists who do not tweet much, still constantly monitor. Twitter, more important as news-

source rather than a publication channel.

2# Information overload in social media


#3 Different modalities

7


4# Trade-offs: verification vs. fast-paced publishing

8

Real-time breaking news Verification of content

"if speed is the currency of the modern information era, misinformation is the increasingly high cost" (Wood, 2013).

Social media are speeding up publishing


Research question and method

9

What characterizes emerging journalistic practices concerning

the verification of social media content and sources?

24 semi-structured interviews with journalists (early adaptors of social

media) between January and February 2014. To increase the breadth

of the data collection, the interviewees were based in different

European countries. The sample included 18 men and 6 women

14 7 1 1 1


Findings

10

Five practices among social media journalists:

1. Trusted sources

2. Access to eyewitnesses and sources

3. Traditional journalistic methods

4. Multimodal verification and verification tools

5. Workaround methods


1# Trusted sources

11

1. Trusted sources





"What we often use is if other media

have also used it. If they refer to the

same. It's not a guarantee, but often

gives a hint, like, yesterday BBC and

New York Times and others referred to

the same tweets. That could be an

indication that they also consider it

accurate, but of course everyone could

go into the same trap."


Social media as a "primary" news source

12

Trusted sources are important as, the first stage in a news-production process has

been reversed:

”

"Before, we often called people, to find out whether anything had happened. Not many

years ago, you took the initiative. But now, the opposite is the case because you often get

information from Twitter or other places. I work a lot with the police and the justice-system,

and it has changed, social media is now the place where you first get access to

information. (...) The foundation for what you produce news-stories on is really from social

media."o a much larger extent now come to you. In a rather large volume.”


2# Access to eyewitnesses and sources

13

1. Trusted sources





"Often, it can be as simple as, well just

making searches in Google and

Facebook, and check out whether the

person concerned is who he presents

himself as."

"The first time I can remember to have

used social media very actively in a big

incident was the Virginia Tech massacre

in 2007. I looked at different student-

profiles at the school and sent requests

to those students who seemed to have

been there when it happened. We had

several eyewitnesses, via Facebook.

We were directly in touch with

eyewitnesses."

Photo: Brett Weinstein (CC): http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/471661031

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/471661031/


Social media as "world wide" news source

14

"Journalists have become better at looking beyond their own neighbourhood. The

distance to some village in Pakistan is shorter than it was five years ago."


3# Traditional journalistic methods

15

1. Trusted sources





"Regular journalistic criteria are still

working, right. Like if there is a tweet

about a plane having crashed in Bergen,

we don't report it, we call the rescue

coordination center and the police,

right. Social media content are managed

the same way as regular news tips that

are called in to us. Everything has to be

checked and confirmed."


4# Multimodal verification and tools

16

1. Trusted sources





"Did we also publish it? Oh yes, we did, "Here,

the miracle-toddler is rescued." We included the

same disclaimer, "apparently a toodler in the

ruins". (...) It was uploaded to YouTube on

22.01, we picked it up at once, and published it

on the 25th."


5# Workaround methods

17

1. Trusted sources





"But we take reservations. For

example, we write that they

supposedly claimed this and that

(…)You can always include

disclaimers. We do that often"

"One challenge, and particularly with

photos. Like with text, you can always

include disclaimers. But when you use a

photo or video, they need to be

absolutely confirmed. (...) If you publish

a photo of a large explosion, you need to

be sure this is the right place."


Main challenges

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User challenges: Journalists vary in their competence in respect to social media, and

are often making use of manually and time consuming verification practices.

Contextual challenges: Increased expectations to high-speed publishing, growing

amount of content and more multimodal content in social media.

”The most important thing is to produce results as quickly as

possible, and to hope for the best”


Innovation in social media verification?

19

User requirements: A verification tool that should enable…

- easy and efficient way to verify social media content

(in particular important for video and photos)

- a tool integrated with applications journalists already use

(e.g. Twitter).

- enable identification of, and contact to prime sources/contributors

- organize and make sense of a huge amounts of content

- provide a clear understanding of how the verification is

taking place (what is behind the algorithm)


Thanks

http://revealproject.eu/



social media as a trustworthy news source: exploring journalists’ working practices concerning...

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