Social media is obviously a hot topic for the mainstream media. They see opportunity in using it towards turning their career paths and organizations around, and thus their coverage of it is through the roof.
That said, it was puzzling to hear earlier this year that a survey by PR Week / PRNewswire found that only 22% of journalists were leveraging Twitter for crowd-sourcing, connecting with readers and aggregating their stories on the Web. A separate survey, around the same time, by the TEKgroup found that only 38% of journalists would be interested in receiving corporate news via corporate Twitter handles. Yes, those second numbers seemed promising, but where were the mandates to adopt these strategies – FAST?
Well, perhaps the moves by media organizations like the New York Times, to get serious with social media have paid off.
According to a new survey from Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), 70% of journalists said they use social networks to assist in reporting. Compare that to the 41% that said they used social networks to assist in last year’s “Survey of Media in the Wired World.”
The online survey, which will remain open for a few more weeks, has the responses of 317 journalists to date. Far less than the 2,174 polled by PR Week and PR Newswire in April, so the validity of the findings may be in doubt.
For what it’s worth, The Survey of Media in the Wired World also found that:
69% of journalists go to company Web sites to assist in their reporting
While the BBC is having its sattelite signals blocked by Iranian authorities and CNN is being openly critisized – across the Web and throughout the Twitterspere (#CNNFail) - for their lack of coverage on the fallout following the Iraninian election victory claim by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his party; information continues to stream out across the Web from online global “correspondents” (including citizen journalists).
Nico Pitney, National Editor for the Huffington Post, is “live-blogging” the events from Tehran by pulling together content and information from people on the ground and others aggregating it across the Web.
There is no doubt the Social Web has made it easier for these modern-day “correspondents” and “international editors” as they aggregate the news of the disputed elections with hashtags such as #IranElection on Twitter, and bring video and pictures to the masses through YouTube and Flickr.
“That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.”
To be fair to the mainstream media, we can’t blame their lack of coverage or lack of portraying actual events (as they happen in Tehran) on their closure of foreign bureaus. They’ve made an effort to cover this. While people are criticizing CNN.com, their best international correspondent is directly addressing Ahmadinejad on the status of his rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi.
The New York Times is dedicating their The Lede blog to the discussion and has correspondents and even columnists taking a look at the happenings on the ground in Tehran.
This is really a case of the mainstream media being hampered by authorities that want to vastly limit the information coming out of Tehran, especially from the international free press. But they can’t cut off all communications in this information age.
Citizen journalists aren’t waiting for the mainstream media. They’re taking to every communication technology available and filling in ”pieces of the puzzle,” as Iranian authorities scramble to take down telecommunications, Internet and mobile access. Mir Hossein Moussavi , himself, is taking to Twitter to update “his people” on his location and safety.
Iran, although closed off from the world in some respects by its regime, has embraced the Internet-age. Even with talk of the death penalty for those that oppose the regime through blogs on the Web, Iran is home to the 3rd largest group of bloggers in the world. They are driving this crowd-sourced news story through small tweets of information.
So while we should still fear the death of publications like the New York Times, this event offers hope in citizen journalism and processing through some type objective, free press outlet. The Times, itself, has been outspoken against the act of “process journalism,” but this type of process journalism is crucial to the future of democracy.
