Everyone’s favourite microblogging site has continued its evolution this week, as Twitter moved subtly into a mass grassroots campaigning tool. Move over breaking news, you were so Spring 2009, organic protest is where it’s at now.
First up was the Trafigura case, of which so much has been written, it’s somewhat pointless to rehash completely what went on (Adam Tinworth has a nice, concise summary). In a nutshell, the Guardian were gagged on writing about reporting on a Parliamentary question concerning Trafigura and there actions surrounding the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.
Once the Guardian wrote that they’d been gagged, Twitter (and plenty of blogs) quickly ensured it was one of the most discussed and written about topics online. The Streisand effect, if you will.
Much has been said about how Twitter brought about the downfall of Carter-Ruck’s gagging order. For what it’s worth, I suspect it would have been lifted eventually – you simply can’t stop papers reporting on the democratic business of Parliament just because it damages your client’s reputation. That would abolish hundreds of years of precedent. There’s a fair bit of that around.
For me, that’s the most important aspect, more so, even, than Twitter’s role in all this. The very fact a law firm thought it could ride roughshod over a basic right that’s essential to any functioning democracy is somewhat concerning. It would have set a very dangerous precedent, and it’s good to see, for ones, MPs from all parties standing up pretty strongly against this. This would have been a step too far.
What Twitter definitely did was to accelerate the process. Carter-Ruck may not have backed down so quickly were it not for Twitter, and it’s unlikely that it would have spread onto more news outlets, and the original root of the litigation wouldn’t have been dug up. In all honesty, can anybody recall Trafigura’s name before this?
As Adam says, it was crowdsourced journalism at its finest.
The second was Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir’s rather sickening piece on the death of Stephen Gately (no, I’m not going to link to it), which again hit the trending topics as Twitter users flocked to express their disgust. Again, this became, and maintained its place, as a trending topic on Twitter throughout the day.
This was somewhat different from the Trafigura campaign in some respects – it was more about decency than an affront to democracy. Nevertheless, the strength of feeling was enough to crash the Press Complaints Commission’s website and cause advertisers to ask to be removed from Moir’s article on the Mail’s site.
There has been a lot written about Stephen Gately’s death, some of it probably untrue, and some of it not overly pleasant. But it was this one article that ignited Twitter’s fury. It could have ben written by any writer in any national paper – the result would have probably been the same.
The Moir case really shows the power of Twitter. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how many complaints the Mail gets each day. It’s incredibly rare for them to issue a statement around a complaint so quickly though (in an episode that contains just a touch of schadenfreude).
The difference, I think (and this is only hypotheticals), is that Carter-Ruck’s injunction would have been overturned sooner or later. This isn’t to say Twitter didn’t help, but it was a key player rather than an essential in getting it lifted. With Moir, the statement would never have been issued were it not for Twitter.
Moir also grasps the wrong end of the stick with her statement by describing it as “clearly a heavily-orchestrated online campaign”. Wrong. A heavily-orchestrated one implies a degree of organisation, whereas the reaction to her piece was spontaneous. It was the strength of feeling towards Moir’s article rather than a grassroots piece of action from, say, a gay rights group. It’s difficult to think something would trend so quickly and stay trending by organisation alone. It needs other Twitter users to keep talking about it long after it first moves towards trending.
And it’s also why I can’t see an organised campaign working as well as the Moir campaign. There’s only so far you can tap into the internet before it falls away, a victim of natural information turnover.
A quick note on the politics of Twitter as well. Somebody (I can’t remember who) noted that the two major Twitter campaigns were predominantly on liberal topics.
Is Twitter a liberal haven? I’m not so sure. To me it feels liberal, but that’s because of the people I follow. That doesn’t mean there’s not a large conservative following on there.
Secondly, it’s worth pointing out that Trafigura transcended political divides. Having heavyweight and idiologically different bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Chicken Yoghurt lending their support it somewhat like the suspension of cold war, in online terms. The only internet community recognised the chilling threat of the super-injunction for what it was: an affront to democracy. That does not necessarily make it liberal.
The Moir reaction leans towards a traditional cause of the left, or liberals, but you don’t have to belong to that part of the political spectrum to be appalled by her views on Stephen Gately. It, perhaps, shows how we as a society have become more liberal and tolerant, but it isn’t quite a cause championed entirely my liberals.
For me, Twitter comes across as more libertarian than liberal, and there is a crucial difference in this. It’s quick to stand up for freedom in all sense of the word, but also leans away from censorship. It certainly isn’t an area where one spectrum of politics dominates though.
Deep down, part of me still believes I could have made it as a footballer. Well, if it hadn’t been for discovering beer and generally being lazy. And possibly learning how to tackle and head a ball. Minor inconveniences aside, I could have been a contender.
Anyway, as part of my non-footballing development I stopped playing around the age of 17 when I went to college. Between then and finishing university, I really didn’t play that often, other than the occasional kickabout or turning out as an unfit favour for a mate’s team.
Since moving into the world of work, though, I started playing regularly for the 5-a-side team, and haven’t stopped since then. I may be in a different city and different job now, but I still make a point of playing every week. Mondays are football nights, and God do I miss them if I’m not playing.
Anyway, the point of this slightly rambling reminiscing brings me to the latest campaign from the FA. Called Whatever Your Level, it’s designed to encourage people to carry on playing and enjoy the game whatever your level is.
It’s a very smart, slick and engaging video. I was actually asked to pop along and watch it being filmed on Hackney Marshes but sadly wasn’t around at the time. My co-host of the twofootedtackle podcast, Chris, did make it down and even landed himself a quick cameo. Lucky git.
There’s always a misconception, I find, that the FA is just about top level football, the FA Cup and a few other things. It really isn’t – and I’ve seen for myself in the past their commitment to the sport at its most basic level.
The Whatever Your Level campaign is just as important to the wellbeing of football as the national team. And the FA should be applauded for their efforts here. Playing football once a week has left me fitter, healthier, stronger and even happier then when I wasn’t playing. Long may it continue.
How quickly times change. When I first started doing work experience and then freelancing for assorted journalistic outlets nearly a decade ago, the only thing the newsroom used the web for on any kind of regular basis was Google.
When I took over editorship of our student paper, we had a website but no content. When I left, we had a different website with the building blocks for content. We also had an editorial blog, hosted on a basic Blogger.com template [1]. This was seen as quite novel at the time.
When I did my professional BJTC qualification, I was one of only two people who blogged regularly. One of our regular assignments was to blog about journalism and the stories behind the stories. Many of the course were a little baffled and confused by this. This, they said, wasn’t journalism.
When I was a fully fledged reporter, the web was seen as both a curiosity and vaguely important, but we’d be buggered if we could work out exactly what to do with it. What we did know was when we got it right, we got one hell of a lot of traffic and comments. This didn’t happen often. Meanwhile, I was using Google Alerts, Technorati and other such tools to find stories. This was seen as something of a curiosity.
When I took the decision to move into PR, the debate on whether blogs should be treated the same as other media outlets was in its infancy still. Twitter was something only a couple of us geeks in the corner were spending time on, while everybody else looked on somewhat quizzically.
Now, as I prepare to move into yet another new role, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds and what I’ll be looking back on in a few years time and go “isn’t that funny.”
In just under ten days time I officially become part of the communities team at ITV.com, driving online engagement and facilitating conversations and other such things. I’ll be working with another ex-journo, Ben Ayers.
So what does this have to do with journalism? If you’d described my new role to the 18-year-old me, eagerly applying for work experience with local newspapers and radio stations, I’d have probably looked at you slightly funny before probably telling you this was nothing to do with journalism whatsoever [2]. In fact, I’d probably have had no clue what the hell you were on about.
But times change. Journalists are now bloggers, podcasters, video editors, and more as well as being reporters. And, yes, they’re working within online communities, be it facilitating conversation, engaging in the comments, posting blogged responses to the community and the like.
You could probably argue journalists have always done this, but there’s never been as much of a two way conversation, bar letters to the editor, or the odd chance to accost the journalist on their patch. Communities, though, have always been at the heart of journalism.
And the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. I’ve been addressed in emails as a football journalist, due to my writing for Soccerlens and podcasting for twofootedtackle, both of which are done in my spare time [3]. I’d call myself a football blogger and podcaster, but break it down and it’s very similar to what many traditional media outlets do.
Other boundaries are being broken. Not too long ago I was chatting to Joanna Geary, then of the Birmingham Post now of the Times, about getting the news about, well, the news out there. Journalists, she mentioned, were increasingly doing their own PR on the web to get people reading their stories. That’s not a million miles away from a communities editor.
When I first started in journalism, I did so because I wanted to make a difference. Granted, my career may not have gone the same way as Woodward and Bernstein, but I still repeat and hold onto that. I’d like to think I’m still making a difference these days, just in a different way.
[1] While it would have been nice to have kept this going for posterity, it got deleted the year after due to a small misunderstanding with some cartoons. You may be familiar with this.
[2] Although the web-loving part of me would have probably been reasonably impressed.
[3] I may still be a rarity though – a journalism trained blogger who does this sort of stuff for fun.
Two excellent, interesting, a very different posts that are worth flagging up.
Firstly, Sarah Evans on Mashable on the ten best social media tools for journalists and PRs. It’s a bit US centric but there’s a couple of the list I use from time to time, and I’d especially love to get more people into working with wikis, as there’s so much potential there.
Even if you’re not planning on using any of them, it’s worth a look just to get an idea of the tools and sites that are available.
On a completely and utterly different note, POLIS director Charlie Beckett asks if, in relation to journalism, we can trust the internet. It’s a fascinating read that, if I had more time, I’d have liked to blog a bit further about. There’s small points I disagree with, but his conclusion is one I’d go along with.
It’s always difficult to gauge exactly how widely Twitter has extended outside of the tech and social media crowd (and, to a certain extent, the media). On one hand, I have Twitter on in the background every day at work and find it increasingly useful. On the other hand, I went out to dinner the other night with a couple of friends who I did my journalism training with and neither of them had heard of it.
But just when I learn to the other hand and start to wonder if it generally has a wider application, something like this comes along.
Essentially, The Chicago Tribute has an online Twitter presence who interacts with other users and it was to this profile that other Twitters turned when a few of them started asking about some kind of panic at a local plaza they were hearing about.
Not only did the Tribute’s Twitter feed reply, it got back to them about twenty minutes later with the full story, verified by the paper’s journalists, before crediting the breaking story to the Tweeter who first told him (or her) about it.
Thanks to the retweeting of the story by other users, it turned into one of the most widely read stories on the site. Neither the story nor the subsequent hits would have been as big had it not been for Twitter.
This small event is the perfect example of how new and old media can work together to create great journalism, and it’s the journalism aspect of Twitter that excites me the most.
At it’s most basic, it’s like the pub, where plenty of conversations are taking place [1]. Some of them are meaningless, but some may be interesting to the journalist and make a great story. Older journalists will have done more than their fair share of pub stories, while whenever I was sent to cover a story in an area I didn’t know, I’d usually head down the pub, as this was one of the best places for background and context.
Twitter can be seen as the pub. Or perhaps a trendy, if somewhat dilapidated, wine bar. That has poor acoustics, and the clientele speak in clipped tones. But is up to date with the latest news from the area.
Twitter, then, goes beyond just searching for people on location for a breaking news event – it allows those users to break the news to the journalists, although that only seems to have happened because of interaction. If the Chicago Tribute’s Twitter account didn’t bother to interact with its followers, then it wouldn’t have got the story (or got the story as quickly).
That, for me, perfectly encapsulates what social media is all about, and why it complements journalism rather than threatens it [2]. And why every journalist should at least be aware of how useful Twitter can be for newsgathering.
It may not have as many people signing up as Facebook did, and nor will it probably take off on such a mass scale as Facebook did. But that’s not necessarily the point. As my colleague Ben is fond of saying, it’s who you follow, not how many you follow.
The next question is how many news organisations have a presence of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, and other sites, and regularly interact with readers? Those who don’t, or haven’t even considered it, are potentially missing a trick.
It’s why it’s important that Twitter users are able to receive SMS messages in the UK and Europe. The site cut this service due to spiraling costs they incurred from mobile providers.
It’s one of the most useful services Twitter offers, and for journalists is a key part of why Twitter is so useful. Paul Bradshaw has started a campaign to get mobile operators to strike a deal with Twitter – the Facebook group is here.
[1] I have a feeling I’ve shamelessly stolen this analogy from Joanna Geary. Sorry Jo – think of it as social media analogy sharing
[2] Quite whether the same is true, at this current stage, for PR, I’m not so sure. It’s very useful, but nowhere near as useful as journalists are finding it. There’s definitely potential in there though, but as Jaz Cummins said to me at the Shoreditch Twit last week when I mentioned I was using Twitter for PR purposes, a lot of its users are still very much in the London or media-centric bubble and bursting through this bubble is the challenge. At least I think that’s what she was saying. My memory of the night is a tad hazy, but it was along those lines and is a very valid point. It’s certainly a major challenge for PR to work out how best to utilise the potential of Twitter.
Creating a mixtape was – and still is – an artform. You had to be quick on the pause and stop buttons and be able to work out if adding that extra Belle and Sebastian track would take you over 45 minutes on side A.
Then there was the hours of agonising over the exact tracklisting and order, as the tape not only showcased your impeccable musical taste but also would be baring your soul to the woman you loved. Mix tapes were nearly always made with seducing a woman in mind. They very rarely succeeded. There are probably a good number of girls from Exeter and the surrounding area who still have a an old C90 complete with a rare Sneaker Pimps remix or a Lewis Taylor B-side kicking about at the back of a drawer.
God, I loved mixtapes. I used to record every new entry off the Top 40 on a religious basis, then make a further tape to discard the songs I didn’t like. It’s a good job I didn’t have access to a large scale CD production factory otherwise the Now That’s What I Call Music series would have been in serious trouble.
But while today’s modern music downloading tools, MySpace music, and iPods are fantastic, there’s still a part of me that hankers after the mixtape compiling. Making a compilation CD just isn’t the same. Drag, drop, set to record and go off and make a cup of tea, or whatever. Dull.
But with the internet, and retro loves, it was inevitable something like MixWit would crop up. Ok, so it’s still a drag and drop into a playlist. And there’s no physical product at the end of it. But you can custom-make your own C60. And when you play it, the cassette reel graphic goes round. What’s not to love?
I may be a little to excited by these kind of things. I may also need to get out more.
The only thing missing is the player behaving genuinely like a C60 and cutting out halfway through a song after 30 minutes.
I’m eternally grateful to Lolly from Blog Til You Drop for Tweeting about the site. My work colleagues, who’ve already been on the receiving end of several Mixwit emails may be less grateful. But it does mean I can introduce them to Los Campesinos! and remind them of what a great track Cake’s The Distance is.
There’s plenty of embeddable and sharing options, so here’s one I created today. The full title is ‘It’s Friday afternoon, I have lots of work to do but I really want the weekend to fast forward by a few hours. In lieu of that, I’ll make a mixtape that has The Pixes in it’.
PS Apologies, I can’t work out how to get rid of the random bit of code above. It doesn’t appear in my post editor.
PPS The absolute King of Mixtapes (and compilation CDs for that matter) is John Widdop. No matter how bizarre the theme, he can always produce an impeccable set of songs and has a vast, encylopedic knowledge of music. Why he’s not been offered a writing job with a music publication is beyond me.
What you’ve been saying