media – Page 10 – Andrew Careaga

In the days since the Iranian election and the protests that followed, much has been written, broadcast, tweeted and blogged about how Iranian citizens have seized the power of social media to report what is happening to the outside world. In the United States, the mainstream media has picked up on this phenomenon, but sadly most of the reporting has been about the cool factor of Twitter, amateur video, etc.

But a few mainstream media outlets are getting the hang of new media. They’re aggregating the citizen-journalist reports, lending context, and sharing with the rest of us. Mark Jones of Reuters highlights a few of them in his blog post about running web commentary on Iran.

The challenge of providing the latest to a world hungry for the news from Iran “is to match what TV stations can do when they switch between news bulletins to rolling 24 hour coverage,” Jones writes. “Only the web ought to be able to do so much more given its scope for interactivity.”

In an ideal world you’d want to provide the fastest, most thoroughly verified reports around the clock whether they or not they are from conventional journalists. And as a user I think you’d also want to be pointed in the direction of where you can find out more. If all this was easy then it would have been done by now. But it’s a lot of work. And all news organisations have had to strike compromises on one or more of those counts.

Live blogs that attempt to document the unrest in Iran — such as The Guardian’s and the New York Times lede blog — help to meet some of that need for information and blend the accounts of citizens on the ground with journalists’ analysis and annotation. Jones also discusses (briefly) reporters logs, which rely on the news organization’s staffers instead of citizen journalists, and “the most interesting approach,” aggregated information streaming in from “validated” citizen journalists, such as what Sky News is doing.

“None of these approaches has entirely nailed it,” Jones writes. In his perfect scenario, the ideal blend of mainstream and social-networking media would include:

Direct publishing by sources validated by the news organization
The ability for live blog anchors to republish and annotate external contributions
A means by which participants could add to or critique particular elements of the commentary

What about you? How do you think mainstream and newstream media should converge to cover this unfolding story?

Now that Twitter is all the rage among mainstream media (a point I touched on in yesterday’s mediamorphosis post), it’s only a matter of time before journalists turn their attention to the Next New Shiny Toy (whatever that is, or will be). At least that’s the argument Jay Moonah makes in his post describing the seven phases of mainstream media coverage of social media. He even illustrates it for us with the following chart:

The continuum of social media coverage, via Media Driving (click image to enlarge)

Moonah shows how media coverage of social networks follows a predictable arc, the rise and fall in seven steps:

What is X? — Pretty self-explanatory, early stories (perhaps in the form of sidebars or other short formats) explaining what the social network is, at least at a rudimentary level.

Why X is Silly — Usually in the form of editorial or as a part of a larger story, comments saying Twitter is “populated mainly by people keen to share the minutiae of their lives” and the like.

Why X is Great! — Stories about social/fundraising efforts like Twestival and other uses of the technology for fun and profit.

Guess What Celebrity is Using X Now? — This is about where Twitter is at right now — hey, look at which music star or mayor or basketball player is using it!

The Dark Side of X — This is where the Twitter coverage is (IMHO) most likely headed next. Remember stories about people having affairs on Second Life or Facebook bullying? Watch for similar stories about Twitter very soon.

X Doesn’t Live Up To Promise — I thought it was interesting that one of the most recent stories I’d seen on Second Life was about the British government defending spending a pretty paltry sum on experimenting with the virtual world as a meeting place. I couldn’t help but thinking that they would have almost certainly been universally praised for this effort two years ago, back when Second Life was all the rage.

Hey, What Ever Happened To X? — Seen any mainstream media stories on Myspace lately? Even though the social network is still used regularly by millions of users (probably far more than use Twitter) I don’t recall seeing a lot of stories about it specifically, except perhaps as part of laundry list of services lumped in with Facebook and Twitter. And perhaps that’s a good thing for Myspace — it’s possible that it is now just taken for granted as part of the landscape of services that we use online, like search or email. It will be interesting to see if Twitter gets to the same place before it falls off the mainstream media radar, and more interestingly if coverage of the NEXT big thing in social networks follows the same pattern.

Will the coverage of Twitter follow this predictable path? So far, it seems to be.