Digital Perspective Blog

Guest post by Samuel Degremont, Digital Strategist, Burson-Marsteller France

Some time ago, a post by Jeff Jarvis caught my eye. Entitled “The King of Twitter”, the article wonders about the role played by TV channels in the creation and distribution of information, more particularly in light of Mickael Jackson’s death and the latest events in Iran.

The first above-mentioned event increased so considerably the number of exchanges on Twitter that servers were saturated (25% of the total number of “twits” on the night of M.Jackson’s death and before Twitter’s crash), due to the spreading of the information published by a media website (TMZ.com).

<

The second event – contested elections in Iran on Twitter – illustrated the gap that sometimes exists between the citizens’ expectations and the information provided by news TV channels. While there were many exchanges on that topic on Twitter, the (American) citizens highly criticized the very poor coverage of these events by traditional media, starting with CNN, which lead to the creation of a new Twitter “tag”, #cnnfail (and the associated dedicated website http://cnnfail.com).

According to Javis, the journalists who covered the Iranian crisis created or kept on using a new kind of journalism called “social journalism” or “collaborative journalism”. Since very few of them were in Iran, they had to use the information available on social or any other kind of networks. Then, they no longer had to tell what was going on but to put things into context and perspective, to (try) to check out and to explain a piece of information created collectively by Web users.

Actually, this journalism did not appear because of the situation in Iran but in 2005/2006 with the creation of “collaborative” media websites on which the Web user was first invited to leave comments. Lately, he has been more and more associated with the Web content creation (see the new recent example below from the NYT : “Send us your Jackson Memorial Photos”):

Twitter encourages the “all emotion” trend

I tried to represent below the scheme of information circulation before its arrival on Twitter:

The scheme shows that time is necessary for the information to spread:
• time for the reporter-journalist to check out the information and to corroborate it,
• time to transfer it to his/her office
• time for the office to publish it (press agency)
• time for the media to edit and check it out again
• time for the media to publish it ( time obviously depends on the nature of the considered media, the least favored one being the traditional press).

In this “traditional” system, the chief editor decides the importance he want to give to the information comparing it with other information he has and wants to publish, depending on readers too. He/she creates “his/her” own information hierarchy.

With the development of the use of Twitter, the information circulation has changed:

“Stark” information (sometimes false, for that matter – an element that Benoît Raphaël refers to in his point 6 – Automated translation) can be published directly on Twitter by an eyewitness, as by a journalist, before it goes through the editing process described above.

As the functioning of Twitter favors the redistribution of content by those who feel concerned ( via the RT), an information published on it can easily “saturate” the system ( see the statistics related to Michael Jackson’s death above) and reach a huge number of people in a very short time.

Obviously, journalists “follow” Twitter and it helps them to see new published information very quickly (there is even a specific following Twitter tool for journalists: JournoTwit) and to publish them even more quickly: to a certain extent, it favors their reactivity in front of events.

The confrontation of 2 logics
On one hand, Twitter helps identifying – on a narrow sample (from 16 to 20 million people on a global scale) of an overconnected population – the more discussed topics in real time (also called “trending topics”).

Necessarily, sensational topics (such as show biz, accidents, death, sex and scandals) are more popular than topics involving analysis and reflexion. To be clicked on (and twitted again), a link must necessarily attract the audience.

On the other hand, there are some chief editors who want information to make sense and are willing to put it into context and perspective.

When these information professionals consider that a topic does not need to be given too much importance, Web users can now ring the bell (see the example of CNNfail mentioned before). Does it have an influence on these media contents so that it forces them to treat in priority sensational topics before those that are more common?

Eric Mettout, the chief editor of the Express online, explained in a post his responsibility towards Web users and readers as an information editor:

“No, you are not “clients”, we have nothing to sell, we are just doing our job that is to say dealing with current topics. In general, if you consider our job is good enough, you read what we publish (in the widest sense). If you think we are doing a bad job (and this is your right, obviously), you don’t read.”

It seems that this discourse is becoming more and more difficult to keep in a media landscape in which newspapers are losing money. Then, the only solution would be to get some audience (to use advertising) and the only way to get the audience is to… deal with “clicked on” topics, topics that people are talking about (on Twitter and elsewhere)… In a word, journalists have no choice but to deal with sensational topics.

Paradox chief editors have to resolve:
• How to deal quickly and efficiently with sensational topics to attract “consumers” to then prompt Web users to read serious topics, journalistic and intelligent topics?
• Is this even possible to do?

The blogosphere is buzzing over CNN firing a producer for blogging. The chatter ranges from conversations around freedom of speech to a dissection of his blog posts, and emotions range from anger over the unfairness of it all to glee from those who are have a differing political viewpoint. I first heard about this on Thursday, and my initial reaction was one of surprise. It seems very 2002 for a media property to fire someone over blogging, especially given blog readership and how many media outlets are encouraging their journalists to blog more. But then I read some of the producer’s posts, both on his personal blog and on Huffington Post. He covers topics with a strong personal point of view and no mincing of words, and could leave readers wondering how his personal perspective influences his work for CNN. To be fair, I don’t believe he had ever disclosed his employer on his blog, but he also didn’t have any disclaimers protecting them either.

So did he deserve to be fired? That isn’t for me to say. I’m curious to know what others think. In the meantime, it did make me realize how critical it is for companies to develop and distribute a policy on employee blogging. What are the rules of engagement, and what are the consequences for violating them? At Burson-Marsteller we encourage employees to participate in social media, although have a few guidelines that must be followed:

• If blogging personally about topics related to the PR or communications industry, we ask for a disclaimer indicating the point of view is personal and not on behalf of the firm.
• If blogging on behalf of the company, the blog must be reviewed before being launched for relevance, and then guidelines are in place around not mentioning clients without their permission, not disclosing confidential information, etc.
• We insist on full transparency when blogging on behalf of the company, and strongly recommend it for personal blogging and social media activities.
• We are willing to coach clients on topics and editorial style, but recommend they do their own writing for blogs. It really is different than other activities we conduct such as speech writing or internal communications.
• We support and abide by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code around social media participation.

There are other points to the policy, but so much of this is common sense. Companies should develop policies with input from various groups – legal, human resources, regulatory (if applicable), digital, sales, marketing, etc. A frank outline of the risks and opportunities, with a discussion around acceptable behavior can save both companies and employees from difficult scenarios in the long run.

For the record, this post is my personal opinion, and doesn’t necessarily represent the opinions of Burson-Marsteller or WPP.

Update: This story is also covered on “For Immediate Release“. Listen here.

I read on CNN yesterday about Yahoo and Google planning to offer social networking applications through their email page functions. Both companies have already made significant strides in allowing users to customize their home pages and aggregate content and functionality from various sites into a personal portal page.  However, I think that email is at odds with social networking given that email is inherently a personal communication.  Sure, I can block content from being seen by the world on social networking sites, but content is largely available to people I’ve marked as friends. Email is often more transactional then social, and that is a significant difference. I get the point about my email contacts being the genesis of my social graph, but no offense, there are some folks in my contacts database that I prefer to communicate with only on an as necessary and transactional basis.  Now, having widgets that tie my social networking information into my Google home page would be something I’d really go for. I’m all for the idea of a centralized home page that is aggregated, and eventually curated, just for and by me.  But leave my email account alone.