* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Somehow, most likely, the next breaking news story you come across, Social Media will be involved.
The need to monitor and engage with Social Media is no longer a luxury for journalists.
Rapidly expanding complexities of time and technology management make it necessary for every journalist to understand and keep up with all the prevailing online media platforms. Increasingly, newsmakers (individuals and organizations) communicate directly to their self-chosen audiences through Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and YouTube, often trying to avoid the scrutiny of journalists.
While Social Media must now be monitored 24/7 as a primary newsgathering source, journalists must also master how to manage direct engagement with their own audiences.
Using these online tools with contacts, subjects, viewers and readers can generate new leads, help tease out information, get immediate feedback on stories and promote the journalist’s own work, while engendering trust in the news organization and new audiences too.
But this engagement is fraught with potential ethical and moral issues which could potentially destroy careers and the reputations of news organisations. One poorly-judged tweet, an ill-advised picture or clip, or falling victim to a hoax, can ruin decades of trust.
These are the key themes at the heart of the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s latest Social Media and Journalism Workshop, with 15 journalists from 10 countries gathered in Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki in July.
Madalina Comana of the Romanian news agency Agerpres organised the four-day event for members of the Association of Balkan News Agencies – Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE), with Sofia Papadopoulou Thessaloniki-based journalist from Greece’s AMNA playing host.
(For more on the Workshop from Agerpres, click here.)
The group comprised a wide range of Social Media skills and experiences with various platforms. Each delegate jumped head-first into real-time exercises to develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities and risks inherent in the emerging forms of online journalism.
Several tasks were dedicated to the effective time management in the monitoring of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, showing that journalists actually can save time in the gathering of information and sources instead getting overwhelmed with the vast majority of white noise in the Social Media spectrum. Effectively managing tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, they found they could be quickly aware of the latest proclamation, picture or clip from the politicians, celebrities or pundits they must follow each day, while filtering out what is irrelevant.
The Workshop also explored how to make use of Social Media authoring tools such as Storify with which journalists can quickly gather separate pieces of social media on a rolling story, adding the context and background to help their audiences make sense of it all.
A challenging live blogging event -- coverage of the annual Queen’s Speech in UK parliament -- tested each journalist’s ability to report effectively, monitor Social Media, and construct a rolling narrative for readers in real time. Not easy to do, even if English is your first language.
One section of the workshop helped each delegate to refine their online profiles and make sure that their public persona in Social Media is aligned with the editorial tone and strategies of their news organizations.
Finally we capped the week with a series of exercises on verification of information, pictures and video in order to avoid hoaxes and ethical dilemmas.
With such a diverse group of journalists, each with their own mixture of situations -- technological, cultural and systemic -- the chance to spend a few days discussing best practice and preparing for the future of the profession, was invaluable. I learned a lot from these new friends and colleagues and I am sure they will help to reinforce each other’s work online.
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