In a moment of either self care or broad stupidity, I decided to not check most social media over winter break.
But what did omitting my daily (okay, sometimes several-times-a-day) Facebook and Twitter scrolling mean? I missed out on my Friends and followers sharing articles from Occupy Democrats? I skipped seeing their frustrations with and mockings of the Trump Train supporters? I was supposed to not look at my phone when awkwardly waiting to go through airport security?
By putting away my phone and resisting the habitual instinct to scroll, I actually met people. I talked with strangers I otherwise never would've encountered in my Facebook sphere or my Twitter cylinder. And yes, this is most likely a Millennial problem (I see you gray-haired editors rolling your eyes, but come on, you've probably done this before too) but it was refreshing to connect with people in the real world rather than my own little online world. Someone in the airport security line even offered me a taste of his homemade sweet potato pie after I commented how good it smelled.
I still kept up with the news, too--and that made it seem more like actual news rather than just information/infotainment. Thanks to a constant onslaught of email newsletters (these are some of my favorites - check out your own local letters!) I was able to consume the news when I wanted, rather than having it constantly shared and promoted on my feeds. I didn't have any news FOMO, because the lovely reporters, editors, and curators behind the newsletters made sure I had the essentials and I didn't have to rely on Facebook's sneaky algorithm or the chronology of my Twitter feed. (Plus, people who write email newsletters tend to sound a lot less panicked and dramatic than people on social media.) This semi-sabbatical made me reconsider my social media habits not just as a person, but also as a journalist. Many of our personal accounts allow us to fabricate our own images of ourselves. I'm as guilty of reliving my day by rewatching my Snapchat Story as the next person, but there's a difference between that and between staying isolated in our social media cylinders. Especially as journalists, we should treat our accounts and activities on Facebook, Twitter, etc. as public service opportunities. I can't control the Facebook algorithm, but I can control my postings. There's nothing wrong with sharing our own stories, but what about sharing the stories of people around us? We can serve as conduits for pertinent news and information in our communities and societies through our own accounts. But we can also do more than observe from our own social media bubbles: we can show our audiences that we're human, that we're a part of their communities and lives as well. We can engage, and we can offer the opportunity for others to engage. This may be easier said than done, but opportunity is ripe on the local level. Check out the Twitter feed and Facebook page of Lici Beveridge, the engagement editor at the Hattiesburg American in Mississippi. I met her a few months ago through a journalism workshop geared toward building an engaging newsroom, thanks to the Poynter Institute. She shares the happenings in Hattiesburg in a way that demonstrates her local ties and simultaneously informs her audiences.
Remember the golden rule of not using first person in journalism? Lici's social media is a model to abide by.
And there's proof that this sort of engagement works: in a 2015 study about journalists' social media activities and the impact they have on their news products, researcher Jayeon Lee found that "the journalist was evaluated more positively when he disclosed personal information and when he had engaged with people who left comments. He was perceived to be more likeable." Nearly since the dawn of social media itself, opportunities to connect with sources and find breaking news have abounded. As NPR's ethics handbook reminds us, "Properly used, social networking sites can be valuable parts of our newsgathering and reporting kits because they can speed research and quickly extend a reporter’s contacts. They are also useful transparency tools — allowing us to open up our reporting and editing processes when appropriate. " This semi-dated but still helpful Mashable piece discusses some of those ways, such as how a Chicago transportation reporter Friended bus drivers on Facebook to communicate about city transit updates both to not leave an email trail, but also in a more intimate and relatable way. And in the modern reporting era with a Trump presidency, David Fahrenthold's crowd-sourced and transparent reporting on the president-elect's charitable initiatives sets a new standard. And so, here is my news: I moved to Los Angeles a few days ago to intern at the local NBC affiliate, KNBC, with their political team. The weather is crazy nice here compared to Chicago (#sorrynotsorry), and I've walked probably close to 10 miles in the past two days exploring the area. But I've also had the chance to meet some people who also chose not to scroll and instead have a conversation, and it's the stories like theirs that I'm looking forward to getting to know better and share with you all in one way or another.
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After an election cycle largely defined by Twitter moments, it's hard to imagine where campaigns on social media could go from here.
In a paper from a 2013 fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, Twitter's major role in this year's race was only hypothetical. Former CNN reporter and now head of news for Snapchat Peter Hamby delved into the way that intra-campaign conversations on Twitter shaped the communications of the 2012 presidential race. He believed that the value of being a "boy on the bus," or a traditional presidential campaign reporter following the candidate's daily happenings by traveling with the campaign, was steadily decreasing in favor of the easy-to-follow buzz generated by Twitter. In fact, Hamby argued that "Twitter is the central news source for the Washington-based political news establishment." But what particularly stood out to me was this tidbit toward the end: But according to {NBC News Political Director] Chuck Todd, it's all but certain that some candidates in 2016 will find a way to harness the social media beast and run with it.
Welp.
Let's take a quick peek at a "hypothetical" candidate, shall we?
Which makes you wonder - what comes next? (After draining the swamp, apparently.)
Will Twitter, despite its recent troubles, still be the leader for live postings and campaign news in 2020? Or will the next big thing be a newcomer like Hamby's Snapchat, virtual reality along the campaign through Facebook, or a nascent technology that hasn't even emerged yet? Maybe it will be Tinder for candidates, but with Snapchat's stickers and filters. Any candidate running for a top office from now on has to have a mastery of some form of social media, and it'll have to be organic. Watching Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and her core followers of female Baby Boomers try to figure out how to Tweet and Snap has been painfully awkward. You can't ask people to make memes for you - that's like Jeb Bush asking people to clap, and no one wants to go down that road again.
Sure, you can go to a debate watch party. But what better watch party than the ones happening on your social media channels, with gifs and filters galore?
Here's a breakdown of how Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat allowed users to cover the last debate of the 2016 presidential election.
To see play-by-play reactions of professional journalists and commentators, it was easy to watch essentially a livestream of remarks on my Twitter feed. Twitter had partnered with Buzzfeed to provide a broadcast of the debate itself, and for past debates and even the convention I had watched the video there. But I was more interested in seeing individuals' reactions rather than a full video of the debate last night.
However, it was difficult to find Tweets that were a) from people that I didn't already follow and b) that were actually substantial. My Twitter homepage had buzzy remarks and instant quote replays from the journalists I follow, and the #debatenight hashtag took me to either a feed of second connections on Twitter (Tweets from people who are followed by people I follow) or a general "Top Tweets" feed of literally anyone. It wasn't the most satisfying experience - though I did get to see this gem from Merriam-Webster.
Some of my Facebook friends were posting instant reactions to what was said, but because of Facebook's algorithm, that made it clunky to follow along on an instantaneous basis. The app had an alert for the debate but it was still set as an announcement more than a half hour after the event had started.
There were gobs of livestreams from news organizations throughout my News Feed. Some were more creative than others: CNN International had a livestream of a group in Japan watching the debate for a different perspective, and Stephen Colbert's Late Show arranged for a quartet to accompany the debate on their own Facebook Live video. Both of those I found thanks to my own Facebook friends sharing them. But I also wanted to see what people were saying and thinking beyond my own bubble. Because I was using the app on my phone, I couldn't see the Trending News bar that shows up on your Facebook when using a laptop. This morning, the Trending News algorithm told me that "US Presidential Debate" was buzzing with 25,000 people - though it wasn't the trendiest news topic. If you clicked on it, you would see a fact-checking article from AOL (who knew AOL was trending anymore?) followed by livestreams from the night before and "Top Posts" from the Washington Post, CNN International, and Donald Trump's channel himself. It seemed as though Facebook wanted the news organizations to provide the live content rather than aggregating it itself, like Twitter was trying to do. This kept many of us in our bubbles - unless you sought out livestreams to watch and commented to interact with different people, like this user below. Snapchat
Snapchat was quiet last night, but the real treasure trove came after the debate.
Some of the people and organizations I follow on Snapchat were posting on their stories about the debate. Most of the individuals just used the filters to enhance Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's voices (when you hear the same stump lines again and again, it's more entertaining to hear them at a higher pitch). But then this morning I watched the curated Campus Watch Party and the US Presidential Debate Stories. This was as close as I'd get, it seemed, to finding different takes on the debate beyond the people I already follow. These stories allowed me to see people's reactions from Brigham Young University to Rutgers on the Campus Watch Party story. The main story took viewers behind the scenes at the debate with cameos from Snapchat's Head of News Peter Hamby, house DJ Steve Aoki, former NFL player Emmett Smith, reporters from CNN and the Hill (among others), and students at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who gained entry to the debate hall.
The main debate story also included footage from the event itself with comment cards on the screen fact-checking the candidates' claims by Politifact. For people who didn't have the interest or time to watch the debate or their social media feeds yesterday when it was actually happening, this provided a recap of the moments people talked about and a review of the facts discussed as well. Plus, though the Campus Watch Party story showed many Snapchatters aghast at Donald Trump's "bigly" language, it also included Hillary Clinton toilet paper.
It's easy to forget that there are real people on both sides of this election that aren't Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Social media can bring us together but also drive us apart, and these Snapchat stories can help viewers connect with people on all sides of the spectrum. I just wish I didn't have to go hunting it for during the debate. |
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