By 
Tools / MIRH/20 DEC 2021
By David Brewer, mediahelpingmedia
Social media often releases information about which mainstream media might not have been aware, and information that mainstream media might have tried to ignore.
It can offer a wider, more diverse perspective on life than that covered by traditional media.
It challenges mainstream media’s editorial standards and makes editors think again about their values and ethics.
It offers mainstream media opportunities to tap into conversations, learn about social change, and connect with those who were previously out of reach.
It provides a direct link from a media organisation to a connected, empowered, and active audience, and, in doing so, totally changes that relationship.
And yet, surprisingly, some media organisations fail to take social media seriously, or, perhaps worse, totally misunderstand what it’s about and, therefore, respond inadequately
Media Evolution
The media is in a constant state of change, or at least it should be.
Technological advances result in changing audience behaviour resulting in altered attitudes to how news is consumed and shared, which means that a media organisation can’t afford to a standstill.
Innovation is needed, but only if it makes business sense.
There have been many stages of media evolution over the years, below we look at three. The “broadcast AT or publish AT” model, the “engage with on our terms” model, and the “participate in” model.
Broadcast AT and publish AT model
This is the model that the broadcasters and publishers thought they knew best.
They would broadcast and published programs and information to a passive audience who consumed what they were given.
There was no interactivity, and the output reflected the choices made by the journalists, not the audience.
This resulted in a limited perspective of society, usually representing that of the owners of the media organisation, the state, or the editors and journalists who were producing the content.
That model is dead.
Engage with our terms model
In this model, mainstream media offered limited interactivity. It could be in the form of studio debates, vox pops conducted in the street, or, in the case of print, letters to the editor.
Some media organisations had websites and would run polls and invite comments, but these were usually heavily pre-moderated and monitored, and were about issues that the broadcasters and publishers wanted to discuss.
Audience participation was carefully controlled, with the audience selected based on a journalist’s assessment of the public’s value to the story.
That model is in its death throes. Now we are in the ‘participate in’ model.
Participate in model
the ‘participate in’ model is where audience engagement is part of the editorial proposition.
It’s where stories are built around the issues the audience is discussing in the street, in their homes, and on social media.
Please refer to our modules entitled “Identifying the target audience and its information needs” and “Establishing a market differential with original, in-depth, issue-led journalism”.
It’s about having an active unit in the newsroom that uses social media to monitor what the audience is saying, share stories from the newsroom, stimulate a debate, and then watch that debate develop while feeding those developments back into the news production process.
This strategy will not only bring a media organisation closer to its audience, but it is also likely to increase engagement around the content being produced, while, at the same time, winning audience trust.
It will mean that output will be enriched to reflect audience concerns.
What is required
A modern media organisation needs to have a social media editor or at least a member of staff whose job it is to monitor social media. Ideally, they will be sitting at the central super desk in a converged newsroom. Please refer to our training module entitled “Convergence, roles and responsibilities and workflows”.
The social media editor or producer has an important role to play. They will:
- attend all the main news meetings.
- be called on to contribute ideas based on what the target audience is discussing on social media.
- use desktop tools, such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to monitor audience groups and keywords in order to track story developments.
- be expected to be offering news alerts when news breaks on social media.
- stimulate the conversation of the day based on the main news stories being produced by the converged newsroom.
- monitor that conversation and feed updates back into the news production process.
- ensure consistent cross-promotion between news and programs via social media.
- monitor any UGC (user-generated content) in terms of images, video, sound, and graphics submitted by the audience.
- suggest story treatment ideas based on the results of their social media monitoring.
Smart media managers will realise that for the news to truly reflect the concerns of the target audience they will need to exploit the opportunities and benefits of social media, and not see it as an unwelcome distraction.
And if you are thinking in terms of a wider reach via social media on new, continually-developing platforms/devices, you will be helping to ensure that your media organisation is always responsive to new revenue-generating opportunities.
Source: https://mediahelpingmedia.org/2008/01/17/social-media-in-news-production-and-news-dissemination/
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