Up until a few months ago, I didn't really have a Twitter account. I mean, I did, but I opened it because a particularly funny friend of mine was on Twitter and I wanted to read the things he posted, but his Tweets were protected so I had to get an account to read them. I posted maybe five things in over a year, until I realised everyone at work had it and they started hounding me to use mine. So I've embraced it. And in doing so, I've come to see that it can be a lot more than just another narcissistic forum for people who think everyone cares about what they think a lot more than anyone does.
Since everyone and their dog is now on Twitter, it can be a great resource for finding out about events and stories, for following what's going on as people live-tweet events, and as I hardly feel needs saying at this point, for finding out what's happening in places that are closed to traditional media. This became increasingly obvious as governments took measures against press freedom in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya in recent weeks. It's hard to find fault with using social media in these situations, for organising, for sources, for spreading word between journalists. I would caution, though, about completely overstating the importance of social media in these situations - several journalists who were on the ground in Egypt have since pointed out that when the internet was shut down around January 27, the presence on the street actually increased because people had no way of finding out what was going on and had to head to the streets to find out. But still, it's clear that in places like Libya, where press freedom was non-existent and the regime was doing everything it could to keep journalists out and deny violence against protesters, the fact that people had any way at all to get information to the rest of the world was absolutely crucial to understanding what was happening there.
So in these situations, I can absolutely see the merit of the kind of amalgamation of journalism and social media that we've seen in recent weeks. Where I do have a massive problem with it is in modern more domestic journalism, where getting opinions from Twitter and Facebook has become standard practice, and where posts themselves suddenly become news just because everyone can see them and decide to be outraged. Reporters regularly include 'reaction' from people who purport to care about an event in their stories - that is, they post a couple of choice tweets that come up when you search for the relevant trending topic or hashtag. Is this the same as getting an informed opinion from an expert, as we might have done in the past, or the same as actually attending an event, understanding the atmosphere, and getting an opinion from someone who was there when it happened and is reacting in that context? I don't think it necessarily is. There's no way of verifying sources on Twitter - it's somehow just assumed that anyone posting a comment on something is the same kind of person you might have otherwise sought out for comment in the pre-Twitter days. Likewise, it is now common practice when a person dies to report on what messages 'friends' have posted on their Facebook page. Is this the same as a journalist getting an emotional interview with the person's family or friends at a memorial service?
I also think there's a very real danger of becoming lazy because everything seems to be on hand, and of journalistic laziness being potentially dangerous. An example. When I was in j-school, I got a phone call from a classmate who was then doing some work for a national newspaper. He asked me if I knew a Jason Smith (not his real name), because Jason's last tagged photos on Facebook were in an album of mine. I didn't know him - he was the flatmate of an acquaintance, and had come along to a j-school event I'd organised and subsequently been tagged in the photos by his flatmate. Why? Well it turns out someone with Jason's name, who was or had been studying at our school, who was from Toronto, had just been charged with murdering a disabled woman in Toronto. Jason's Facebook profile fit the bill, and his profile picture was dark, with a baseball hat obscuring his face, so it was hard to tell if he fit the alleged murderer's description. I said I didn't know him, but was pretty sure he was living in Ottawa and not a murderer. When I got home, I had a Facebook message from another reporter, and could see from Jason's profile that some of his other friends had been contacted as well. Of course, it turned out to be a different person with the same name - but how many of Jason's friends were contacted to find out if he had killed someone, and what is the danger there? Were there more safeguards against this kind of mistaken identity when people charged with crimes were tracked down by the details available from police, courts, and public records (date of birth, address, listed phone numbers, etc)?
I guess what I'm really saying is that social media is a great tool for leads, a good source of information when nothing else is available and a dynamic way to see how stories move forward- but it cannot and should not replace real journalism. Research, context and verification have become more important, not less, as so much information is available to media consumers, and it seems to me that these are the first things to go when people start depending on social media for news, and, worse, when journalists start depending on it in lieu of doing the kind of work they have done in the past and should still be doing now.
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