asylum 3 and news reporting (or, I only lj now when I can't fit my thoughts into 140 characters)
So my soon-to-be-live-in boyfriend Josh-- he's the guy in charge of the Nieman Journalism Lab, which I point out in part because it's apropos and in part to try to make up for my previous "Nieman" spelling mistakes-- talks sometimes about Twitter's potential as a reporting and news vehicle, largely thanks to its immediacy, even compared to web-based news sites, blogs, etc. Case in point: reports of earthquakes on the other side of the globe. Not so earth-shattering (earth-shaking?) other case in point: the other week there was a shooting on Harvard's campus, and while the articles that were posted on "official" newspaper webpages were no doubt more complete, and "reliable" (re: accuracy), and are important for it, they came after anyone on Twitter had already heard the basics.
What it seems like is happening here (at least to my non-journalist mind) is that one of the traditional functions of the news-- speedy reporting of things-that-are-happening-now(ish)-- has been essential usurped. In a world that has Twitter, etc., even online outlets' stories become recaps, rather than breaking news. That doesn't mean those recaps aren't worthwhile; it just means they're slow. And that sometimes its more important that an event be reported quickly than reported thoroughly or even well.
That's not all that's happening, of course. There are other clear benefits (and detractions) to the spread of news via Twitter. My favorites (given my personal post-modern bent) are that you can 1) get first-person perspectives directly, from the source (the role of a retweeter is, if you think about it, a lot like that of a traditional journalist: collecting a source's perspective, and distributing it to a larger audience); and 2) access a veritable kaleidoscope of those perspectives, which lets you build a more multi-dimensional "picture" of the event the way you might build an object via sonar. Between these two things, you end up feeling a little bit like you're there-- you get the same sense of anticipation, the same sense of piecing together things from what you see and hear, except other people are your eyes and ears, and you can have a hundred eyes and a hundred ears, all in different places, seeing and hearing different things.
But none of this really hit home for me until this weekend, and not because of "important" news like a shooting or an earthquake. It hit home because I've been following the #asylm tag on Twitter-- the "official" tag for UK Supernatural convention Asylum 3. We sent the folks at Asylum flyers for the registration packs, and donated copies of In the Hunt for the auction, and have a vendor selling copies in the dealer's room, which is (mostly) why I started watching the tag. But I kept watching because it was riveting. (You can check it out for yourself here.)
Friday's registration was a mess-- lines upon lines, and individually no one knew what was going on. But one person in one part of the line would ask a question, and someone else a few dozen or hundred feet away would supply the answer. Someone would spot a guest and pass the word down the line. Panels started, and when audience members relayed quotes they were taken up, repeated, commented on. Photos started trickling in, and links to vids.
And it wasn't just what was happening (what people said, what people did) that showed up, watching the twitter feed. You could see reactions-- and not just of the people there, but of the other people watching the feed, as they commented and retweeted. The "important moments"-- the ones that captured people's attention and imagination -- were clear almost immediately. And maybe what remains important will change as time passes, but to see that process taking place, to see a community making decisions like that, in real-time, was just . . . kind of incredible.
If I were not so out of practice lj-ing, this is the point at which I would draw some sort of very insightful conclusion about the news. Instead, I'm going to go catch up on the #asylm twitters I missed while writing this. :)
What it seems like is happening here (at least to my non-journalist mind) is that one of the traditional functions of the news-- speedy reporting of things-that-are-happening-now(ish)-- has been essential usurped. In a world that has Twitter, etc., even online outlets' stories become recaps, rather than breaking news. That doesn't mean those recaps aren't worthwhile; it just means they're slow. And that sometimes its more important that an event be reported quickly than reported thoroughly or even well.
That's not all that's happening, of course. There are other clear benefits (and detractions) to the spread of news via Twitter. My favorites (given my personal post-modern bent) are that you can 1) get first-person perspectives directly, from the source (the role of a retweeter is, if you think about it, a lot like that of a traditional journalist: collecting a source's perspective, and distributing it to a larger audience); and 2) access a veritable kaleidoscope of those perspectives, which lets you build a more multi-dimensional "picture" of the event the way you might build an object via sonar. Between these two things, you end up feeling a little bit like you're there-- you get the same sense of anticipation, the same sense of piecing together things from what you see and hear, except other people are your eyes and ears, and you can have a hundred eyes and a hundred ears, all in different places, seeing and hearing different things.
But none of this really hit home for me until this weekend, and not because of "important" news like a shooting or an earthquake. It hit home because I've been following the #asylm tag on Twitter-- the "official" tag for UK Supernatural convention Asylum 3. We sent the folks at Asylum flyers for the registration packs, and donated copies of In the Hunt for the auction, and have a vendor selling copies in the dealer's room, which is (mostly) why I started watching the tag. But I kept watching because it was riveting. (You can check it out for yourself here.)
Friday's registration was a mess-- lines upon lines, and individually no one knew what was going on. But one person in one part of the line would ask a question, and someone else a few dozen or hundred feet away would supply the answer. Someone would spot a guest and pass the word down the line. Panels started, and when audience members relayed quotes they were taken up, repeated, commented on. Photos started trickling in, and links to vids.
And it wasn't just what was happening (what people said, what people did) that showed up, watching the twitter feed. You could see reactions-- and not just of the people there, but of the other people watching the feed, as they commented and retweeted. The "important moments"-- the ones that captured people's attention and imagination -- were clear almost immediately. And maybe what remains important will change as time passes, but to see that process taking place, to see a community making decisions like that, in real-time, was just . . . kind of incredible.
If I were not so out of practice lj-ing, this is the point at which I would draw some sort of very insightful conclusion about the news. Instead, I'm going to go catch up on the #asylm twitters I missed while writing this. :)