11 takeaways from webinar with BBC’s Mark Frankel on how journalists use social media
Mark Frankel, BBC’s assistant editor of social news, was a guest speaker on the latest Cision webinar on How Journalists Use Social Media & What It Means for PR. Mark oversees @BBCBreaking, BBC News on Facebook and Google+ – some of the largest social media accounts for news in the World.
What better person therefore to discuss, challenge and break-down the findings of the latest installment of the Cision Social Journalism Study 2015, which explores the ways that journalists are using social media, charts the changes we’ve seen over the last four years and predicts the trends that will shape the PR-journalist dialogue in the coming months and years.
Here are 11 takeaways from Mark Frankel in the order that they were discussed at the webinar:
1. SJS Finding: Three years ago our study identified five types of social media users among journalists: Architects, Promoters, Hunters, Observers and Sceptics. In 2014 one of the largest groups were the Promoters who are journalists that are using social media to push out their own content.
Social media has become important to brands and news journalists and organisations in general. The idea of putting content on those particular networks in a way to promote other activity has become absolutely central from a news journalists’ perspective. It’s as important for us to be across breaking and developing news and make sure our audiences is aware of the best of our content from minute-to-minute hour-to-hour, as it is to point those followers and fans on those particular platforms to the exclusives, special programs and activity that we are looking to do around particular news events.
2. SJS Finding: Publishing/promoting and sourcing are the two main reasons journalists use social media:
We are as much about looking to highlight particular content on social media as we are about monitoring conversations and feeding back to our audience in different ways on how they are engaging with things. If we were just developing a presence on social media in order to have a fairly linear conversation where everything was about look at that, see this, watch that – you would find that over time your audience would tire of that content.
But it’s also important to have that conversation, certainly from a Facebook point of view when people respond to us and say certain things we are looking for opportunities to reply. We’re looking at Q&As on Twitter and Facebook on a regular basis because they are opportunities to invite correspondents and reporters to engage directly with the audience
It’s up to the audience to decide what they want from the networks they subscribe to and it’s up to us as journalists to enable them to engage with the content in the first place.
3. SJS Finding: 58% of journalists use social media to post original comments on networks and micro-blogging sites.
Different microblogging sites and different networks have different aspirations so if you’re using Instagram or Whatsapp your focus would be very different from how you approach your audience on Facebook or Twitter. All of them have their particular strengths. But what combines them all in different ways is that you have to create something that is engaging and shareable. There is no point producing a series of updates when they can get these updates by going to say the BBC news website. It has to be something that complements their experience not just duplicates the experience they’re already having elsewhere.
4. SJS Finding: 40% of journalists reply to comments in relation to their work on social media.
Replying for bigger organisations, be it brands or in my case news organisation, is very difficult and challenging – and when you have accounts that have millions of followers or fans, it is simply impossible to reply to every single comment. However, there are ways to do it in terms of picking out people with certain klout, looking to do targeted Q&As where you give your audience a specific amount of time to talk directly to one of your correspondents. I think the figure (40%) is low but it’s a challenge.When you do respond directly, I think there has to be a value to the responses. Either you are responding to someone who needs more information because the information you’ve provided is incomplete or they think it’s incomplete, or they’ve noticed something that doesn’t work.
Social media has become integral and instrumental in journalists’ ability to be able to story tell, to news gather, and to be involved in whatever it is they are reporting on a daily basis.
5. SJS Finding: 53% of journalists wouldn’t be able to carry out their work without social media.
Certainly from my perspective and the people I mingle with in BBC and across journalism it is unthinkable that they could be as active, engaged, participatory and informed as they need to be without social media. Social media has become integral and instrumental in their ability to be able to story tell, to news gather, and to be involved in whatever it is they are reporting on a daily basis. If I was asked that question, it would be well over 90% but I think for some people, whether they are brands or other organisations, social media is still something they are experimenting with.
6. SJS Finding: There are growing concerns about the effects it has on privacy, data security and journalistic values
There is certainly a great awareness on privacy and data security concerns, and it has become a big story. As we’re all aware, there have been a number of stories about hacked celebrity and mainstream media accounts. There have been a number of concerns about sharing of data and how social media networks have stored data and that has fed into our journalism, and how we manage our accounts. It also becomes part of the story on how people are using social media.For example, the rise of chat apps is a phenomenon in itself. They’ve been around for sometime but are now big beasts in the social media jungle, far bigger than they were a year or two ago and knocking on the door of Facebook,the largest network in the world. And that reflects some concerns that people have about how social media is working. Some people prefer to use private channels to conduct their social media activity in a non-public forum, and that becomes a greater challenge to us as media organisations or other organisations. We have to try and get into that space without disrupting their willingness and desire to be part of a wider network. So there is a big challenge there. We have to try and find a way to hold a conversation in those spaces.
7. SJS Finding: Social Media is undermining traditional journalistic values
We have to be careful. There’s a lot of noise out there. There are a lot of people that are sharing information who are not necessarily in the best place to do so. They may be a witness to things, they may be central to a conversation that’s going on, and that is relevant to a news organisation and therfore needs to be shared in some way. But equally there are a number of people who are looking to disrupt and traditional news organisations have a big part to play in helping to guide, helping to verify, helping to be selective if you like – to say these are conversations that matter, these are the conversations that are interesting, here is something that is a new perspective that we’ve found via social media that we’ve checked out and found interesting. We need to use social media as a tool in our armory as journalists. We should not be looking at it as a be-all and end-all – it is not to replace our instincts as journalists. We still need to question what we’re told and pursue the truth where we find it, and we still need to be honest and open about the things we’ve discovered or not discovered.
8. SJS Finding: PRs are the number one source for journalists
There’s a lot of organisation channeling for attention and the fact that PR tops the list is not surprising because PRs are going to be more committed, more aware of the power of social media than anyone else because they can see the benefit of being able to sell and develop a narrative around something.
9. SJS Finding: Email remains top communications for PRs to get in contact with journalists, followed by phone and social media
When I do get contacted I see they come partly via social media, partly via email. Probably more email than social media at the moment.
10. Is social media for everyone? For every news organisation? And will they all benefit to a similar degree?
Whether they benefit to a similar degree depends entirely on how they use it. You can be active on social media but to be effective on it it amounts to how you resource it, how you prioritise your social media networks, how you write on the different platforms because every network has a different style and tone. There are huge amounts of media organisations now who have made social media a big part of what they do. We’re all using it but it is about how engaged their audience is as a consequence of what they are doing which is absolutely the key. I’m not sure if everyone is measuring their performance – daily and weekly against their competitors in a way that would allow them to grow and develop.
We should not be looking at social media as a be-all and end-all – it is not to replace our instincts as journalists. We still need to question what we’re told and pursue the truth where we find it, and we still need to be honest and open about the things we’ve discovered or not discovered.
11. Isn’t there a pressure to keep up with breaking news, where there’s a rush to get the news out first, often does undermine journalistic values?
There is obviously a priority to be quick with breaking developing news – no media org would ever say otherwise. I would challenge back certainly from where I sit within the BBC that it’s critical to us that we don’t tell our audience things that we haven’t substantiated or verified. If we start to tell a story that is developing and there is a narrative on social media that we are very clear to them that these are unsubstantiated reports and that we are looking into the veracity of them I’m not sure I can talk on other media organisations and their approaches to it.
Breaking news by definition is confusing and and people are not always aware of the truth and they are looking to journalists and media organisations to give the some kind of perspective. I think it’s a challenge to us all but I don’t think it is undermining – that would be tantamount to saying we shouldn’t be using it because it can only disrupt, it can only mislead us, and I think that’s too far in my mind.
Social media is all too often unsubstantiated gossip controlled by those who want to control what the media is told. It’s great as a source, the problem is too many rely on it as their only source. It’s the same as talking to a contact over a coffee or in the pub without the follow up questioning conversation. I’d love to know any story the BBC broke through Twitter or Facebook that wasn’t deliberately fed to them.
Hi Paul, thanks for writing in – it’s a good point you make there. And you’re right, it is often the off-the-cuff conversations in the pub/coffee shops and social media that yield the best leads for journalists. But as Mark pointed out, it’s eventually up to journalists to decipher what they are fed and separate the gossip from news. Will pass on your query to Mark though.