Why many news organizations use Twitter as an RSS feed.

There are  certain realities in social media interaction for serious, trusted brands, such as news organizations, political parties and nonprofits, where sophisticated layers of branding—including sensitivities surrounding appearance of bias—are concerned.

Every decision to follow, retweet, reply, list, #FF and smiley face other users can be deconstructed for bias.

This isn’t helpful where journalistic integrity is required.

Social interactions—for instance, “supporting” someone by retweeting them; following—actually muddy transparency, because they imply relationships where potentially only information gathering or “listening” occur.

This appearance sometimes can’t be made balanced by following “both sides”, as not everyone’s on Twitter.

When news orgs don’t tweet you back, don’t take it personally.

Some news organizations policy is noninteraction—basically treating twitter as an RSS feed & not participating in the social aspects. You’ll see many more followers than followed, and no retweets/@ replies. Why might they do this? 

• They’re letting the quality, speed & accuracy of reported news be the product, as opposed to ancillary conversations built around it.
• They’re building up their reporters as trustworthy touchpoints.
• They’re preventing unconfirmed reports from being lent the weight of their brand.
• They’re conscious of the appearance of bias.
• They won’t benefit from nor have the capacity to engage in becoming mired in endless opinion-based arguments.
• They don’t want to demonstrate editorial bias towards the most sensational (ie, most talked-about or retweetable) content.

Twitter knows it’s branding bread is buttered on the “realtime news network” side.

People are pondering Pulitzers for Twitter reporting. Twitter’s pitch is that you’ll have instant news based on your interests, not social interactions.

Pew Research Centre for People & the Press reported in in December 2010 that  55% of Twitter users post links to news. Personal currency on Twitter is largely linked to sharing news, either “first” or curated for niche relevance.

Can news orgs increase followership with social media chit chat?

Sure. I’ve done it for a major news outlet. But the above reasons/risks outline why it may not be worth the effort for already strong brands. Training reporters to engage, investigate & report in real time is often a better use of the new media budget.

News orgs have a privileged place on Twitter—they have what people want. They’re the “media” in “social media”, you know? Their job is to provide information to the public, not chat about it.

That’s the job of informed citizens

Do you expect to interact with news organizations on Twitter?

The debate: do you want news orgs to use Twitter as RSS feeds & just deliver the headlines, or do you hope someone’s listening when current events get you riled up?

Prompted by a tweet to local that wondered if there was a headline-only feed (news “without all the adverts/soft news stories”), I polled my tweeps to see what they’re looking for in the tweets coming from big brand news accounts.

The unscientific result: close to a tie with the slight edge to people expecting interaction from this particular medium, citing the variety of options (RSS, apps) to get straight headlines.

Hypothesis: the mainstream #media feeds social media. What do you think? [Infographic]

My supposition here is that in today’s information culture, the mainstream media (MSM) are still an important conduit for information. They take raw information and give it the context that years of newsgathering provides, and the clout of accuracy commiserate with the individual media org’s brand. Amateur media adds a layer of commentary, repackaging MSM’s contribution and feeding it out to the social streams, where it’s reblogged and shared.

Does this graphic work* for you? Am I missing anything? Let me know your thoughts on MSM’s place in the infosystem.

The dotted lines represent MSM making it straight to FB/Twitter, which I suspect doesn’t happen much on the reblogging platforms (Tumblr & Posterous) because it’s not beautiful/pithy (too much context).

* A funny comment on information quality—what MSM represents—is that Google will return this graphic to people without the context where I’m saying “this is a draft; what do you think?”, unavoidably making me contribute to the unverified information that characterizes an unmediated internet. Sorry about that. What am I going to do, stamp ‘draft’ across it?

Personalizing the web will make us stupider

Facebook has taken the web-swallowing step of adding a personalization platform, Open Graph, to as much of the web as will allow it. This means ads and content will be targeted according to your Facebook profile.

Yikes. The web shouldn’t be personalized for me. Here’s why:

1. My interests don’t encompass everything important that happens. The news is what is new and valuable for me to know to understand the world, but I’m not the best judge of that, nor are my Facebook interests a predictor of it. I prefer to rely on the professional judgment of news directors, editors, and journalists to make sure I know what’s up across the globe, not just in my narrow band of interest.

2. I keep very limited info on Facebook out of privacy concerns, and what is there may not reflect my real interests. I might fan a page because it belongs to a friend and I want to support them, or because I’m trying to win a contest.

3. Part of what I’m doing on the web is looking for new things I don’t know I want to find. Serendipity, syntopic analysis, and random discovery make you smarter. Finding more of the same, however novel, doesn’t.

4. I don’t want my biases confirmed or my stereotypes perpetuated. Feeding me what I like surrounds me with people who think like I do, talk like I do, and know what I know. The more insular our thinking and the fewer challenges presented to it, the more homogenous, boring, and satisfied we become. That’s not who I want to be.

5. My friends aren’t that bright either. (Just kidding, guys). Privileging news on CNN, for instance, that amused or captivated one of my friends would work if I was 14, but I’m an adult with a broad range of acquaintanceships. Their interests aren’t any better a source for my daily news than my own; neither would their shopping habits or music tastes necessarily suit me.

6. It impacts the fun I have on Facebook. I’m increasingly nervous about the things I post there. I lock down as much as I can, and think twice before private messaging anything I don’t want to accidentally show up on my wall due to some “glitch”. Now I have to consider the ramifications of listing a favourite book, as the tentacles of my professed liking spread throughout the web and potentially affect everthing I see and read thereafter. Holy pressure = a lot less fun.

People still want news: on demand, tailored & interactive

Despite all the moaning about dying print publications, people are still eager to absorb daily news. What they expect out of the experience has changed, though, according to a new Pew Research Center report. Now people want multi-platform news on demand, customized, and spreadable.