Journalism

THE RISING TIDE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: REFLECTIONS FROM #EVNSOCIAL | 2015-04-04

It is certainly not the biggest of all surprises that the main substantial takeaway from attending an industry-driven summit on social media trends – organized at the LSE on 26th March thanks to a successful partnership between the European Broadcasting Union and Polis – is the conviction that social media are fundamentally reshaping what it means to do good journalism in the public interest. Probably a little more unexpected was the fact that such an agreement was almost unanimously shared by all stakeholders practicing in the realm of public service broadcasting. That is, the public service entity does in fact represent a category which is not exactly the definition of precursors with regard to adaptations to new innovations, large-scaled reorganizations, and more generally willingness to undertake strategic changes in the media landscape, not least because of their often underestimated burden of having to deliver performance under the pressure of optimizing the use of incomes generated by the license fees paid by the respective populations.

Probably the most interesting point coming out of the event was, in my opinion, the inherent juxtaposition between repetitive claims that “there is no such thing as ‘best practice’ in the use of social media” – even comparing it to the art of painting by Mike Mullane, Head of Media Online at EBU – on the one side, and the deep readiness to “philosophically reinvent” the notion of public service on the other side, with the latter process especially emphasized by NRK’s Head of Social Media Ingeborg Volan. In a way, it is as if everyone agrees that for healthy media outlets there is no way of bypassing social media use in the current landscape, but at the same time there are very little existing points of reference that could act as initial guidelines in implementing social media strategies onto traditional editorial processes. I think that this sort of dilemma does nothing more than rising both the excitement and the risk perception on the part of media practitioners willing to invest in social media presences.

Actually, a number of speakers, captained by Director General of Swedish Radio Cilla Benkö as well as BBC News’s Jeremy Skeet, tried to outline some conceptual pillars concerning the initial embracement of social media, addressing particularly the most skeptical ones in the field, expressing in this case that “you really have to be on social media simply because your audience is on social media” or again “social media journalism can and should be fun”. Whether these and similar statements really help in formulating concrete strategies for the use of social media on the part of public service broadcasters is probably to difficult to tell. Rather, it is the enthusiasm and believable conviction manifested by the majority of the speakers when talking about their (current or future) use of social media that should, as it appeared to me, be the best and most honest promotional tool for investing in it.

I really like the suggestive idea that something practically uncontrollable a priori like social media and their impact on content strategies and management are meant to fundamentally reshape a cornerstone of modern secular societies such as the functioning of public service broadcasting. In some ways, some hesitation on the part of the players necessarily affected by its now fully recognized establishment in the digital media universe is partially understandable. Probably to overcome such initial indecisions, if not fears, of journalists about to embark in the social media adventure, Swedish Radio has been clever and kind enough to produce – in my opinion – a very useful as well as publicly accessible Social Media Handbook available as PDF for all those who do not have a single clue on where to start from.

I believe it is fair to say that, if even public service broadcasters have come to the agreement that social media is no longer “the future” but an inescapable, powerful reality that cannot be ignored, it is really time to preach their actual establishment in journalistic practices almost globally (or at least on an European level, judging the countries of origin of the speakers present at the summit). While it is no secret that commercial and private media have already fully invested in social media resources a while ago, at least with regard to the intensity of the investment, there are no excuses left for their colleagues operating in the public service sector to follow the trend and start surfing along on the multiform wave of social media channels. After all, did we not already hear at some in history point that, in the end, a rising tide lifts all the boats?

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

P.s.: this blogpost has also been published on Polis’s blog in a slightly edited form.

#EVNSocial_Image

ARCADE FIRE, PROFESSIONAL GUARDIAN | 2015-03-04

A couple of weeks ago I came across this news story on NME’s website. Not a huge connoisseur of Arcade Fire myself, for I only know a couple of songs pretty good, although I may’ve bought an album somewhen, but nonetheless I really had to read the whole article. In fact, my interest was already captured by the unusual headline used: “Arcade Fire’s Will Butler to write songs based on Guardian news stories”. The article is basically about this new thing the singer-songwriter Will Butler had agreed to do in collaboration with The Guardian from 23rd to 27th February where he’d write and release a song a day based on news stories produced by the liberal UK newspaper.

Well, I think this operation is at the same time very cool and really worrying. I’ve been interested in journalism and all its various forms and developments for a long time and, above all, I do consider it being a fundamental pillar of modern progressive societies, if functioning properly with discrete transparency and accountability. In addition to that, I’m at the moment interning at a journalism and society’s think tank called Polis based at my university (to be specific, I’m taking care of their Twitter profile), so I do feel a bit of a personal duty catalysing me to comment on this featuring.

On the one hand, I honestly see the collaboration as something useful to try out new forms of songwriting and inspiration generation in realms never really tried out before, particularly in an established way. As Butler himself – whose by the way solo debut album “Policy” is due to be released on 16th March via Merge Records – declared in an associated interview: “It’s a cruel thing, but sometimes you read something and think, ‘Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that'”. Thus, if he’s admitting to feel inspired by real-world phenomena and issues, who are we to stop him from doing that? After all, it was even the folk-Lord Bob Dylan himself who involuntarily kicked off his tradition, as he once declared that certain of his songs were actually based on news headlines. Yet, on the other hand, I’d have to ask myself: are songs and especially lyrics not always somehow triggered by what specific artists come across in their everyday life experience, whether consciously or unconsciously? I feel there is no real need to officially frame this process directly by setting up such kinds of collaboration. If one gets inspired by a newspaper’s story, then he/she should just go on and write the piece without feeling obliged to give back something in return or to somehow acknowledge the source of creativity. What is really missing here, for me, is the true point of the overall operation.

However, these may be considerations concerning more the artistic-musical dimension of the relationship. I think one should also be aware that The Guardian itself could really gain something by such a featuring with someone who’s without doubt a really valuable musician. I’m not only talking about a healthy portion of promotion across target audiences (even though I concede that it’s debatable who’s really profiting between Butler and The Guardian on a mere publicity-level). I’m actually also referring to an interesting analysis that could be done of how their news stories can get perceived by someone who’s deployed to turn them into musical pieces. What is being consider relevant? What can be left out? Are such conceptions of values shared across the two parties or is there a big discrepancy in the output? This is exactly where the operation gets really fascinating, in my opinion: to see how something rather static presenting events and facts happening in the world in a journalistic way gets converted into an art effort. Still I think it’s not extremely surprising that The Guardian has come up with something like this. Thus, it’s certainly right to say that the UK newspaper has always been very successful in re-inventing itself both on- and offline as well as in finding new ways to undertake ‘alternative’ approaches to traditional news reporting across time, being it by redesigning specific features, undertaking risky editorial choices, or simply establishing new columns. It’s almost become its recognised trademark, and probably also what it makes it so popular.

For those interested, the result of the featuring between Will Butler and The Guardian’s website can be admired and heard here. I’m not gonna judge on the five songs themselves – after all, this isn’t an ARM blogpost – I really just wanted to let these thoughts out on the overall collaboration. Which, at the end of the day, I’m not really sure if I genuinely like or quietly fear. The answer is probably that since it was The Guardian that was implied, maybe the whole thing doesn’t seem so out of control after all. Great initiative, yet with an obscure goal.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV