Slashdot Mirror
News Experiment To Rely Only On Facebook, Twitter
snydeq writes "With a setup ripped right out of a reality show — or, perhaps more fittingly, The Shining — a French-language public broadcasters association will put five journalists in a French farmhouse for five days, giving them no access to newspapers, television, radio, or the Internet, save Facebook and Twitter, to see how much world news they can report. The reporters will report this news on a communal blog. 'Our aim is to show that there are different sources of information and to look at the legitimacy of each of these sources,' said France Inter editor Helene Jouan. 'This experiment will enable us to take a hard look at all the myths that exist about Facebook and Twitter.'"
By following all the major news Twitter's, they will get a stream of information on what's happening, and then they can post the snippets of what they know on Facebook. Their friends on the outside can send them the full stories though Facebook's message system. Nothing of interest here, move along.
They get up to the second updates on the world of Pop Entertainment via Twitter
They get a confusingly clouded understanding of what happens in the worlds of politics via everyones facebook rantings.
dreaming up "news" on their own? somebody get a Predator warmed up, we got a target... .
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
http://www.xkcd.com/574/
Hostes futuri sint socii.
Apparently, they can get plenty of news (or at least stuff that matters) just by following slashdot's twitter feed. They should be just fine!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
See, when I think about myths regarding various things, I think of drugs, history, Greek heroes, and fisherman-eating orcas. Regarding Facebook and Twitter, however, I couldn't give a rat's patoot. Those who use the technologies have an understanding of how they work, and those who don't... don't. Those who don't may well make up a spiel to sound as though they know, much as applies to a lot of cases in life... including l'intarweb, mes amis. Mix a publicity scheme with an attempt to get the journalists to go online, shake in a little bit of fake discernment, and voila! A news experiment!
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
This just in, the International Space Station was recently equipped with full internet access.
Refresh for more details at 11.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
competition to experiment with drugs on facebook and twitter mines you!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Now why would they want do this!!!
As a news junky, I associate with other news junkies of various stripes. My Facebook Feed reads like an amalgamation of Fox News, CNN, BBC, Slashdot and The National Enquirer. Put me in there with my friends list intact, and I'd probably be able to replace HLN. I assume it's a similar deal with these journalists. Try it with a random sample of people and get back to me.
All social networking and no news makes Jacques a dull boy.
All social networking and no news makes Jacques a dull boy.
All social networking and no news makes Jacques a dull boy.
All social networking and no news makes Jacques a dull boy.
All social networking and no news makes Jacques a dull boy.
b
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Barely researched information and lots and lots of opinion.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wait, so they'll be reporting straight from the sources, without the bias of others' reportings?
Isn't this just doing their jobs!?
Jacques could really use some help fertilizing their crops in FarmVille!
Renee just found some Treasured Golden Mystery Eggs and wants to say thank you!
Their first story will probably be that they've killed themselves.
That would probably be my reaction, anyway.
Canonical example.
While I do get a lot of news from Facebook, it's almost always just in the form of a headline, short summary, and a link to the article.
Most of the friends I have rarely make more than a short comment about whatever they're posting on... just a "passing this on" kind of note.
So, I fail to see how this is going to produce anything other than "We know this happened, but we're awfully short on details."
But I look forward to being wrong.
-David
So well see news like this?:
In breaking news, Rob admitted he cheated on Katie, but Katie has dumped Rob, changed her status to single, and Mike is hitting on Katie on her wall hoping for a rebound hookup... Michelle is also flirting with Katie, and Katies friends are calling Rob a pig. Rob has threatened Katie with 'those pics'. We'll keep you updated as news comes to hand
Why would someone rely on FB or Twits for news? Really, there is a place for everything, and these ain't for collecting news.
That's what slashdot is for... :p
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
FTA, "to see whether they can effectively report on the news by using Twitter and Facebook, and nothing else."
Does this mean that they can't click links to other websites? If so, that's stupid.
What good is news if it can't cite any sources? Is your bibliography filled with 1000 entries pointing to Twitter?
But if they could access other websites, then they would pretty much have access to the whole Internet. So, I doubt that's what they are doing. Nope, they are doing it the stupid way.
FTA, "Our aim is to show that there are different sources of information and to look at the legitimacy of each of these sources,"
So, they are trying to determine the validity of Facebook and Twitter as news sources while removing one of the things that makes them great news sources. That is, their ability to link to actual news sites.
Ok then, maybe they are trying to figure out if Facebook and Twitter (with its 140 character limit) are legitimate new sources. Well, whether or not they are capable of reporting the news, they are not a "great news source". You could cut n' paste anything into Twitter. So this whole thing is mute. Twitter could report the news just fine. But so could email, or SMS messaging, or packet radio. But these are not "great news sources". They are just another way to get data.
But social networking websites have value not only because of the large userbase, but also because of their ability to link to the Internet. Therefore, by cutting out "The Internet" from this experiment, they will not be able to answer the question, "Are Facebook and Twitter useful news sources?" They are part of the Internet. You can't separate them from it.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Isn't that kind of the point?
Whenever someone tries to defend twitter as a legitimate "news source", it's trivial to actually go to, say, the Irianian or Mumbai pages -- which at the moment seem to be the two big prizes -- and show that really, nothing of any consequence was "tweeted" at all. The feeds themselves are devoid of context, and usually second- or third-hand reports of what some guy who wasn't even there thinks is going on based on -- you guessed it -- actual news sources, but without any of the context or detail of the actual news sources. They rarely amount to anything more than "Situation bad, everyone is fighting."
In an experiment like this, if they're not allowed to click links, it really takes the wind out of the sails of twitter defenders who like to pretend there's any meaningful information on twitter.
Of course, it's at this point where the twitter defender will furiously backpedal, explaining that while twitter might not be news as such, it's useful like RSS, to get a stream of links about where to find news.
At this point, though, the battle is over, as far as I'm concerned, since the question then becomes: Why do I need a bunch of anonoymous nobodies spamming random hearsay about where to find news? I can turn on the TV / radio / check various news websites just as easily as they can, thanks. And I can do it without having to guess at what asinine garbage this or that "bit.ly" or other cutesy 2.0 linkrotter is going to end up.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
5 days hardly seems long enough to conduct a serious study. You have to take into account the fact that these journalists are going to be working in an environment completely different from what they're used to. It's going to take them a while to adapt to being cut off from their regular tools before they can report anything properly, assuming that it's possible at all.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
. . . in a French farmhouse for five days, giving them no access to newspapers, television, radio, or the Internet. . .
Sounds like the perfect vacation, but a little short.
All play and no work makes Jacques a dull reporter.
All play and no work makes Jacques a dull reporter.
All play and no work makes Jacques a dull reporter.
All play and no work makes Jacques a dull reporter.
Isn't this called the E! network?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
This won't tell us anything about twitter or facebook. We are aware these aren't valid news sources.
What it does highlight is if the stuff they come up with is the same as regular journalism... then regular journalism has been proven to be completely worthless.
PS: I don't know why people read anything who's citation is anything other than scholarly papers, news wires...... that's it. And they should all link to their source... in case I want to read the paper or listen to recordings taken by AP/Reuters. If you are citing a newspaper in your blog or another blog you are playing a horrible game of information telephone. And your product is shit.
They are sending in *journalists* which makes its a pretty-poorly controlled study. They are using a group of people whose profession is threatened by these online services. Its like asking Encyclopedia Britannica employees to evaluate Wikipedia.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
They should be right at home then - that sounds just like the traditional media.
Most stories are actually propagated from news reported elsewhere - obviously someone must write them originally, but a significant amount of "news" is just as you describe. And it has the same capability for the story getting diluted and transmogrified. At least bloggers, facebook users etc have the decency to either link to their source, or rewrite it in their own words. In the media, stories are just plagiarised, often with trivial word rearrangements in a petty attempt to make it look like their own words. And occasionally news stories are reported originally on the likes of blogs, Facebook etc.
Mod parent up:
+1 Abso-fucking-lutely right on the money.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
There are two sorts of news. One is the stuff you find in cheapo rags like "Metro" and the other free newspapers. Also when you read news.google.com, the reuters and associated press feeds.
This is the news of what people want you to hear. Press statements as it were.
But the second meaning of news, as in information, reporting, investigation, that you won't get. That is the author of an article using his/her experience and wisdom to question the information that was fed to him and dig deeper.
NEWS: RIAA claims piracy costs 1 gazillion dollars.
news: RIAA claims piracy costs more money then exists in the world and they do this while their members reported record profits just last week, how come?
The first is easy, there is always someone somewhere willing to put out a press release, the second is incredibly hard and expensive and has a limited market because it needs an audience that wants to think.
A good example of this was in "Spits" a dutch free rag. X percentage of young people feel that Wilders (a controversial right-wing politician on a crusade against Islam) should be prosecuted. Small detail, the poll was run by FunX (a so-called multi-cultural station that does NOT broadcast Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Japanese, Korean, African music) and Maroc.nl (a site aimed at marrocan immigrants). Gosh, what an unbiased source... but the reprinted press-release did NOT mention the specific background of those who were polled making it instead appear that it was a an average sample.
Now a GOOD reporter would have asked about this because he WOULD have remembered other polls such as one reporting that Wilders has a lot of support among young people, especially of course white... So what is the truth? I don't know and the news ain't telling me.
It would be like polling americans opinion about Obama, by asking Fox viewers... lots of news but truth?
Good reporting is essential, because PR managers have become very skilled at twisting their press-releases to say what they want to say, even if the facts are completely different.
Such as the harm piracy does to media companies that just happen to increase their profits each year.
If you were to use Twitter, you would get the same quality information feed as a press-release (none) AND loose the ability to verify on top of that. How do you KNOW the person claiming X is actually the person he claims to be? Do you only accept a fact if a LOT of people repeat it? Oh goodie, then it is now a fact that you can't get pregnant if you were a virgin...
This experiment is to real news-gathering what the earlier article about that guy in his shed was to real astronomy. Sorry, those pictures might look pretty, but they are NOT scientifically useful anymore. And the news you get from Twitter might very fast and numerous, but it doesn't have the ability to dig deeper, to examine, to question, to investigate.
The odd thing is that a lot of people in Holland now can and do easily read THREE newspapers, (Spits, Metro, De Pers) but end up knowing less then if they read the rag "Telegraaf" (think Fox-news without the integrity) because even if it was shallow and biased, it at least sometimes digged down (to be fair, "De Pers" does try but still fails to ask the "killer question" that can so easily rip apart most press-releases).
I remember an old TV-journalist, (for the dutch, the bald guy who did the news magazine for Veronica) who could really tear apart the person he was questioning, taking what they said and ripping it to shreds to expose their lies and true motives... Jerremy Paxman used to be like this for the brits. Nowadays it news interviews seem close to talk shows on late-night. All about making the guest look good and carefully not touch on anything that might expose them.
To bad, the world needs good reporting. Less news, more digging.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Lets use slashdot, the EMP gun article.
News facts according to slashdot:
I would go on, but you can read the comments yourself and feel your brain start to rot.
Twitter is a news source for the people who think an SMS message service can predict the gender of your baby.
Twitter is the proof democracy is a bad thing. Every man a voice and this is what you get.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your Tuesday evening reality TV show!
What's it called again? Oh wait, I could never tell them apart in the first place </snark>