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.
This just in, the International Space Station was recently equipped with full internet access.
Refresh for more details at 11.
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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.
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!
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
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?
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.
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.
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