Media ShiftsThe marriage (and divorce) of content and technology

Content in the 21st centuryTraditional media relied on traditional modes of delivery: free

papers, subscriptions, some cross-promotions between media outlets

The Internet shifted these models, requiring traditional media to adopt new modes of circulation, in large part through social media

This lead to new modes of tracking: page views, viral stats, trend-spotting, as well a new modes of considering “engagement”

This also created a greater push for UG—user-generated content as the Internet created opportunities for “everyone” to fill roles previously held by professionals.

Industry ShiftsYou can’t create anything without the story itself, but in the

wild west of the Internet, “story” became “content”This lead to the creation of many companies (some

thriving, some to-be-seen) that look at ways to both leverage content and help content creators “package” and share their work

Content creators suddenly didn’t mean just professional journalists, but anyone with Internet access could upload a video, live Tweet a story, write something, post something on FB etc. etc.

As with most things, there’s good sides to this and perhaps less good sides.

UGC“Amateur Footage” report studied eight

channels using UGC content for 21 days, eight hours a day, to analyze usage: was it used, in what form, credited as such

They found only used when nothing else was available, but did not consistently label it as UGC

From the Report“Over the past decade some of the world’s most important news stories have been covered using photographs or video shot by eyewitnesses. From photos taken on camera phones by passengers being led to safety through the underground tunnels in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings on July 7, 2005, to the videos of police shooting protestors in Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in early 2014, UGC has become an increasingly regular feature of news output both on television and the Web.”

Main ConclusionsThat UGC is used consistently by news sources,

although mostly when no other content is available

Has been used greatly to cover the war in SyriaIs often un-credited as such

Why is this problematic? Or potentially problematic?

Internet and Truth“In a 2008 book, I argued that the internet

would usher in a “post-fact” age. Eight years later, in the death throes of an election that features a candidate who once led the campaign to lie about President Obama’s birth, there is more reason to despair about truth in the online age.”

—Farhad Manjoo, Nov. 2, The New York Times, “How the Internet is Loosening our Grip on the Truth”

I blame FacebookBecause it’s its fault:“Hyperpartisan political Facebook pages and websites

are consistently feeding their millions of followers false or misleading information, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. The review of more than 1,000 posts from six large hyperpartisan Facebook pages selected from the right and from the left also found that the least accurate pages generated some of the highest numbers of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook — far more than the three large mainstream political news pages analyzed for comparison.” —Buzzfeed,

Advice: Triple-CheckDon’t blame “the media.” Check, recheck and check

again when you come across content. Check its sourcing. Use online tools to do so.

And, yes, Snopes is a good source.Exercise for today: We are going to go into the lab.

You are going to look on your social media networks and find a story on Snopes. Read through its analysis. See if you can also follow the trail of the story. Then be prepared to share the story in class. Would you have believed it without verification? What were some signs you should or should not have?

On the other hand…Storyful

Storyful: international company. “There’s never been a better time to be a storyteller.”

Merging of technology, journalism and social media; it was founded by journalists

Storyful describes itself as the first social news agency

What they doStoryful’s golden rule is that there is always

someone closer to the story. We are not experts in every subject. We find the people who are.

When they discover compelling content – video, photos, maps or tweets – Storyful journalists search for the key details, data and context that will help clients safely use the content in their broadcasts or on their websites. Storyful delivers a range of hand-curated and automated content feeds through a web dashboard or directly into a client’s content management system (CMS).

What they say they do Engagement with the member of the community who shared the video

in an effort to establish the identity of the original uploader. Translation of every word that comes with a video for additional

context. Review of the uploader’s history to see whether he/she has shared

useful and credible content in the past, or if he/she is simply ‘scraping’ other people’s videos.

Use of Google street view/maps/satellite imagery to help verify the locations in a video.

Consultation with other news sources to confirm events in a video happened as they were described.

Examination of key features in a video such as weather and background landscape to see if they match known facts on the ground.

Let’s look at two examplesTracking down someone who uploaded a video a

t a One Direction showVerification of contentSpotting content with viral potential for news org

anizations

Not the only onesAmnesty International now has a

Citizen Evidence Lab, designed to help anyone investigate the veracity of online videos.

The site also has a toolbox of verification resources to look at maps, images and more.

Includes a verification exercise, which I’m hoping we will have time to do possibly next week.

Lots of other tools; for now: Checkdesk

At the same time…While UGC grows along with the industry around

it, so do tools for professional “content creators,” including journalists:

Tools for finding information and dataTools for publishing and sharing stories

MuckRock“MuckRock is a collaborative news site that gives you the tools to keep our government transparent and accountable.”Two tools for reporters and citizens are FOIA and state information laws. In NM, those laws are called IPRA and OMAMuckrock helps individual citizens and reporters file requests, but also crowdfunds requests for larger projects

Trend toward collaborative gatekeeping

ProPublica:

“ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”

BackgroundProPublica was founded by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. It is now led by Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of The Oregonian and former investigative editor of The New York Times, and Richard Tofel, the former assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal.“It is true that the number and variety of publishing platforms are exploding in the Internet age. But very few of these entities are engaged in original reporting. In short, we face a situation in which sources of opinion are proliferating, but sources of facts on which those opinions are based are shrinking. The former phenomenon is almost certainly, on balance, a societal good; the latter is surely a problem.”

ProjectsAward-winning stories on topics

ranging from rape to police to workman’s compReport and publish stories with deep

investigations and rich in dataOffer these for free under licensing that allows

them to be reused and adapted for local use by other publications

Provides its data, for free when it comes from a public source

Platforms for Content Last but not least, new platforms for presenting content, increasingly

focused on creation vs. metrics“Medium is a vibrant network of thinkers who care about the world and making it better —  through their craft, their stories, and their ideas. More than a network of thinkers, though, Medium is a network of thought. Connecting people together increases their knowledge and capabilities. Connecting ideas together increases their value, as well. Medium is not for everybody, but it’s open to everybody. It encourages participation and a diversity of opinion. Anyone can earn influence on Medium via the value of their ideas, thoughtfulness of their responses, or quality of their rhetoric.” Medium: Prioritizes presentation Prioritizes interaction and community Used to offer writing prompts

Atavist“Atavist was founded by Evan (a writer), Nick (an editor), and Jeff (a programmer) back in 2011, when conventional wisdom held that “the end of the attention span” was upon us and that “the death of longform” was imminent. Together with the diverse and talented team of developers, editors, designers, and other creative folk now gathered at Atavist HQ in Brooklyn, we believed instead that the web could be a thriving home for deeper stories, beautiful design, and innovative publications. So we built a software platform to make it all possible, and a magazine to show how it’s done.”

Atavist ExamplesAtavist is used by a spectrum of creators: from

professional journalists to everyday writers/photographers

Also offers tiered plans and publication options; newish Facebook integration

Is a software/platform for everyone, and then uses its own software to publish its own award-winning magazine.

Won a National Magazine award for Love and Ruin

For your projectFirst: Sign up for AtavistYou can upload your story in Word Doc, but not

PDF; you can also copy and pasteUse as many of the available multimedia

elements as possible: video, audio, photographyAtavist is essentially an online CMS:

let’s take a tourHere’s how it looks, but you’ll want to play

around; it’s very user friendly.

Next WeekIn class, work on putting together as much of

your Atavist project as possible. They’ll be evaluated for your use of its tools—but that doesn’t mean just dump a bunch of stuff in it.

You will ultimately share your Atavist piece via a link on your blog, and it will be part of your final web portfolio

As we move toward the end of the semester, you’ll also want to start thinking about finalizing your web portfolio.

Finalizing Web Portfolio Clean up any existing work for typos or edits Make final Instagram essay on “Wild Card” topic Finish your Atavist project Write a brief (500 words) intro to your blog that discusses your use of

these tools this semester. Post this on your blog under your “About” Prepare to present your portfolio in class on Dec. 7. All portfolios should

be finished by Dec. 7. Everyone is responsible for looking at each blog prior to presentations and coming with comments and questions. You will have time in class the week prior (Nov. 30) to work on these as well.

Presentation will include showing your work, discussing how you feel it succeeded/ challenges/ how the format used worked/didn’t work with the material. This will include us watching all your videos in class that day, which I will have prepared in advance.

Final PaperYou will be analyzing the ways in which Serial

and In Cold Blood make use of various elements of creative nonfiction.

As a reminder, we will have a seminar on the final day of class and listen to the final episode of Serial together prior to discussing.

So you have some time, but the final paper parameters are on the website if you want to start thinking about it.