Social media and the BBC World Affairs team
Social media has transformed how news organisations and journalists find stories. It’s an essential newsgathering tool, especially for foreign correspondents who are unable to travel during the current COVID-19 pandemic and need to find out what is happening on the ground in locations around the world.
You can’t beat your sources, but social media has connected people and given us an opportunity to talk, share opinions and situations that we find ourselves in.
Social media and misinformation
The sheer volume of people who are now on social and messaging groups has meant that it has also become a key battleground for state actors who want to set their geopolitical narrative by influencing opinion and reputations. In ‘nation-branding’, social media is an essential tool and not just to establish positive reputations, but also sow distrust and misinformation, something that the UK Government’s recent Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) ‘Russia report’ raised.
Social Media and journalism
But with media organisations battling for eye-balls, it has also become a key battleground for driving engagement in the consumption of content and news. Competition can be fierce between established news organisations as they try to survive. At the same time, social media has enabled people to brand themselves as pseudo-journalists and providers of alternative viewpoints. Social media has disrupted not just the media landscape, but our own understanding of what journalism and facts are. That is an issue that needs to be fixed.
In this new landscape, the BBC has been accused of being obsessed with Twitter, with the former Head of BBC TV News Roger Mosey echoing the view in a recent Sunday Times comment piece that Twitter has made the internal culture at the corporation, “adversarial, more argumentative, more combative, more polarised and sometimes toxic.” He might be right, but at the same time, Twitter and other social media channels are essential for delivering news and content to wide audience groups. Social media has also become a go-to place for newsgathering. It is often the place for breaking news.
The BBC started using social media over 10 years ago. Its User-Generated-Content (UGC) team has been in place for even longer. Its reputation for newsgathering and reporting precedes it. Yes, some will criticise it and on occasions, impartiality in reporting can be questioned. But context needs to be gathered to see what the culture is in others newsrooms and with the wider public.
BBC World Affairs team use of social media during the Covid-19 pandemic
I recently spoke with the BBC’s Senior World Affairs Producer Stuart Hughes, about the challenges of social media and how he and the foreign affairs team have had to adapt to life online to deliver news during this COVID pandemic.
Stuart shared some great insight into how the team works and how they use social media for newsgathering. He also talked about data journalism and messaging and how influencers and decision-makers have become more available to talk through private channels like WhatsApp.
Stuart and I talked about:
How the team works and how COVID-19 has changed news gathering and reporting
The rise of data journalism
Verifying news and the processes
Misinformation and the battles for setting national narratives
How experts, public relations and communications professionals engage with them.
Stuart has over 25 years experience and is somebody with great insight and knowledge.
A key point that Stuart makes is that breaking news no longer happens on the wires. It can start on social media.
In fact, ten years ago (Yes, 10 YEARS AGO!!), after spending some time in newsrooms learning about their workings, I delivered a presentation at the Social Media World Forum Asia conference in Singapore entitled, ‘Social Media: First for breaking news.’ Social was first for breaking news then. It is the same now.
Social media today is more than just a place for promotion, it is also a place for battle and through which opinions, perceptions and reputations can be shaped.
