Pilfering Twitter user updates may soon replace speaking with the man on the street, if some journalists have their way. Twittering may be the hot new social networking trend all the cool kids are doing nowadays but it’s also proving to be an excellent information mine for lazy journalists in an age where traditional media struggles to keep up with the rise of online citizen journalism.
Now let me preface this by saying I am a Twitter addict. As a journalist and, well, as a geek, I use mine every single day as a monologue for my own thought process, as a way to connect with the people I know and as a way to find new people with whom I might obsess over the same TV show or latest gadget. You can use it anywhere – online, via phone applications, and through SMS. In 140 characters, you can delve into deep philosophical thoughts, link to websites or articles you like, tell people what you had for breakfast or complain to the rest of the world about the bad odor emanating from the person sitting next to you on the bus.
The latest trend in social networking has also been beneficial to journalists. When the attacks in Mumbai occurred last year, people Twittered the latest information from their local area, when the Airbus went down in the Hudson River in New York earlier this month, a man who Twittered a photo taken from his iPhone on the ferry over to the crash site was contacted within minutes by CNN and went on to a live to air interview from the scene of the crash. It’s clear that Twitter is a tool that journalists can and should use as a source of information. However, where do we draw the line?
What isn’t a good use of Twitter by journalists and is, frankly, purely lazy journalism is using Twitters as vox pops. During the Obama inauguration, Twitter was in a frenzy and a number of news outlets reported on the running commentary of Twitter users watching the inauguration both positive and negative, quoting user comments in their entirety. This is something that has been repeated in Australia recently with a heatwave sweeping over the south eastern side of Australia in the past week. The Sydney Morning Herald online, under the headline ‘Heatwave gets them all aTwitter’ reported a number of Twitter users’ tweets about the weather verbatim (spelling mistakes included) with little else added by the journalist himself in the article.
Numerous Melburnians revealed themselves going into shock as the mercury rose through the day.
One user, gogglezombie, said: “Walk halfway to worked. Heatsroke & vomit. Call in sick. Typical Melbourne summer day.”
Just an hour or so earlier, melaniesays wrote: “Its Freeking 40 Degrees outside! MELBOURNE?? since when does it get hot here.”
This article would have amounted to the journalist (or AAP in conjunction with the journalist in this case) lazing around at the office, trying to come up with environment stories, looking out the window and noticing it’s hot. From then it’s purely a case of going to Twitter, and searching along the lines of ‘hot’, ‘weather’, ‘heat’ or any of those combinations within the Melbourne area. And voila! with a few copy and pastes, he’s got his very own article up on the Sydney Morning Herald website and the Twitter users, possibly unbeknownst to them, are now commentators on all things meteorological!
I sincerely hope this is not the future of the Vox Pop. It’s lazy journalism and hardly representative of a wide spectrum of views within the community. In the days of talking to the man on the street, you wouldn’t expect to know what his opinion on a topic is. In the age of Twitter Vox Pops, you can just search until you find one that agrees with the article you’re writing.
And then there’s the privacy issue. While Twitter users would be aware that their tweets are out in the open for all to see and hear unless they are limited only to those with whom they are friends, they might find their tweets being taken out of context and spread to an audience far beyond that which the original user intended. Users should not have to protect their own tweets from snooping layabout journalists because it cuts them off from an amazing social network that is growing every single day. So please, think before you steal that tweet journalists.
Image by carrotcreative used under Creative Commons.
[...] See original here: Twitters are NOT Vox Pop Replacements, Lazy Journalists. [...]
[...] Much as I hate people dictating how Twitter and other social media tools should be used, ‘Josh’ makes a good point about using Twitter for easy vox pops. Simply cutting and pasting Tweets that happen to fit the subject of whatever article you are writing is lazy journalism. It’s also a privacy issue. Full blog post… [...]
It was an Airbus.
Right you are! Forgive my late night entry writing.
anything you write on the web is fair game known that for year ,paper have been taking whole message boards and printing them in there papers
ther is nothing the poster can do about this
the site should be getting a cut as they own what we write and post on their site
Yep but I wonder how many of the users would consider that a possibility. I’d wager most users on Twitter would hope they would be afforded some privacy through anonymity with what they write, and not expect it to be broadcast to a much wider audience than simply their own friends. It’s similar to stealing photos from Facebook.
Twitter still hasn’t really found a model to make money from Twitter, strangely enough, despite it’s growing popularity.
I can imagine journalists turning to Twitter for vox pops, especially as the whole point of Twitter is that other people can easily find you and interact with what you say. Hardly anyone Tweets privately. Plus, the majority of journalists don’t have the time to go out and find six to ten people with something interesting to say on a given subject.
Vox pops have always been a dubious source of information – if you ask enough people you can easily find six or seven who agree with what you want to say in your article, just like you can if you search Twitter for long enough.
There’s no way to enforce responsible behaviour, so I guess we’ve just got to trust journalists to be professional, and promote the idea that using people’s Tweets as vox pops is not fair, and will not add anything positive to a news article or blog post.
P.S. They may have found a way to make money from Facebook, so surely it’s only a matter of time before Twitter starts paying its way… http://tinyurl.com/bpnr59
Yeah but there’s a difference between interacting on Twitter and having what you say on there pulled out and used in different media. I think the problem lies in there.
There’s a major difference between a journalist going up to a person and asking their opinion on a subject and searching Twitter for something that matches what they’re looking for and grabbing it (sometimes without asking the original user). That’s what I find a bit lazy.
News.com.au recently did an article listing the top 10 Australian Twitterers (according to them) and reader backlash showed that the mainstream media doesn’t really value it as a resource yet, anyway.
Oh I definitely agree re enforcing. Journalism as a profession is the least regulated, for the good and for the bad. There’s no way to enforce responsible behaviour apart from pointing out the misuse of such things.
It was only a matter of time before they started data mining with Facebook. I’m wondering how valuable it is, and how far it will get them. Hell, Twitter might sell out to Facebook well before then.
[...] on hat and go out into the snowy streets and find them themselves.) Journalism.co.uk has written an impassioned piece explaining why Twitter is not a lazy alternative to voxpops. Â It’s as you said Tommy, rather [...]
[...] is much like your Facebook profile:Â it must be personable. This takes someone deciding to truly use the tool. Shoveling links on to it, is poor form, and [...]
With the possible exception of death knocks, vox pops are one of the worst inityiations jounior journalists have to go through.
Other than puttign photos of readers in the paper, and remindign reporters that their news editor has power to kakie their life miserable, I’m not sure vox pops ever had much value either.
Apart from the ones in The Onion, obviously. ( http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/most_wanted_nazi_believed_dead_in )
Cheers,
Tim – mumbrella
PS – excuse my typos in the above…
It’s funny that you mention death knocks because I think Facebook has just about replaced those, too. Just look at that girl who OD’ed at the Big Day Out a week or two ago, there were a couple of articles written about RIP messages on Facebook, not to mention her photo was also taken from Facebook.
Even if vox pop don’t have much value, I think it’s value is even more diluted by using Twitter. Especially when there’s no permission. It’s like reporting something you overheard.
I think Facebook and Twitter fall under privacy through obscurity for most people. They don’t keep their stuff private because they don’t think it would be all that important to someone. And then it suddenly is and is there for all to take.
The Onion is always of value.
[...] gäller Twitter som journalistiskt verktyg har Josh på Newsphobia skrivit en läsvärd postning bland annat om hur tillgången till privatpersoners tweets kan missbrukas av journalister; And then [...]
[...] A lazy journalist’s use of Twitter as a replacement for vox pops – - excellent analysis here. [...]
[...] As Newsphobia points out, Twitter is not a Lazy Journalist’s Replacement for Vox Pop. [...]
Amen.
I stumbled into the same thesis, 3 months later. Apparently the problem hasn’t been solved yet.
http://www.cyberbuzz.com/2009/04/10/how-lazy-journalists-use-twitter/
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
[...] said on this blog that I believed that journalists should not be using Twitter as a replacement for vox pops. While I stand by that original assessment, Twitter has really become much more than what I [...]