Week 17

What sorts of verification and accuracy standards are appropriate for material gathered on social networks?

Citizen Journalism has been on a rise for the past decade with the increased use of the internet, the invention of smartphones and everyone’s addiction to social media. This helps news outlets to gather raw on-the-scene footage for their stories, because in case of an important event or catastrophe there will always be someone at the right place at the right time (or wrong sometimes) recording or taking a picture with their phone. But how can journalists verify this never-ending flow of user-generated content (UGC)? We’re living in a post-truth era where fake news travel at light speed, so how can we ensure material gathered on social media is up to the journalistic accuracy standards?

Silverman suggests not to “point to a rumor unless you have located the original source and evidence and evaluated it. Journalists who have expertise verifying user-generated content often express shock and dismay at how easily their colleagues miss red flags or don’t do a few basic tests on a piece of content.” From this we can deduct that we should always prove material for its validity. However even experienced journalists can sometimes be wrong when doing so, thus a lot of caution is needed. It might take a lot of time to, for example, discover a Photoshop alteration in a picture, but it is definitely worth the effort when being able to avoid spreading of fake news. The easiest way of verifying UGC is contacting the person who posted the material online. When writing about the BBC’s UGC Hub, David Turner underlines this point, suggesting that usually, a person who is a genuine witness to an event is more than happy to talk. All in all journalists should be always vigilant for inaccurate content shared on social media.

References:

Silverman, C., 2015. Lies, Damn Lies, And Viral Content How News Websites Spread (And Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims, And Misinformation. Available from:http://towcenter.org/research/lies-damn-lies-and-viral-content/ [Accessed 15 January]

Turner, D., 2012. Verifying news on the social web: challenges and prospects. WWW ’13 Companion Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on World Wide Web [online], 875-878.

 

 

Does a journalist need to get permission from a member of the public who’s posted material on a social network before using that material? What other rights issues need to be considered?

Turner (see previous answer) believes that “journalists should always request the permission of any individual who has taken videos or photos before using them as they remain the copyright holder of that material.”

However there is a few differences for example between Facebook and Twitter. Adam Ostrow states that, “Facebook dominates the social media landscape as the most popular way to share information online.” However, permission would be necessary to use certain material, because Facebook hosts private accounts. The privacy settings allow a user to choose whether they want their information and material to be made public and as a result journalists must respect their wishes.

Twitter on the other hand, is a more public social media platform, therefore  journalists would not need permission to use material as it is already in the public domain. “Retweeting on Twitter diffuses information quickly” (Kwak et al 2010)

Even if in some cases material can be legally used without seeking permission, the morally right thing to do is to contact the person who generated the content and ask for permission, for their privacy’s sake and to always be on the legally safe side.

References:

Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H. and Moon, S., 2010. What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? WWW ’10 Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web [online], 591-600.

Ostrow, A., “Sharing on Facebook Now More Popular Than Sharing By E-mail.” Mashable. Mashable, 20 July 2009. Web. 16 Oct. 2009.

 

 

Should a member of the public, who shares newsworthy material on social networks be credited by a journalist who uses that material?

When a journalist refers to an academic article in their story, they credit the author. When a journalists uses information from another news article in their story, they credit the author. So why wouldn’t a journalist credit the author of newsworthy material shared on social network? We label user-generated content as ‘citizen journalism’, therefore the creator of that content should be handled like any other journalist. According to Alfred Hermida, attribution is a “vital ingredient that adds to the credibility of a story”, thus it is important for journalists to credit the owner of the material to uphold their own journalistic values. However, during breaking news, it might sometimes not be possible to credit a user on the material they have shared. Bruno suggests that delivering the news immediately and verifying sources later leads to richer coverage. This is a controversial approach, but could be a risk worth taking. Every individual journalists needs to decide for themselves what to do. It can be argued that content taken off social media platforms, can be used even when a source has not been associated to it yet, if the public interest in the story is wrong enough.

References:

Bruno, N., 2010. TWEET FIRST, VERIFY LATER? How real-time information is changing the coverage of worldwide crisis events [online]. Oxfordshire: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Hermida, A., 2015. Power plays on social media. Social Media + Society. 1(1).