Feature writing and advanced editingLeveraging new and social media
Sanjana Hattotuwa
TEDGlobal Fellow 2010Editor, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org)
what is social media?
• Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. (Wikipedia)
what is new media?
• New media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies.
• New media is not television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications. (Wikipedia)
• But increasingly, old media is leveraging the web, Internet and mobiles in generating and disseminating news and information.
new media and foundations
• Blogs
• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook)
• Google Maps and mashups
• Mobiles: SMS, mobile photography and video
• VoIP: Skype, Google Chat
• And making this all possible is ADSL + 3G wireless broadband
what’s new
• Ubiquity of two way communications
• Addressable peoples, even those who IDPs or refugees
• Both news generation and dissemination leverages new media
• Disintermediated models vs. traditional media model
• Citizens as producers
• Low resolution content broadcast on high definition media
enduring challenges
• Impartial, accurate coverage still vital, increasingly hard to ascertain
• Torrent of information. Trickle of knowledge.
• Veracity / Verifiability hard to determine
• Post-disaster communications can be unreliable and difficult. Eye-witness accounts are partial, subjective.
• New media / technology illiteracy even amongst journalists
• Apathy and animosity against citizen journalism
• Licensing and attribution of online content
What is out there?
online video: Vikalpa YouTube Channelwww.youtube.com/vikalpasl
alternative politics in Sinhala: Vikalpa www.vikalpa.org
kottu: blog aggregationwww.kottu.org
sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregationwww.sinhalabloggers.com
sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregationwww.sinhalabloggers.com
social networking: facebook reach with $0
social networking: facebook reach with $0
Avg. FB account: 100 friends
Updates featured on 155,700 FB accounts. Instantly.
Groundviews FB page has 1,557 fans
readership and reach: web media
From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of commentary. Tens of thousands more have read and commented on this content since.
social networking: facebook
podcasts: apple iTunes
Tools for feature writing and editing
pronunciation from google dictionaryhttp://www.google.com/dictionary
plagiarism checkhttp://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker
visualisationshttp://www.wordle.net
http://www.groundviews.org/2010/01/15/visualising-mahinda-chintanaya-2010-the-presidents-election-manifesto
Managing content: Pushing out
essential email: Gmail
wordpress.com: blogging
wordpress.com: blogging via phonehttp://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-voice
ustream.tv: broadcasting via a PC
bambuser.com: mobile phone broadcasting
drop.io: reports through audio
transferring large fileshttps://www.wetransfer.com
Managing content: Pulling in
google search: Updates from social media
google news: thousands of sources
google reader: a web based RSS reader
key points: recap
• New technologies potentially give voice to all citizens
• Be sceptical of new information, but use new media to push and pull content
• Develop media literacy to embrace new technologies
Thank you