New media for crime and judicial reporting

Crime and judicial reportingLeveraging 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

• 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

old media model

Event / Issue

Journalist

Consumer Mainstream

media

new media models

Event / Issue

Journalist

Consumer Citizen media

Mainstream media

Consumer

the revolution

Journalist Consumer

Journalist Consumer / Witness

News as a conversation

News as a package

What is out there?

bearing witness: Groundviews www.groundviews.org

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.

readership and reach: 18th amendment

• Groundviews was read well over 22,000 times from 1 – 9 September, when content and debates around the 18th Amendment to the constitution reached their peak. Over 170 comments were featured in the site during this week alone, totalling around 65,000 words. In addition to the content on the site, our Twitter feed posted well over one hundred and fifty updates during the course of the week.

• Content on Groundviews was republished or referred to by the Sunday Leader, the New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique dozens of other local and international Twitter accounts of leading journalists and others, Livemint.com published by the Wall Street Journal in India and a range of other blogs and websites.

online video: Vikalpa YouTube Channelwww.youtube.com/vikalpasl

alternative politics in Sinhala: Vikalpa www.vikalpa.org

news from provinces: Perambara www.perambara.org

kottu: blog aggregationwww.kottu.org

sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregationwww.sinhalabloggers.com

sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregationwww.sinhalabloggers.com

twitter: new perspectiveswww.twitter.com

flickr content on sri lankawww.flickr.com

social networking: facebook reach with $0

social networking: facebook reach with $0

Avg. FB account: 130 friends

Updates featured on 208,000+ FB accounts. Instantly.

Groundviews FB page has 1,600+ fans

social networking: facebook

podcasts: apple iTunes

Managing content: Pushing out

essential email: gmail / google account

wordpress.com: blogging

wordpress.com: blogginghttp://si.wordpress.com

wordpress.com: blogginghttp://ta.wordpress.com

wordpress.com: blogging via phonehttp://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-voice

ustream.tv: broadcasting via a PC

bambuser.com: mobile phone broadcasting

ustream: mobile phone broadcastinghttp://www.ustream.tv/mobile

flickr: posting images via mobileshttp://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile

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 alerts: thousands of sourceshttp://www.google.com/alerts

google reader: a web based RSS reader

enduring challenges

• Impartial, accurate coverage still vital, increasingly hard to ascertain

• Torrent of information, trickle of knowledge

• Veracity and verifiability

• 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

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