Social Newsgathering

From open to closed networks

1. Are you looking at the original version?

2. Do you know who captured the content?

3. Do you know where they captured the content?

4. Do you know when they captured the content?

5. Do you know why they captured the content?

If you can answer then you might avoid this…

No public API >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Join a group/befriend

Blocked or unavailable >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Think private chat

Remember this? BBM and the 2011 London Riots

Users swapped a pin to share messages as often as they liked and at the touch of a button sent a broadcast (or "ping") to everyone on their contact list.

Thousands of tweets then emerged with#BBM alongside #LondonRiots

"All I know is that the BlackBerry was enough to give me enough information, or tell me at the time, of what was going on, where to stay wary of and what sort of things were targeted."

"The main thing about the phone that everybody was gassed [excited] about was BBM – that was the main feature. It's just become the normal way to communicate … Everyone has BlackBerry for BBM period – BlackBerry is not a status phone; it is the cheapest way to communicate. It's the best social networking phone out there.''

When the Umbrella Revolution took place in Hong Kong, certain phrases were censored on many social media platforms just a few hours later. Instagram hashtags such as "#hongkong", "#umbrellarevolution" and "#occupycentral" as well as a few more Chinese ones were also censored in China immediately. Instagram was completely blocked by China's Great Firewall on the weekend following the protests.

The Firechat app allows smartphone users to talk to one another "off-the-grid", in the absence of a mobile signal or access to the internet. By making use of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, messages are spread in a daisy chain fashion, jumping from one user to the next. The system is particularly effective when large numbers of people are congregated together - like at a music festival, or a political protest.

FireChat: 6 million+ users

You can be 200 feet apart and send/receivedata without web access

The more sinister…

Think abouttone..

…And make sure you don’t all try to joinor make contact at the same time!

Yik Yak is a news source for local communities. Users post everything from traffic alerts and college news to event announcements on their local feed. Worth keeping an eye on “peek”.

Around 50 percent of content on our BBC News live online blog was from WhatsApp contributions

• WhatsApp allows us to communicate directly with people. We can follow up images and check the details of the content we've been sent with the person who sent it.

• We can be waiting several hours for people to access their emails and reply to us, or for phone lines to be reconnected following a natural disaster.

• A quick response means we can use the material straight away.

• On WhatsApp we can see via the phone code where people are from, we can then approach them and ask them about a specific event in their country.

Fast approaching one billion active users worldwide

BUT!!! Beware of UGC laundering

Geotagged as from YemenDuring period of Saudi Airstrikes on Twitter..

But actually from theInfamous‘Highway of Death’In first Gulf War

How did it happen? Andy Carvin of Reported.ly explains…

“It ends up in this process by which someone takes the photo that they want to share,maliciously or maybe in pure ignorance…and circulates it through their friends on WhatsApp or any of the other [private messaging apps].

Then someone in that network thinks ‘oh this is a great photo so I’m going to remove it from the closed network and upload it to a public network like Twitter.’”

Then, if that user has geotagging enabled on their phone, the image’s metadata will trick geolocation tools into thinking the photo was taken at a completely differenttime and place from where it originated.

1. Is geolocation data sufficient?2. Check private/anonymous groups. 3. Are you following the right conversations, befriending the right groups?4. But take care not to be tricked or duped?5. Use your natural journalist’s scepticism. What do you know already about the story?Check your sources.

@markfrankel29