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Did the Obama administration know its Libya protest talk was inaccurate?

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Josh Hicks - Nov. 19 (Opinion) - “It was clear that the State Department was able to witness this in real time. There is no indication that there was a mob. There is no indication that a video was the genesis of this. Why did the administration, for weeks, mislead the American people?

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Andy Carvin on Twitter as a newsroom and being human

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 26 (Interview) - In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism -- including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human.

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Social journalism research helps explain how information is verified on Twitter

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Poynter Institute - By Craig Silverman, Alfred Hermida - May. 16 (Interview) - Hermida, a founding member of the BBCNews.com team who now serves as an associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, also recently presented a paper at the International Symposium on Online Journalism about A

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Kenyan chief foils robbery via Twitter

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By Faith Karimi - Feb. 18 (News Report) - A Kenyan chief in a town far from the bustling capital foiled a predawn robbery recently using Twitter, highlighting the far-reaching effects of social media in areas that don't have access to the Internet.

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@MentionMachine tracks the presidential candidates: Who’s up, who’s down on Twitter?

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Cory Haik, Amanda Zamora, Natalie Jennings - Jan. 03 (Special Report) - When Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination Aug. 13, the same day as the Ames Straw Poll, those watching social streams could have rightfully assumed he had won the Iowa contest. Twitter exploded with Perry mentions, even though he didn’t participate in the straw poll, while the winner, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), drew far less attention. Social media was the writing on the wall. Perry would soon trend up in polls, surpassing Bachmann and the rest of the field. Twitter was the early — scratch that — Twitter was the real-time warning ...

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How will technology influence the news in 2012?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Predicting the next year's news is a fool's errand, but looking at technological trends could give us a hint At the beginning of 2011, aging dictators ruled Egypt and Libya, and despotism was the nearly unquestioned reality in most of the Middle East. The eurozone was seeing trouble at its edges, but wasn't heading toward collapse. News International had successfully covered up most of its rampant bad acts, and Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of even greater control over British media and politics. Anyone who might have predicted how utterly and rapidly those realities would change might have been branded a lunatic. Which is one reason why the annual journalistic ritual of making predictions about the year ahead is a fool's errand. With that in mind, let me offer instead some observations about the technology and media trends we've seen in past months, and how they might play out in 2012. In many cases, the trajectory is deeply worrisome. But I remain an eternal optimist in the face of ...

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Bits Blog: Twitter Tries to Simplify Its Service

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Somini Sengupta - Dec. 09 (Opinion) - Twitter announced a new design for its service that the company hopes will draw new users, keep them on the site longer and persuade paid advertisers to follow them there.

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Twitter Reaches 100 Million Active Users

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nick Bilton - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - Twitter says 100 million people actively use the service. The company also discussed goals to eventually reach people on two billion devices.

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Telcos could be the key to Twitter’s revenue model

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Sam Ramji - Jun. 26 (Interview) - At WWDC this year Apple and Twitter announced a new partnership to bring Twitter to iOS devices. While this is impressive, the total number of new iOS users is dwarfed by the number of people who use feature phones worldwide. So how will services like Twitter bridge this opportunity gap?

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Reid's advice to Weiner: "Call somebody else"

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Washington Post Staff - Jun. 08 (News Report) - Call somebody else.

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A lesson of PBS's Tupac Shakur 'story' | Dan Gillmor

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Dan Gillmor - Jun. 01 (Opinion) - Digital news is much more vulnerable to hacking and hoaxing than old media. Scepticism must be in the eye of the beholderLast week, the website of America's Public Broadcasting Service featured an incredible story: the rap artist Tupac Shakur, killed half a decade ago, was actually not dead; rather, the story said, he was alive and living peacefully in New Zealand.The news was incredible because it was false. Hackers, apparently angry at a PBS Frontline documentary about WikiLeaks leak suspect Bradley Manning, had found security flaws and temporarily taken over the site. Their Tupac "scoop" did little harm in the end – though it exposed PBS as a news organisation that needed to work a lot harder to ensure online security.Little harm in this case – but false news is not a minor issue in the online world. In October 2008, someone using the pseudonym "johntw" posted an item to CNN's "iReport" site claiming that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, had suffered a major heart attack. This claim made its way to a financial blog and began racing around the web and email threads. Apple's shares tumbled briefly, recovering when it became clear that the posting was a hoax. That was, in effect, an invited hack: CNN hadn't taken sufficient care to vet the iReports or to warn the site's viewers that they should regard everything there as inherently unreliable.Hackers are also finding ways to put false words in other people's mouths, or keyboards. That's what an American congressman, Anthony Weiner, says happened to him recently with social media services when a lewd photo supposedly was sent to a Twitter follower. That case is doubly suspicious given that it was first reported by a rightwing website run by a man who's notorious for spreading misinformation.The people who sold Apple stock upon hearing the bogus news in 2008 were fools. Anyone who assumed that Weiner was guilty of lewd photo-sharing based on a report spun by a well-known manipulator is a fool, too.The PBS story, however, raised a serious question for news organisations and the people who get most of their news online. Even though the Tupac story was relatively benign, as hoaxes go, it demonstrated how entirely possible, even likely, it has become for even the most reputable news organisations to be victims of these kinds of hacks.One of these days, hackers are going to take over the home page of the New York Times, or the Guardian, or the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, and they are going to post a story that could have much more troubling consequences. The right (wrong) kind of posting could start a stockmarket panic, for example. Or, in even more scary circumstances, it might further inflame ethnic tensions or nationalistic fervour that sparks worse fighting in already violent places. The only surprise, when this occurs, will be that it didn't happen sooner.This leads to our changing responsibility as news consumers. In the past, even though we knew that the daily newspaper didn't get everything right, and that the evening news programme was shallow and sometimes wrong, we didn't doubt that we were seeing what these news organisations had reported with their own staffs or had received via their own trusted news services. It was vanishingly unlikely that anyone could create an entire fake newspaper or hijack the airwaves.The odds that hackers are showing fake news on any particular traditional or new media website right now are small. But as the PBS hack shows, they are not zero.And even if, by some miracle, this never occurs, sometimes our best news organisations occasionally get things badly wrong. The classic recent example is a spate of mistaken reports of the death of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the wake of the Arizona shootings in January. She is, of course, alive and in intensive therapy.Our obligation as news users is to be sceptical of everything, especially stories that sound incredible and breaking news. We have to be especially careful not to overreact to what we see and hear. The consequences of being wrong are growing, as the dupes who sold Apple shares can attest.Scepticism doesn't mean we should automatically disbelieve everything; it does mean that we should use judgment. In my case, I have a category for all such items: "Interesting if true."US televisionNewspapers & magazinesNewspapersHackingInternetDigital mediaSocial mediaTwitterUS politicsUnited StatesWikiLeaksAppleSteve JobsDan Gillmorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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The article as luxury or byproduct

Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Buzzmachine - By Jeff Jarvis - May. 29 (Opinion) - A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a byproduct of the process. * See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.) (And aren’t you proud of me for not drawing the obvious and embarrassing comparison to Times editor Bill Keller’s Luddite trolling about Twitter even as his man in Twitter, Stelter, proves what a valuable tool it is?)

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News is a subset of the conversation «

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Buzzmachine - By Jeff Jarvis - May. 21 (Opinion) - Here’s a tale that reveals how journalists tend to think of their role in the conversation that makes up news and society. I think the conversation is happening all around us, with or without the journalists. I teach now that it’s the role of the journalist to add value to that conversation: verification, debunking, facts, reporting, context, platforms, teaching…. The late James Carey defines the role differently. As Jay Rosen explains in the Carey Reader: “The press does not ‘inform’ the public. It is ‘the public’ that ought to inform the press. The true subject matter of journalism is the conversation the public is having with itself.” But I’m seeing that news organizations think it is their role to lead the conversation (they set the agenda), allow the conversation (you may now comment on our story, now that it’s done), and judge the conversation (see Bill Keller’s sniffing at vox polloi). That’s why I went theatrically batshit on Twitter against the BBC for holding the first day of a meeting this week about *social media* under Chatham House Rule, which decrees: “participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”

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The new tech bubble

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 15 (News) - Some time after the dotcom boom turned into a spectacular bust in 2000, bumper stickers began appearing in Silicon Valley imploring: “Please God, just one more bubble.” That wish has now been granted. Compared with the rest of America, Silicon Valley feels like a boomtown. Corporate chefs are in demand again, office rents are soaring and the pay being offered to talented folk in fashionable fields like data science is reaching Hollywood levels. And no wonder, given the prices now being put on web companies. Facebook and Twitter are not listed, but secondary-market trades value them at some $76 billion (more than Boeing or Ford) and $7.7 billion respectively. This week LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, said it hopes to be valued at up to $3.3 billion in an initial public offering (IPO). The next day Microsoft announced its purchase of Skype, an internet calling and video service, for a frothy-looking $8.5 billion—ten times its sales last year and 400 times its operating income. And those are all big-brand companies with customers around the world. Prices look even more excessive for fledgling firms in the private market (Color, a photo-sharing social network, was recently said to be worth $100m, even though it has an untested service) or for anything involving China. There has been a stampede for shares in Renren, hailed as “China’s Facebook”, and other Chinese web giants listed on American exchanges.

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Overwhelmed Internet users choose to unplug — for a little while

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Gus Sentementes - May. 15 (News) - Consciously avoiding using the Web may seem impossible to many in this era of information overload. Researchers on the issue say addiction to information may be similar in some ways to the effect that certain drugs have on the human brain — and some people may need to take disciplined breaks from their gadgets.

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The Boston Marathon, the aborted landing and the lost journalists: #WPNewsquiz

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Katie Rogers - Apr. 22 (Entertainment) - Welcome to BlogPosts's weekly crazy social-news-quiz-on-Twitter-experiment.

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NPR’s Andy Carvin, tweeting the Middle East

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Paul Farhi - Apr. 13 (News Report) - Since December, Andy Carvin, a social-media strategist at NPR in Washington, has become a one-man Twitter news bureau, chronicling fast-moving developments throughout the Middle East.

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Nic Robertson's harrowing tweets from Libya

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Jeff Jarvis, Nic Robertson - Mar. 26 (News Report) - Woman came into restaurant of journalists' hotel today claiming she’d been detained at govt chkpt, held 2 days, tied up, beaten and raped. Within mins of beginning to tell her story, govt officls and hotel staff moved in to shut her up. CNN cameraman on scene said she showed journalsts bruises, scratches on thighs, bruised face, rope burns on wrists & ankles

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Why Women Rule The Internet

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies. Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet. Consider some more data. Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web. Comscore says women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men; mobile social network usage is 55% female according to Nielsen. In e-commerce, female purchasing power is also pretty clear. Sites like Zappos (>$1 billion in revenue last year), Groupon ($760m last year), Gilt Groupe ($500m projected revenue this year), Etsy (over $300m in GMV last year), and Diapers ($300m estimated revenue last year) are all driven by a majority of female customers. According to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue. And 77% of Groupon’s customers are female according to their site.

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JPMorgan fund eyes 10% stake in Twitter

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By David Gelles - Feb. 27 (News) - A JPMorgan fund is in talks to acquire a substantial stake in Twitter, one of the fastest-growing social networking sites.The fund hopes to acquire 10 per cent of the online messaging service for $450m, valuing Twitter at $4.5bn, according to people familiar with the plans.

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Obama at Zeitgeist Rumors Dominate San Francsico Twittersphere

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

thefeast.com - By Kevin Meenan - Feb. 18 (News Report) - President Barack Obama enjoying a #SFbeerweek brew with at the newly reopened Zeitgeist, and pics to prove it?! Rumors swirled late night Thursday that the Commander in Chief - in town for a quick meal with the Silicon Valley elite -- had made a post-dinner detour to the famed hipster hang, presumably to celebrate the bar's grand reopening. San Francisco tweeters please, are we really that gullible? Sigh. Our morning net sleuthin' skills traced the origin of the rumor back to Techmeme's Gabe Rivera, who first tweeted a fake Zeitgeist Foursquare check-in with "@barackobama @dickc @ericschmidt @scobleizer" and later linked to a apparently believable Instagram pic of Obama boozing it up at a similarly divey haunt.

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Nir Rosen's Offensive Tweets Shouldn't Have Surprised Us

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Politics Daily - By Matt Lewis - Feb. 17 (Opinion) - After examining Rosen's past writings (and Tweets), none of us should be terribly surprised that he would have so viciously attacked Logan.

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Middle East nations scramble to contain unrest

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Kim Murphy - Feb. 14 (News) - Governments step up political concessions, dole out benefits or prepare the riot police in attempts to keep order after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which showed people that strongmen may not be needed to protect against sectarian violence or Islamic extremism.

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The “Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators” Article

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

pressthink.org - By Jay Rosen - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - It's hard to know how much weight to assign to the Internet and its social media tools–Facebook and Twitter–in recent uprisings like Iran and Moldova in 2009, Tunisia this year and Egypt's stunning January 25th revolution. Because the tools are still fairly new they naturally draw a lot of attention from analysts, journalists and headline writers looking for a "sexy" newsy sidebar to the main event. And inevitably some people get carried away. But then a strange thing happens. Even more people get worried that everyone is getting carred away. And they decide to bring us all back down to earth. "It's not that simple!" they cry.

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The End Of History

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Jon Evans - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - The world is quaking. Egypt and Tunisia are overthrown; Algeria, Gabon, Jordan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are rocking. Some say this is thanks to Twitter and Facebook. Others, notably Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov, say that social media are politically irrelevant and/or dangerous. China has censored “Egypt”, Syria has legalized Facebook, and the president of Sudan has declared he will use social media to crush his enemies. You couldn’t make this stuff up. What’s going on? Who to believe? Fear not. I can explain. Everyone is right, and what’s going on is nothing more than the end of international politics and history as we know them. Welcome to our brave new world, and about time, too. The old one sure was miserable while it lasted.

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