FASE IV: Evaluación
IV. BIBLIOGRAFÍA
7. CONCLUSIÓN
Queensland floods
When the rivers began to rise in the Australian state of Queensland in December 2010, journalists at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation were faced with the challenge of reporting events, and of working with the public and emergency services to gather and provide information and resources that could be used to save lives and rebuild the community.
ABC turned to Kenya, and to technology company Ushahidi, to provide assistance with mapping, using and distributing the massive amount of social media and other forms of information that were being generated as the floodwaters headed towards the urbanised coastline of the state (Bruns, 2011;
Gosier, 2011).
Ushahidi, or ‘Witness’ in Swahili, was originally set up to map texted reports of violence in the wake of the Kenyan elections in 2007. Since then it has developed into a comprehensive suite of disaster- and crisis-reporting tools, including mapping, scraping social networks and interaction. Since its launch, Ushahidi’s software has been used to report on and assist with a
FIGURE 7.1 Picture courtesy the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Crowdmap. http://
queenslandfloods.crowdmap.com/.
large number of events, including events in the Arab Spring, and the Haitian and Christchurch earthquakes.
Using a range of tools from Ushahidi, staff at ABC created a number of products, including a crowdsourced map of reports of electricity and road outages, evacuations, hazards, help and services, volunteer efforts, and places where assistance was needed. The map was continuously updated over 24 days, using verified data, eyewitness reports and social media data.
The Corporation solicited information from the public via their own web page, on email and on Twitter, as well as via Ushahidi’s own iPhone application. Reports were verified before publishing.
By the time the project was archived, at the end of January 2011, 1500 verified reports had been published, and the site had generated more than 230,000 hits, bringing down the original servers and necessitating emergency backups (Gosier, 2011).
Since then, the ABC has reinforced its commitment to using and harnessing social media as a reporting and community tool, launching several similar projects. Their commitment to community engagement, social media and reporting their communities remains clear. Ping Lo, an information analyst and journalist, highlighted these issues in a blog post for the BBC College of Journalism:
‘The ABC’s experience piloting Ushahidi during the Queensland floods sharpened some ques-tions for the Corporation; in particular, around verification and moderation load, defining its key purpose in using the platform, training (of both staff and the public), and managing expectations’
(Lo, 2011).
Broadcasters (and, by extension, all journalists) need to think about their relationship to their communities in times of crisis: is it simply a reporting role, or is it important to become involved in activism? Should companies manage crowdsourcing and newsgathering themselves, or work with other community organisations? How does one do this without compromising one’s reputation and relationships? But, most importantly: ‘How can all organisations, community groups and individuals combine to produce the clearest, most reliable content possible – that is, minimising duplication and inaccuracy – at a time when people need it most?’ (Lo, 2011).
Key reflections
The lines between the journalists, the users and sources have been blurred, if not completely erased.
Cultivate your community: they are both the source of your news and the audience for it.
Maintain control of your product, and keep your voice and identity intact within the communal noise.
What can a journalist learn from the comments on their stories? Should they participate in the discussion?
Is opening up the news diary and conference to the users (as the Guardian has done) useful, or just a gimmick?
How can you best prevent malicious users from abusing your community?
Readings and resources
BBC College of Journalism: an invaluable training resource for student and practising journalists alike. The section on citizen journalism, which contains discussion of user-generated content and the UGC hub, is particularly useful, even if you do not have the reach and resources of the BBC.
The College’s website is at: www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/ and the citizen journalism section is at:
www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/citizen-journalism/citizen-journalism-guide/.
Axel Bruns: Axel Bruns’s 2005 book Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is one of the first studies of collaborative journalism. His ongoing work is discussed on his blog, http://
snurb.info/, and his twitter feed, @snurb_dot_info.
Mark Deuze: Mark Deuze’s books Media Work (2007) and Managing Media Work (2011) are key to the changing newsroom. He blogs and discusses his work at http://deuze.blogspot.com/ and at http://indiana.academia.edu/MarkDeuze.
Participatory Journalism: Participatory Journalism by Jane Singer et al. (2011) 2011) is a com-prehensive and seminal study of both the theories and forms of this new kind of journalism.
Alf Hermida: Alf Hermida, former BBC journalist and now Professor of Journalism at the University of British Columbia, maintains an excellent blog at www.reportr.net/ which showcases work and projects in social media. A more formal website listing his academic research is at: http://
alfredhermida.com/.
The Poynter Institute: the institute, based in St Petersburg, Florida, has been researching and train-ing ‘future journalism’ since 1975. The website at www.poynter.org/ contains resources on a range of journalism-related material, including information about training courses and resources. The section of the website on social media (www.poynter.org/category/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/) is particularly useful.
Guardian: like the BBC, the London-based Guardian newspaper (www.guardian.co.uk) is considered a world leader in open and participatory journalism. The media section of the site (www.
guardian.co.uk/media), the digital subsection of that and the PDA Digital Content Blog (www.guardian.
co.uk/media/pda) are all excellent resources on the changes facing the news industry.
Pressthink: Jay Rosen’s Pressthink blog contains a wealth of information and material by him and other contributors on the subjects of collaborative and open news media. It can be found at: http://
pressthink.org/ Jay Rosen also tweets as @jayrosen_nyu.
News Rewired: Journalism.co.uk’s recurring conference, News Rewired, covers issues in new and breaking news. The site at www.newsrewired.com remains an astounding repository of presenta-tions, papers, discussions and ideas on the future of journalism.