Nov
24
2010
How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media
In a society that is more connected than ever, investigative journalists that were once shrouded in mystery are now taking advantage of their online community relationships to help scour documents and uncover potential wrongs. The tools and information now available to journalists are making the jobs of investigative outlets more efficient.The socialization of the web is revolutionizing the traditional story format. Investigative reporters are now capturing content shared in the social space to enrich their stories, enabling tomorrow's reporters to create contextualized social story streams that reference not only interviewed sources, but embedded tweets, Facebook postings and more. Journalists are also leveraging the vast reach of social networks in unprecedented ways. In many respects, social media is enabling watchdog journalism to prosper. Here's how.
Distributed Reporting
On the social web, investigative journalists are tapping citizens to take part in the process by scouring documents and doing shoe-leather reporting in the community. This is advantageous because readers often know more than journalists do about a given subject, said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University.“That was always the case, but with the tools that we have today, that knowledge can start flowing in at relatively low cost and with relatively few headaches," Rosen said. Rosen admits that we are just starting to learn how to do this effectively, but there are certainly some great experiments being done.Talking Points Memo Muckraker had success with this approach by having its readers help sort through thousands of documents pertaining to the investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice's controversial firing of seven United States attorneys in 2006. TPM provided clear instructions to its readers to cite specific documents that included something interesting or "damning.”Even though they had hundreds of readers contribute in the comments, it's important to remember the often invisible factors that contribute to that success. The site's readers had a shared background knowledge because they had been following the story as Josh Marshall and his team developed it over months of reporting. They were also motivated to show that the attorney general had done something wrong, Rosen pointed out.A similar example on a grander scale is that of The Guardian deploying its community to help dig through 458,832 members of parliament (MP's) expense documents. They've already examined roughly half of those, thanks to the 27,270 people who participated. The Guardian rewarded community participants by creating a leader board based on the quantity and quality of their contributions and also highlighting some of the great finds by its members.
Recruiting Shoe-Leather Volunteers
But can a call to action motivate the community to do some actual shoe-leather reporting? Wendy Norris, an investigative reporter and Knight Fellow working on web and mobile civic engagement applications at Stanford University, motivated a community to do just that with a simple tweet (shown below). Norris was investigating whether locking up condoms and keeping them stored in pharmacy shelves in Colorado was depressing purchases, especially those by younger people, who might be too embarrassed to ask a clerk for help.
1. Employ a sense of fun with the request. 2. Make the task discrete and easily accomplished. 3. Explain the purpose as a larger public service. 4. Set a reasonable time frame for task completion. 5. Allow volunteers to overlap tasks as built-in fact checking. 6. Provide immediate feedback to questions/responses and encourage retweets for additional recruitment. 7. Build public interest in, and anticipation for, the story.
Community-Sourced Mapping
There's a big difference between an audience and a community. Norris probably wouldn't have been able to convince a detached "audience" to go out and do some reporting, but because she had built a community, she was able to get them on board. It's not just about the tools journalists use, but the community they have already established and whether that community is a genuine one or just a crowd, said Rosen. Is the relationship you have with the community strong enough that community members are willing to participate with information, advice, feedback?“It's similar to how we make a mistake if we look at the gross number of followers, because what really makes a difference is how densely inter-connected those people are,” Rosen said.In Columbia, South Carolina, journalists of The State Media Company newsroom noticed something didn't smell right in their town. It wasn't corruption, but an actual stink that was permeating the air outside. Betsey Guzior, the features editor, decided to call on the community to help investigate the smell using an open Google Map.
Keeping the Powerful Accountable With Social Questions
Because the social web gives both citizenry and journalists access to officials and companies at the click of a mouse, social question and answer tools can be used to collaboratively investigate issues and keep powers accountable.In the UK, Paul Bradshaw founded HelpMeInvestigate, a site in beta that enables users to start an investigation and invite others to collaborate on it. It often includes answers to questions that journalists wouldn't be interested in, but ones that people care about.
A Networked Newsroom
What if newsrooms were open to the public, where sources could drop in to give tips to reporters who are digging for a story? Social media opens it up virtually, and by building a networked community of sources on the social web, investigative journalists can get story leads they otherwise wouldn't have, and are able to report stories more quickly.
Robert Hernandez, an assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, said if journalists connect with their communities through the social web and encourage and engage in a dialogue, they'll be more likely to get tips for stories that are worth investigating. But it's all about the relationship."Social media has amplified our reach and network to increase the size of the of the crowd," Hernandez said. "Investigative reporters need to be committed to social media to build that brand, so that one day, the investment pays off.”But perhaps the biggest challenge for many investigative journalists is opening up to the community in the first place. "Most investigative reporters are freaked out about sharing publicly what they are working on. They are convinced that the guy from the street will steal their story." Rosen said. "But if you can't tell people what you are working on, you cannot do any distributed reporting.”Once you open up to that community, it takes time to build that relationship. "Social media tools are useful when you need a diverse range of knowledge, but you need an existing community to really use them well, too, and that takes time and understanding,” Bradshaw added.The Investigative Network Effect
Having an open dialogue on social sites can encourage sources to come forward and build interest in the investigation and story. If you publicize the activity of an investigation while it is ongoing, Bradshaw said, it will help bring other potential sources with new information into the conversation. But sensitivity is the key.“Don't use social media for the sake of it,” Bradshaw said. “It should be appropriate to the people involved and the objectives you're pursuing.”If you're dealing with sensitive material or sources you want to protect, then you might want to deal with it offline, he said. But if you're doing a public investigation, the social web's network effect can give you a boost.Paul Lewis, an investigative journalist for The Guardian, has demonstrated the value of the network effect in several investigations. He recently had to investigate the death of a deportee on a plane from the UK to Angola. It was suspicious because the guards that escort the deportees had been criticized for brutality in the past, Lewis said. To find witnesses of what took place on the flight, Lewis tweeted from his account, asking for anyone who was on the flight that saw what happened. He started a hashtag named after the victim, #jimmymubenga, and Lewis received several responses, including one from a man who was quite distraught in his reply.“Could we have done that story five years ago? Probably not,” Lewis said. “Journalistically, it has opened up a whole new realm.”
Monitoring the Conversation and Sources
Though many people often joke about stalking their friends on Facebook to learn about new developments in their lives, journalists can take advantage of social search and monitoring tools to find relevant information and, in some cases, even keep up with officials' activity. Meghann Farnsworth, the distribution and online community manager for the Center for Investigative Reporting and California Watch said its reporters use Twitter to monitor government agencies, noting themes they may be emphasizing or subtle changes in policies that in reality may have a larger impact on the public.
Creating a Transparent Process
When an in-depth investigative story is released, it often requires some transparent finessing from the journalist or editor to establish a sense of trust and credibility in the reporting process that took place, especially with controversial or sensitive topics. Social tools can help you have an open dialogue about the story after it is published, or, if created prior to its publishing, it can build some momentum as well.The Wall Street Journal, for example, in its recent series on digital privacy, created a Twitter account that curates information from other sources on the topic and answers questions from readers. Because the series created a lot of conversation around the topic and took on criticism from media, this was a great way to help address readers' questions. The account was successful because it offered readers a destination for conversation around this topic, and even linked to pieces that criticized the series itself, creating great transparency.
Keeping an Eye on New Tools
Established social networks are great for finding sources and connecting dots more easily, “but journalists shouldn't wed themselves to a particular tool simply because it's popular at a given time," Farnsworth said. Perhaps the greater understanding comes from recognizing and reacting to the fact that the entire web is becoming social.
Farnsworth said sites might come and go, and that reporters should keep a close eye on new opportunities. Perhaps in the future, investigative journalists may take advantage of location-based tools similar to Foursquare or SCVNGR as a way to track a story subject's location.Tools with potential are cropping up all the time. For instance, Farnsworth said she's keeping a watch on the Appleseed Project, Diaspora and Storify to see what storytelling opportunities might arise there.Storify is a curation tool in beta and invite-only that has generated buzz among journalists in the industry for enabling content producers to easily curate social content with context into an embeddable stream. So, what better way to tell Storify's story than by using the tool itself? More Social Media Resources from Mashable:
- How News Organizations Are Generating Revenue From Social Media - The Future of Social Media in Journalism - 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media - 5 Winning Social Media Campaigns to Learn From - HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook PageImages courtesy of Flickr, disrupsean and iStockphoto, JordiDelgado
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