Strategically Communicating

Social networks: Where we go to connect, interact, keep in touch. They are a wonderful resource, allowing people to maintain relationships across time and space without in-person interaction. Valenzuela, Park and Kee (2009) say that online interactions encourage individuals to expand and diversify their social circles, thereby increasing their social capital. It leads me to wonder though, is all social capital created equal?

Researchers remain divided on the true impact social networking sites have on users. Our course readings suggest that the impacts are largely positive but others, including author Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone, 2000), worry that decreased in-person interaction actually leads to a decrease in social capital because opting into online communities allows people to become less engaged in physical communities.

Both online and in-person communication offer reciprocity, but it is how these relationships are perceived by SNS users that interests me. When individuals are able to interact with the media they may feel a higher level of closeness to a source, but in reality the relationships formed online can be very one-sided (Hash & McCutcheon, 2001), which is where para-social relationships come into play. Following Conan O’Brien on Twitter gives me a view into his life and the sense that we are closer than we truly are, but what does Conan O’Brien know about me? By expanding my social circle online to include people I will never meet in person, am I really increasing my social capital, or is it just my perception? What am I giving up by staying online?

Gone are the days when a trusted news anchor would appear on my t.v. screen at 6pm sharp, and I in my kerchief and papa in his cap would hunker down for a long winter’s viewing of the day’s newsworthy headlines.

First of all, I don’t own a t.v. Second, according to Lewis, Holton, and Coddington’s article “Reciprocal Journalism” (2014), I don’t find as much value in a one-way stream of didactic dialogue as I would in a more reciprocal environment. AKA the comment section below a news article online.

I simply can’t read their article without constantly stopping between sentences and saying something to the effect of “man I wish that was true!” in my head.

Because I do. I do wish it was true that simply allowing for more exchange and communication between news gatherers and news consumers would lead not only to increased engagement, but also renewed respect and appreciation for the journalistic craft.

The problem is that engagement actually looks like this:

The viewer engagement sought by news agencies consists of audience clicks, likes, shares, and participation in idiotic polls about the true nature of Anderson’s candle’s aroma.

The very articles that these click-happy readers consume are crafted and distributed based on statistics and algorithms that belittle human intelligence and basic norms for what is, in fact, newsworthy.

And worst of all? The catching millennial notion that the really important news will simply bubble up to the top of my newsfeed.

What kind of lazy, entitled expectation is that? If reciprocity is reinforcing the notion that news is what my friends are talking about, then I have to step back and protest.

News is not the Holderness family and their adorable Christmas jammies.

News is not Kim Kardashian’s full moon on the cover of Paper magazine.

Yes, I have shared links to both of these examples. So any algorithm can assume that these stories are important to me. I hate that I click, and yet I do. But I don’t want these links to be interpreted as newsworthy simply because I viewed them.

To make the idealistic version of a reciprocal and community-minded news gathering and disseminating society outlined in “Reciprocal Journalism” a reality, we must find a way to overthrow the maddening and all-pervasive power of algorithms that indiscriminately prioritize our interactions on the mere basis of clicks.

“Reciprocal journalism” is a hot buzzword these days, as exemplified by this white paper. It directs journalists’ attention to interacting with readers on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, stating that social media can disseminate news and build followings efficiently in the Age of the Smartphone.

Of course, all revenues garnered on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook go to, respectively, Twitter and Facebook. The authors of the white paper admit as much: “Nor may it be possible for every news organization to mediate indirect and sustained reciprocity around hashtags or Facebook groups, as we have described. Simply put, there are transaction costs associated with engaging audiences … “(11)

Perhaps because of that, social media is generally used to promote, not inform. On Twitter, for example, most top-trending subjects worldwide are commercial promotions or celebrity gossip. I captured this screenshot just a minute ago:

#Rampal is an embattled sect leader in India. He’s news … but an overwhelming number of the relevant tweets were reactionary, conversational and didn’t tell me his story.

#pplsforum refers to a televised debate between candidates for Premier in Australia. That’s related to news, but it’s really just a promotion for civic engagement. I had to do a Google search to even determine what office was at stake.

The rest – all gossip and entertainment. In fact, most are sponsored promotions: Pizza Hut, the movie “Mockingjay Part 1,” People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue, a talk show on Comedy Central (thus, CatVideoGames).

While doing my readings for this week on reciprocal journalism, I wanted to talk about the ways journalists utilize social media and other forms of public interaction to help tell stories.

Take, for example, the recent shooting at Marysville-Pitluck High School earlier this month. I was sitting at my desk at Oregon Public Broadcasting when the events unfolded, and our staff immediately went to work to try and notify the public of what was going on. We don’t have reporters based out of that area, so we had to rely on the “reporting” that was going on at the time to help sort out the truth.

I was assisting in social media coverage, and found myself re-tweeting videos and photos that community members had put on social media documenting what was going on. We utilized community members “on-the-ground” information gathering to give the public up-to-date information about what was happening.

Then, when Associated Press photographers and reporters were able to go on scene, they could continue to investigate and provide more researched and reported stories to the public.

I’m using this example to show how journalism is becoming an industry of information exchange between journalists and community members. Journalists now rely on audience members to assist with the reporting.

When I read the EFF articles on privacy, defamation and Section 230 on free speech, images of haughty cheerleaders came to mind. The high-kicking steps of sparkly cheerleaders are a sports photographer’s gold. They are energetic, pretty, and dripping with the excitement of the game under those stadium lights. But what happens to these photos? Often they will land on high-readership sports websites like deadspin.com, yardbarker.com, and the beloved bleacherreport.com. For a lot of sports fans, this is where you go to get the scoop and the exciting cherries and sprinkles. Though some of these sites have been called out about the controversial content they publish, they still see and portray themselves as somewhat newsworthy.  However, the websites also publish profiles of cheerleaders that often misrepresent them and contain false information.

To apply this situation back to the reading, this is a case where these women have signed waivers and contracts to be photographed in the stadium as apart of their team’s franchise. So automatically, a defamation claim wouldn’t stand a chance in court.  It is unfortunate that they can’t be protected as often their first and last names are published in the articles. I began to think: What rights do cheerleaders have for privacy and what protection do they have against being defamed and harmed in media platforms?

While taking a break from preparing this week’s presentation to the class on copyright, privacy and fair use, a completely related story crossed my online news aggregator, or ‘aggravator’ as I suspect many traditional journalists prefer to call them.

In any case, there is a law in the EU that nighttime photos of the Eiffel Tower are ‘interdit‘ (forbidden) without seeking prior request from the rights owners. Other notable EU buildings, like the Belgian parliament are included as well.

Here’s a link to the story in the EU Observer – Belgian and French copyright laws ban photos of EP buildings

In essence, if you should go the Paris, be sure you’ve secured clearances for any nighttime photos you take of the Eiffel Tower, or take them during the day when the structure is considered ‘public domain.’ Otherwise, that Facebook post you have of the holiday lighting display on the Eiffel Tower may cost you.

When I first read this, I thought was a hoax, but it is true. Here is the official word from LaTourEiffel.

Image Rights – The Eiffel Tower Brand

The protection that copyright laws lend to artists and creators cannot be underestimated. Nor can it be relegated to the physical world alone. This protection also extends to all creations existing digitally on the internet. For example, if I were to publish a DIY organic makeup recipe blog this very moment (which I wish I had the skills to actually execute), my work would be protected under the law. Anyone who tried to copy and paste my original recipe for avocado infused lip stain could face legal penalty. And right they should!

With the advent of convenient online publication and distribution via blogging, once obscure and irrelevant creative geniuses can now hope to gain widespread success. And that success can be protected via copyright. But what would happen if the so called “neutral” net within which most of us operate, were to become less neutral?

The content that we all create suddenly relegated to a slow lane by Comcast or other ISPs (internet service providers.) Sure, copyright laws protect your intellectual property, but what good are they if nobody can access it? In light of current events, I think we all need to be talking about Net Neutrality. Our very own president has sided with the over 4 million Americans commenting on the FCC’s website who agree that designating fast and slow lanes for content providers like Netflix and Google are contrary to what the internet is all about. Using Google to educate myself on this topic, I stumbled upon an interesting infographic purporting to explain how the internet actually works:

According the the article “What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality” by Robert McMillan, content providers already have an advantage in distributing content by bypassing the “internet backbone” and setting up content delivery networks within ISPs. Those fast lanes everyone is so worried about? Well it turns out they already exist!

The real threat seems to be Comcast and other ISPs’ very own copyright-like control over internet service. If there are only a few ISPs, then content providers won’t have any choice in negotiations over prices or speed. Verizon could start charging Google to provide a quicker connection. And in turn, that cost could trickle down to the consumer.

We might intrinsically feel like we all have a right to the internet, as if we all hold some kind of legally binding contract based on our digital creations that exist in blogs, news feeds, and embeds. But in fact, it is the ISPs that have more control, and currently stand to prevail over all of us individual copyright owners if the FCC decides in their favor.

When pouring over the concepts of copyright and Fair Use, one phrase kept coming to mind: “For the exclusive use of J. Luecht.” The academic articles I have been devouring over the past few months had burned this into my memory – the ones I had purchased for class were laced with these exact words, and others accessed through our university always contained something similar outlining copyright rules. As students, we are investing time and money to become experts in a subject. We are consuming concepts from academics and industry professionals who have built careers out of researching information and presenting new ideas.

Access to new information has the power to change one’s opinion on various topics and encourage political participation. But, if some information is only accessible to those who hold the keys, and the barriers to entry include economic situation and physical location, what is the cost of exchanging money for ideas?

Consider the federal government’s recent investigation into the closure of some of Chicago’s public schools and programs following civil rights complaints . What does the creation of The Chicago Public School Resistance and #OccupyCPS have to say about the access to education within our nation? Whose voice does the government and school system represent, and who is being left out?

We pay to access different levels of information via taxes, universities, after school programs, etc. Who are the gatekeepers to education?

After reading Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi’s report I must admit that I have this friend (cough) who maybe, possibly relied on “common sense” during her daily journalistic duties when it came to copyright and fair use. If she were asked to explicitly to apply fair use, she too would have been “unable to make a timely decision or justify it to a gatekeeper.”

From their study, Aufderheide and Jaszi found that journalists (well, the 80 they interviewed) “showed remarkably sound judgment on fair use decisions, on an intuitive basis”—which I believe stands for something considering the “lack of clarity around copyright and fair use,” which Rachel mentioned in her post.

Of course, it’s incredibly important that we’re all aware of how copyright, fair use, defamation, libel and privacy affect our professional lives. But is it so bad that journalists would rather not wade through the legalese surrounding copyright infringement, fair use, etc., and would rather follow their gut and “give credit whenever and wherever credit is due”? (Advice given to me my friend by a former editor.)