Fishburn Hedges

11.07.2011

I’ve read and heard a great deal in the last few days about the role of social media in the News International scandal, including this article by a specialist agency, who I don’t blame one iota for pressing their case.

However, the fact it was traditional media which had led this story. The original Milly Dowler story was in The Guardian, which has followed up with scoop after scoop. The Telegraph and the BBC’s Robert Peston have both had a number of important additional stories to keep the pressure on.

It is true that social media – and in particular Twitter and Facebook – helped disseminate the stories and was instrumental in enabling consumers to put pressure on advertisers to withdraw ads from the News of the World. This was something reporters were quick to follow-up on, spotting the mood music on the Facebook pages of various major consumer brands.

The fact is that social media has become an important element of any story – particularly in a crisis. It is a fantastic barometer of opinion among those who engage with it – in the case of Twitter, that would be well educated, largely white people, mostly over 30 (according to a recent US study). It’s also a good indicator of what will find its way into “older” media, as all the major media organisations and a lot of the leading journalists tweet to drive traffic to their sides or discuss what is going on. Twitter is now acting like a 24 hour tickertape of news, akin to a 24 news channel like, ahem, Sky News. Anyone trying to communicate in a crisis needs to be aware of what is on social media, even if they are cautious about how they could use it to get their messages out there.

But, as will no doubt see when the reader figures come out, this scandal will have driven more people to sites like The Guardian, Mail Online and BBC News, sold more papers and got more people watching news on TV.

Those big beasts still have a lot of life in them.