2012 Elections and the Race to Newer "New Media"

With the 2012 Presidential Election gearing up and likely to soon be dominating media coverage, candidates are looking for a way to spread their political message through new media forums. President Barack Obama was known for his innovate use of social media, grassroots politics, and for mobilizing the youth vote. This article by Rob Salkowitz, author of Young World Rising: How Youth Technology and Entrepreneurship are Changing the World from the Bottom Up, share his predication for the role new media will play in the upcoming election.
One issues that I think this article does a nice job of focusing on is the speed at which social media is evolving. The 2004 election was arguably the first major election to be influence by the rise of social media and, since then, politicians have been searching for ways to creatively promote their message on the internet. One of the benefits of social networking for politicians is that this type of media is relatively low cost, especially when compared to television and newspaper advertisements. Salkowitz points out that the biggest factor in the next election will be figuring out to turn this low cost media into a profitable venture. For example, instead of using new media just to share a message, a politicians will have to use new media to get more donations to their campaign. While this article does not necessarily frame any new media technology as most useful than another, it does make some valid points of about the limitations of recent developments. It seems that applications, like FourSquare and “video-on-demand” improvements, will be unable to make substantial improvements to a candidate’s message. This article does a good job of balancing the potential benefits of newer media tools in the upcoming elections, with limitations that candidates will face in developing their online strategies.

@acarvin

As Twitter becomes a popular way for empowering individuals to share their own experiences and communicate with each other, some questions have been raised about its viability as a form of journalism. To some, allows “everyday citizens” to become journalist seems like it would destroy a level of professionalism and trust that is necessary for reporting current events. Twitter has given individuals involved in the Middle East uprisings a platform to share their opinion and stories. However, this style also raises some important questions: How do we know who to trust? If I am not interested in learning about an opinion, is it possible for me to selectively avoid it? What does this mean for larger media entities?
This USA Today article focuses on how Andy Carvin, an NPR senior strategist focusing on social media, deals with some of these issues and has earned him the reputation as the “maestro of the [Middle East region’s] Twitter feed” and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. Personally, I started following Carvin a few months ago and have found that his tweets on the revolutions in the Middle East to be the most accurate and informational. As a member of a professional media outlet, Carvin works to find reliable sources of information and uses his own Twitter feed as an aggregator. Carvin’s Twitter style seems to be one way that larger media outlets or professional journalists can use new media to their advantage and diversity their source information.

Freedom vs. Facebook

As I have discussed before, Facebook has ramped up its lobbying efforts, which has drawn increased coverage across the news media. The Wall Street Journal published a particularly interesting article about this topic where it discusses Facebook's efforts to access the Chinese market, which has been closed since 2009. In the process of trying to access China, Facebook is also dealing with difficult questions of censorship and freedom of speech. In the WSJ article, Adam Connor, a Facebook lobbyist, says,

"Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others...We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven't experienced it before."

The question of how much freedom of speech to allow is difficult to answer, particularly when there are authoritarian regimes involved. However, Facebook is often praised for allowing individuals to share thoughts with one another unfiltered. It has also been championed as a means for organizing individuals precisely when their freedoms are threatened or not granted. If Facebook decides to block content in certain countries it will seriously be doing itself a disfavor as an information provider. While we do not necessarily demand the same democratic responsibility from social media sites as we do from traditional news media, the question comes up of whether or not we should. To what extent should we treat Facebook's possible censorship decisions as part of business? Or should we demand more from a site that portrays itself as doing more than traditional business does? What is the democratic responsibility of social media and to what standard should we hold it? If censorship is allowed, some of the valuable things that social media platforms are praised for doing, such as disseminating information quickly and mobilizing individuals around a cause, might not happen.

Video: The Importance of Facebook

Check out this video from The New York Times, describing the power of Facebook in politics!  Megan Liberman discuses the role the social site played in the 2008 Presidential elections and is already playing in the 2012 elections.

Facebook Friends D.C.

Over the past few years the relationship between Facebook and politicians and policy makers in Washington has grown increasingly cozier. President Obama's current trip out west, which included a town-hall-style meeting at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, is an indication of this. Not only is Facebook drawing visits from the President, but it is also drawing top political and legal talent of administrations past. Facebook's current chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is a former Clinton administration official, and a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, Ted Ullyot, is Facebook's general counsel. Currently, there are rumors about Robert Gibbs joining Facebook's communications team. It's no secret that Facebook is trying to develop better relationships with Washington in the case that those relationships might be useful in future legal and policy battles over privacy issues.

While concerns over privacy and access to individuals' information are crucial, there are interesting advantages in the relationship between Facebook and politicians that go beyond money and campaign donations. Politicians now rely on social media, particularly Facebook, to engage voters and get potential supporters involved. So, not only do Zuckerberg and Facebook benefit from cultivating strong relationships with policy makers to avoid legal battles, but politicians and policy makers also have an interest in using the information about individuals that Facebook provides to further their own campaigns and support. When a Facebook user gives a campaign access to their account a campaign can then get information about a person's email address, hometown, and access to their personal network of friends.

The possible effects of Facebook's relationship with D.C. policy makers are difficult to parse out and not currently known. Facebook connects users to friends and personal interests, and with this comes a lot of information as well as a lot of power, which D.C. would most likely love to be privy to. As the relationship between the two centers of power--tech and government--grows stronger, it will be important to watch and monitor. It will be interesting to see what role, if any, both social media and traditional media play in checking this relationship.

Social News Services: an Innovative Way to Read Your News

The New York Times reported on the long-awaited social news service, entitled News.me, developed by a collaboration between Betaworks and the New York Times Company. This fascinating news service uses artificial intelligence to monitor what people are reading in order to learn what they like to read. Thus, the service can provide other articles and links that will most likely be of interest to the reader. This service also has an important social media aspect -- it will display popular articles that are being posted via sites like Twitter around the Web. Users can also save interesting articles to read them later or share the articles through Facebook, Twitter, and email. News.me is first being featured on iPads by Apple.

The article goes on to say, "News.me's most interesting feature may be that it allows people to follow the articles being read and discussed on Twitter among friends, noted technologists and early-adopters from the Web." The CEO of Betaworks explains, "Instead of only seeing what you're Tweeting, I get to see what you're reading. We're taking the social stream and flipping it on its head."

There is another important feature of News.me: the company receives a weekly fee from readers, out of which it pays publishers (such as The New York Times) according to how many times users read a particular article from that publisher on News.me's site. "On one level, it's very simple. If people read your content, we send you a check at the end of the month. But on a deeper level ... the service is trying to build a sustainable business model for an application built by pulling in content from dozens of other sources ... the application doesn't do away with any pay model put in place by a news organization." News.me is trying to create a social reading experience, and in return, make sure that publishers are getting their cut whenever people read their stuff.

This new market of transforming the way people read news from the Web is expanding: another tech company called Flipboard takes social feeds from Facebook and Twitter and changes the reading experience by formatting it so that it looks like a magazine. The Washington Post Company also developed something similar to News.me, called Trove, that analyzes likes and other personal information from its readers' Facebooks so that it can select articles of interest for its readers.

All of a sudden, social media is shaping the way that traditional media sources are presenting their news. By tracking what readers are liking on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter, the New York Times and the Washington Post have a more concrete idea than ever before of what readers want. Are publications therefore losing some of their control over their content? Are readers now unduly influencing -- via their personal preferences displayed on social media -- what types of stories are getting published?

In addition, there is added pressure for The New York Times because it only makes money from the News.me partnership if people are reading NYT articles. Technology and social media have created a new sense of accountability for publications and (more significantly) for journalists. Now, it's not just how many newspapers you sell, but how many times a person reads each specific article in your publication. Does this pose a threat for some journalists? If people are reading on News.me and then posting articles about Charlie Sheen on Twitter ten times more than articles about the turmoil in Egypt, and the New York Times can now know and track this behavior, will there be a shift in how many writers are hired for certain content areas and which articles get the front page spot?

Social Media and the Personal Story

In past blog posts, I have written about the influence that social networking sites had on the revolutions that are happening in the Middle East and Africa. Secretary Albright also mentioned the usefulness of these tools at her recent lecture. However, little attention has been played to social media in the aftermath of the earthquake that recently hit northern Japan. Personally, I had watched that popular YouTube video of the mayor of Minami Soma City asking the international community for help in distributing necessary goods and was drawn its ability to put a personal narrative into tragic national disaster. After watching the video, the implications of the earthquake and the affects of the damaged nuclear power plan felt more real.
This story by PBS’s MediaShift collected stories from several earthquake survivors or media addicts and explains how social media cites, like Facebook and Twitter, was able to help them find survivors or establish more intricate systems to do so. While I had read many articles on the situation in Japan and about the government’s response to the nuclear reactors, this piece took a different approach and focused on the efforts of individuals. I enjoyed reading this collection of narratives, because I think it does a good job of capturing the essence of social media. Individuals are asking to share their opinions of day-to-day interactions or experiences. These profiles show the importance of collecting small pieces of information of individual users and the implications this can have on larger movements, like rescue missions and revolutions.