The 'Miracle on the Hudson' had its hero in Captain Sully Sullenberger, but the event produced another couple of outstanding performers - social media and citizen journalism.
Hard on the heels of the Mumbai Terror attacks (lauded by CNN as “the day that social media appeared to come of age)", microblogging site Twitter* and its photo-sharing sister site Twitpic were first on the scene after last week’s splash down.
Man-on-the-street Janis Krums is credited with being first to break the story via a tweet, with the line “there’s plane in in the Hudson. I'm on the Ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy”. His iphone image (above) of the scene was up on the Twitpic site within minutes.
Krums’ photo was so popular, it brought the Twitpic site down. Some 7,000 people tried to view it before rescue boats had even reached the downed airliner, and within 24 hours had clocked 100,000 downloads.
The rise of services like Twitter and ‘citizen journalists’ like Janis Krum bring with them enormous challenges to organisations used to a command-and-control crisis management model, and it is likely that these will be the ones hardest hammered by this new news environment.
For those who embrace the opportunities, social media also offers the fascinating spectre of a future where pro-sumers like Krum may make the ultimate leap to become collaborators in an organisation’s hour of need.
Certainly, traditional media outlets themselves are already embracing the power of social media to enhance their own news gathering efforts, with newspaper The Charlotte Observer issuing a series of tweets of its own, including “If anybody sees passengers or witnesses on crashed jet twittering, pls DM to Observer we're looking for stringers with a journalism background for tonight in suburban New Jersey. DM to the Observer.”
All of this is turning the news environment – especially when it comes to breaking stories – on its head.
Time will tell how it will all settle down.
For now, it's a matter of watching and learning and getting a feel for how it things are changing, and what it means. The learning curve is steep, and the issue compounded by the speed of adoption of these news-dissemination methods. Organisations can't afford to get comfortable on that learning curve. Just as fast as they do, it’s likely to get ripped out from under them, exposing any knowledge gaps for all to see.
Just some of the areas we’re all going to see more of include:
The death of the middle-man: the traditional role of the PR is changing. Again. Just as we’ve made the shift from a spin and control environment over the past decade or so to one that is about transparency and facilitation, we’re seeing another sea change. Just what is the role of an information middle-man when everybody is side stepping them? A capable PR professional will most certainly extend beyond a conduit role, anyway – but many lesser souls are likely to get trampled in the stampede.
Story and source fatigue: it used to be that we all got a breather between bulletins (which were broadcast at predictable times. Imagine!). The internet’s 24/7 news cycle has blown all of that away. There is no longer any respite or time to draw breath in intense, breaking stories – they not only go on, but freshen up, around the clock. This, in turn creates demand that drives supply, pushing newsrooms for more angles, more often, and faster, and rendering the single-spokesperson model obsolete.
More (audience) tolerance for media getting it wrong: the viewing and reading public is used to a hyperlinked, dynamic online world now, with nothing remaining static for long. There will always be a trade off between being first and being right – in the past, the balance has swung towards the latter. Facing more intense competition (including that from consumers-turned-professionals, or ‘pro-sumers’, like Krum) it’s likely that mainstream media will plump for getting there first, and cleaning up the mess later. Leaving a mess for the corporates to deal with, too.
Limitless story capacity: we used to console ourselves that there were only a certain number of column centimeters or minutes to dedicate to the story, but in cyberspace there are no limits. We are already seeing a trend towards networks cutting up bite-sized chunks of media conferences for airplay, then hosting the entire event online, as well as human interest backstories, consumer generated content and am-cam footage and photos being used to flesh out stories. Stories can go deeper and further and become more layered than ever before.
An unlimited number of news outlets and an endlessly expanding audience: in a world where everybody is a potential news receiver and creator, the whole game changes. Pro-sumers (amateurs who turn professional for the news event) are putting mainstream media under unprecedented pressure as they do the job without the traditional limits and considerations your standard news room has to (or wants to) abide by.
Explosive word of mouth: Janis Krum's tweet was retweeted by those he tweeted, creating an information wildfire. How long will it be before smart corporates harness the power of SMS messaging and online in getting the message out in a crisis?
The realisation of Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes of Fame concept: other (OK, older) generations remain a little stunned at the ease with which Gen Y expose their hearts, minds and souls to the world, whether it is on Facebook or network news. There’s a whole new kind of consumer out there unafraid to open up and happy to tell their story, which can be good news or bad news for corporates, depending on which way the story is going. Human faces have the ability to deepen a story and make a strong emotional connection, making the
All the world’s a voyeur: while news media have monitored emergency services radio frequencies for as long as newsrooms and radio transmitters have existed, only a minuscule percentage of the population has been sad or obsessed enough to do it for themselves. What’s different here is the power those formerly isolated individuals have to tell it to the world – now. Conceivably, long before the corporate involved even has an inkling there is a problem.
*If you are not already familiar with Twitter, it goes something like this: users sign up and then proceed to upload text-based ‘tweets’ of up to 140 words, usually telling people what they are doing at that minute. The ‘tweets’ are then displayed on the user’s profile page, and forwarded to friends and others who have signed up for them, sometimes via text messaging, others via a social media site like Facebook
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