电子报
电子报

社交新闻采集的新黎明


编者按
2015年岁末,清华大学爱泼斯坦对外传播研究中心联合美国哈佛大学尼曼新闻实验室(Nieman
Journalism
Lab)约请世界各地的新闻学院院长、知名教授和媒体一线人士对2016年全球新闻传播的新趋势发表了看法。我们对访谈记录进行了整理,编译成中文以飨读者。

摘要

随着技术的进步,目击者新闻在社交网站上逐渐兴起,信息的海量传播给媒体带来新的挑战。媒体需要应对在社交新闻中搜寻有效内容、甄别内容真假、解决内容版权等相关问题,才能实现媒体与受众关系的新平衡。


在2016年,新闻机构应该对社交媒体上的新闻采集工作投入更多的时间和资源,要和他们对新闻产出的投入力度相当。


当今社交媒体用户数量和移动设备数量已经超过了全球总人口数,新闻事件发生时基本都有人拿着智能手机在现场,而那时记者可能还没听说这个事件。虽然互联网强大,却也无法弥补人自身的缺陷,网络上大量的虚假信息给新闻机构带来了一个独特的问题。


当事件发生时,记者如何联系到现场的目击者?如何证实成百上千的说辞、图片和视频?如何接近那些在现场性命攸关的人?如何找到素材的原始上传者并避免版权纠纷?如何应对虚假信息的扩散?记者们如何在做到这些的同时仍旧保持竞争力?


通常来说,这些问题大多落在社交媒体编辑们的肩上。编辑们就像舵手,在波涛汹涌的网络和社群之海中为其新闻机构的数字产品之船掌舵。虽然一些针对这一航行的地图和指南针陆续出现,但如果甲板上没有更多训练有素的人手,航程将会充满艰辛。


2015年,几乎每条主要新闻事件都有目击者新闻的介入。在2016年,新闻机构应该对社交媒体上的新闻采集工作投入更多的时间和资源,要和他们对新闻产出的投入力度相当。不少媒体和记者对社交媒体新闻已经掌握纯熟,但由于这个问题刚兴起不久,业内大部分人还在努力追赶这一变化,而追赶的代价也开始显现。


2015年10月,俄勒冈州一所社区大学发生大规模枪击案,一名目击者发了一条推特叙述现场混论场景,多家媒体记者争先恐后在该推文下留言请求采访。这次混乱无序的媒体行为引发上百名推特用户的强烈反对,当时只是在履行工作职责的记者们饱受非议,除了“乘人之危”、“龌龊卑鄙”、“令人作呕”这些词之外,网友们还用了更多难登大雅之堂的词攻击他们。参与这次对话的网友们在未来都可能成为信源,那些记者们遭受的事对很多人而言历历在目,而当初那名目击者从没作出任何回应。


媒体经常被虚假信息和骗局所蒙骗,或者把重新包装过的信息错当成新闻。当这些信息让媒体应声出动后,大多数读者和用户都难辨真相。


在过去的几个月里,媒体引用的一个加州圣伯纳迪诺枪击案的目击者后来被发现是个骗子;《查理周刊》事件后巴黎民众走上街头的照片被当做巴黎恐怖袭击的后续事件图片在网络上传播;美国综合性论坛“4chan”把几家广播媒体耍的团团转,令其错报了两名俄勒冈州社区大学枪击案嫌疑人;俄罗斯飞机在土耳其境内被击落的证据是一张失事飞机的旧图。这样的例子不胜枚举。这些情境下,读者和用户看到的信息和媒体看到的无异,如果社交媒体上的新闻采集工作做得不到位,基于用户参与和社群的新闻产出端就会付出代价。


随着即时通讯应用WhatsApp(如今有近十亿用户)等个人通讯网的崛起,新闻事件发生时,目击者新闻将在个人间更加广泛地传播。目击者越来越明白什么是有新闻价值的内容,这让媒体更难找寻、证实和使用社交网络上的内容。伦敦地铁持刀伤人事件的一段视频引发了一条“兄弟,你不是穆斯林”的热门话题,在WhatsApp上传播之后只引起了一部分公众的关注,该视频的版权所有者到现在也没有找到。


英国广播公司(BBC)、社交媒体通讯社Storyful、社交媒体新闻聚合网站Reportedly、嗡嗡喂(Buzzfeed)等已开始在社交媒体上搜寻优质报道,以信任、尊重和支持等理念为基础,采用传统新闻报道方式进行报道。

这些新闻的基本理念并没有变。每家新闻机构都有报道重大新闻事件、提供有价值的公众服务的记者和编辑团队。但是,由于技术进步过快,我们的能力还无法应对技术的更迭。如果目击者新闻的发掘和证实的问题不解决,新闻机构、受众和记者之间的关系只会受到损害。


阿拉斯戴尔·雷德是First Draft News的总编辑。First Draft News是谷歌新闻实验室主导创立的网站,与媒体分享如何寻找、核查网络中真假信息的实用经验和指南。


注:本文由贺飞编译,系清华大学新闻与传播学院2014级硕士生。
转载请注明:来自微信公号“清华全球传播”
清华大学爱泼斯坦对外传播研究中心主办
来源网址:http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/12/a-new-dawn-in-social-newsgathering/


原文
A New Dawn in Social Newsgathering 


2016
looks to be theyear when news organizations begin devoting as much time
and resources to thenewsgathering side of social media as they do the
output.

            

When social
media users and mobile devices already outnumber the global population,
there will almost always be someone with a smartphone at a news event
before a journalist even hears of it. But — the Internet being the
Internet, and people being people — the huge amount of false information
shared online represents a unique problem to news organizations.

 

When
a story breaks, how can journalists reach eyewitnesses at the scene?
How can they verify claims, pictures, and videos by the hundred? How
should they approach people who are, in that moment, scared for their
lives? How do they find an original uploader and avoid getting stung for
copyright infringement? How should they combat the spread of false
information? And how on earth can they do all this and still remain
competitive?

 

Many of these questions traditionally fall on
the shoulders of a social media editor, tasked with steering their
outlet’s digital ship through a swelling, screaming sea of networks and
communities. Various maps and compasses for the task are emerging, yet
without more trained hands on deck, the going is rough.

 

After
nearly every major news event over 2015 involved some form of
eyewitness media,2016 looks to be the year when news organizations begin
devoting as much time and resources to the news gathering side of
social media as they do the output.There are many organizations and
journalists already excelling in news on the social web, of course, but
the novelty of the problem has left the wider industry playing catch up,
and the costs are beginning to show.

 

The backlash from
hundreds of Twitter users to the media scrum which surrounded onewitness
of the UCC shooting in October made the problem clear. “Scum,”
“vultures,” “ghouls,” “sleazy,” and “disgusting” were some of the more
printable epithets thrown at reporters who were just doing their job.
All of the users involved in that conversation have the potential to be
sourcesin the future, and many will remember all too clearly what
happens to people who report events on social. The original eyewitness
never responded.

 

News organizations are regularly caught
out by fakes and hoaxes, or publish repurposed material as news, and
when they get called out — which they invariably are — more readers and
viewers are lost to the sea.

 

In the last few months alone,
a hoaxer named “Marie Christmas” was quoted as a witness to the San
Bernardino shooting; images from January’s Charlie Hebdo shooting were
shared during the more recent Paris attacks; 4 chan fooled broadcasters
into misidentifying the suspected UCC shooter; and an old image of a
burning jet was published as evidence of the Russian plane shot down
over Turkey. There are many more. Readers and viewers have access to the
same information as news organizationsin these scenarios and when the
newsgathering side of social media is under-resourced, the output side
built on engagement and community is  undermined.

 

Withthe
rise in private networks like WhatsApp, which has nearly a billion
users, eyewitness media will be increasingly shared privately as a story
breaks. Eyewitnesses are becoming savvy to the value of news worthy
material and thiswill make it harder to find, verify and use. The “you
ain’t no Muslim bruv” video of London’s Leytonstone stabbing which
spawned a hashtag only broke the surface of public consciousness after
circulating on WhatsApp and the copyright holder has yet tobe
identified.

 

The BBC, Storyful, Reportedly, BuzzFeed and
many more are already garnering excellent stories from investing in
communities on these networks, using old-school reporting techniques
based on trust, respect and rapport.

 

These fundamentals of
journalism haven’t changed. Every news organization is full of
reporters and editors breaking important stories providing a valuable
public service. But, as is so often the case, the technology has
outpaced our ability to react to it. If the issue of eyewitness media —
its discovery and verification — is not addressed, relationships between
news organizations, audiences, and journalists will only suffer.



Alastair Raid is managing editor of First Draft.
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