4 ms·

This is interesting. I was up drinking beer with a friend until 5am this morning talking about the very phenomenon of breaking news coming from social media and

by iamdave 10y ago

This is interesting. I was up drinking beer with a friend until 5am this morning talking about the very phenomenon of breaking news coming from social media and sites such as Reddit. He pointed to the Boston bombing and Dallas shooter situations as reasons why the press should "just ignore" social media; his entire argument boiled down to 'bad data exists along side good data, therefore throw it all out" I didn't necessarily disagree that there are moments where we got it wrong, for sure. I tried arguing that using those events as a point of reference for insulating journalism a bit better was probably a good idea; you know "first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one" and he was having none of it. Maybe this story will do the trick. Really curious to see where this goes taking some points from that debate.

adamrezich 10y ago
The Boston Marathon bombing fiasco was the result of reddit trying to deduce stuff in the real world based on photos and video and the like. This is reddit trying to deduce information based on reddit posts, on reddit. I think that's an important distinction.
- meowface 10y ago
  It also definitely wasn't just reddit. Tons of people on 4chan, Twitter, and various forums were all looking into that "suspect".
- iamdave 10y ago
  I think so too, and that's a distinction that I tried in our debate to bring up. Broadly, my entire argument was around the use of social media, or at least the existence of social media bringing many new points of reference when looking at historical events in ways we didn't have before, and that if one wanted to, they could go and mine tweets, shares, likes, reddit posts from a fixed point in time and look at sentiment. Well, because some sentiments were wrong (in his opinion because people like Kim Kardashian are allowed to tweet), the whole notion needed to be thrown out. So I agree, it's an important distinction-though that distinction is inherently part of the "riddle" so-to-speak.
omginternets 10y ago
I don't have a real conclusion to offer, but I'd like to suggest that his argument might be a tad more nuanced than that. The claim may not just be that bad data is mixed in with the good. It might rather be that we can't verify sources and facts on social media effectively. In other words, I question the assumption that traditional journalistic methods are effective when examining social media. To be clear: I haven't formed an opinion on this. Thanks for the thought-provoking question, in any case.
- iamdave 10y ago
  It might rather be that we can't verify sources and facts on social media effectively. Believe me when I say we went down that rabbit hole as well. I even asked if perhaps there was something to the notion as to the unreliability of sources on social media and if that was the case, how do we create incentives for or otherwise insulate journalism beyond the baked-in expectation that journalists will perform with more earnest intent to disseminate to verify and seek out sources. We expect a journalist to dig for qualitative sources; we expect integrity; what do we do when that doesn't happen? What's next? He directly said "We ignore it. We ignore the problem and it will stop being one". I couldn't find a way to agree with that, I tried providing a subsequent argument that if there were a problem with social media mucking a story-where was the inherent problem in pointing to a fixed point in time where it happened (using examples he offered to the debate) as a means of understanding what went wrong in the process, and working to do better. That didn't get far. Trust me, I was there. At the end of the day, I had to rest the argument because he just didn't think social media had any bearing for journalists, and I had to try even harder to avoid saying things that were just plain rude after my position was continuously mischaracterized and parroted back as ideological soundbytes. Still, I think it's a critical conversation the journalism world ought to be having, and I don't think "Well just tell journalists to ignore social media" will solve that.
snowwrestler 10y ago
There is not really any news here, although the House GOP will once again spin up the PR machine over this. Redacting the characters of an email address is almost certainly not illegal; in fact both State and the FBI regularly do this themselves when releasing emails. So, I don't think this is much of a win in the social media saves the world column.

by iamdave 10y ago

adamrezich 10y ago

The Boston Marathon bombing fiasco was the result of reddit trying to deduce stuff in the real world based on photos and video and the like. This is reddit trying to deduce information based on reddit posts, on reddit. I think that's an important distinction.

meowface 10y ago
It also definitely wasn't just reddit. Tons of people on 4chan, Twitter, and various forums were all looking into that "suspect".
iamdave 10y ago
I think so too, and that's a distinction that I tried in our debate to bring up. Broadly, my entire argument was around the use of social media, or at least the existence of social media bringing many new points of reference when looking at historical events in ways we didn't have before, and that if one wanted to, they could go and mine tweets, shares, likes, reddit posts from a fixed point in time and look at sentiment. Well, because some sentiments were wrong (in his opinion because people like Kim Kardashian are allowed to tweet), the whole notion needed to be thrown out. So I agree, it's an important distinction-though that distinction is inherently part of the "riddle" so-to-speak.

omginternets 10y ago

I don't have a real conclusion to offer, but I'd like to suggest that his argument might be a tad more nuanced than that. The claim may not just be that bad data is mixed in with the good. It might rather be that we can't verify sources and facts on social media effectively. In other words, I question the assumption that traditional journalistic methods are effective when examining social media. To be clear: I haven't formed an opinion on this. Thanks for the thought-provoking question, in any case.

iamdave 10y ago
It might rather be that we can't verify sources and facts on social media effectively. Believe me when I say we went down that rabbit hole as well. I even asked if perhaps there was something to the notion as to the unreliability of sources on social media and if that was the case, how do we create incentives for or otherwise insulate journalism beyond the baked-in expectation that journalists will perform with more earnest intent to disseminate to verify and seek out sources. We expect a journalist to dig for qualitative sources; we expect integrity; what do we do when that doesn't happen? What's next? He directly said "We ignore it. We ignore the problem and it will stop being one". I couldn't find a way to agree with that, I tried providing a subsequent argument that if there were a problem with social media mucking a story-where was the inherent problem in pointing to a fixed point in time where it happened (using examples he offered to the debate) as a means of understanding what went wrong in the process, and working to do better. That didn't get far. Trust me, I was there. At the end of the day, I had to rest the argument because he just didn't think social media had any bearing for journalists, and I had to try even harder to avoid saying things that were just plain rude after my position was continuously mischaracterized and parroted back as ideological soundbytes. Still, I think it's a critical conversation the journalism world ought to be having, and I don't think "Well just tell journalists to ignore social media" will solve that.

snowwrestler 10y ago

There is not really any news here, although the House GOP will once again spin up the PR machine over this. Redacting the characters of an email address is almost certainly not illegal; in fact both State and the FBI regularly do this themselves when releasing emails. So, I don't think this is much of a win in the social media saves the world column.