Social Media as a News Source

In this week's lecture, Trina McLellan of Reporting 4 Work discussed how journalism is an industry in transition. Particularly she looked at the rise of the internet and how it is changing the nature of journalism. What was most interesting to me was the use of social media for news distribution and dissemination.

According to ACMA's Digital Australians Online Survey in 2011, a large percentage of Australians are accessing news through social media. Trina discussed this in her lecture: 36% of those aged 18 - 29 access news through social media, yet the number of Australians using social media for news decreased as their ages increased.

While this says a lot about the generational changes in society, it also indicates that as the internet infiltrates society, it is becoming a news distribution tool. Children born in the past few years will never know a time without widespread internet, which means they will grow up knowing how to use social media and the internet. My six-year-old cousin, for example, is better with an i-Pad then me, and often plays games on the internet for her school homework.

What this means is that the use of social media to receive news will increase with each generation. The following graph, taken from Trina's excellent lecture, demonstrates this. This graph shows that social media is a significant source of news and one that is increasing, while the more traditional forms of news such as television, radio and print are decreasing in use.

So what does this mean for news organisations?

It means that they have to actively work on engaging audiences through social media. It is no longer possible for journalists and their organisations to simply occasionally tweet about an interesting story or expect people to follow boring links on Facebook to their news websites.

I think there are several things organisations can do to engage with audiences through social media.
1. Ask them their opinion - social media is an outlet through which people love to express themselves. Allow them to do it.
2. Satisfy their curiosity - give them most, or all, of the main facts on social media. No one will click on a link to a website if they can't tell from the tweet of status update what the point of the story is.
3. However, provide more coverage on their website - give a lot of detail on the website so that those who really care about the story can find out more.

I'm not an expert in any way on social media, and the ideas above are very simple. But they are highly effective. If you look at the most successful news organisations on social media, they are the ones who are following these guidelines. The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC news sites, The Age, and news.com.au "own nearly 60% of all Australian news links being shared by Twitter users". This means that these four organisations are connecting so well with audiences over Twitter that their audience is re-tweeting and sharing information from these news websites. For more information on news organisations on Twitter, see the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX), a study conducted by QUT's own Dr Axel Bruns.

Their success could be shared by other news organisations, if they simply accepted that social media and news dissemination is the way of the future, and if they begin to engage with their audiences now, they will build a strong social media following which will improve their brand.