It's just over two weeks to go until the BBC Social Media Summit.
As we explained in the last post, this event is all about producing useful 'things' - whether that's a blueprint for using social media to distribute information during disasters coverage; guidelines for verifying information received via social media channels; a research agenda that will provide academics with ideas and access to data or research subjects; or simply creating a network of individuals from different news organisations which might encourage more collaboration.
We have designed both days with these outcomes in mind.
Each day is structured around discussion rather than show-and-tell. We have emphasised group discussions and Q&As over big panels, and each session has questions we want answering rather than offering space for speakers to simply describe what they do/have done.
With this in mind, we wanted to share our themes and questions with you. Please let us know if you think we've missed anything significant.
We chose these topics because we thought they were the most pressing. Certainly, we haven't touched business models, but that was our theme for the Value of Journalism conference last year. And perhaps we also realised we weren't going to solve those issues at the Summit.
In order to help us produce useful outcomes, we've designed the two days around four main themes. We don't want it to be too mainstream media-centric, although it becomes far too easy to focus on how 'we' do social media to 'them' - the audience rather than the other way around. Mainstream media is in the process of adapting as broadcasting tools are adapted to become collaborative ones. Not easy.
Under each theme are the questions we will be posing. Do you agree? What have we missed?
1) Cultural change
- What needs to be done to effectively change culture/behaviour in the newsroom?
- How can senior managers show support if they don't engage with social media themselves?
- In your newsroom, is cultural change focused too heavily on skills training rather than mindset change?
- What elements would a perfect social media training course include?
2) Editorial concerns
- Is the line of verification shifting? Should the journalism of NPR's Andy Carvin be replicated? - Are we sitting on a ticking timebomb in terms of social media and defamation? What needs to be done in terms of education?
- Do we think Jeff Jarvis' tag rather than hashtags would work for an emergency?
- How can we work impartiality in an age of social media when people's histories/beliefs and affiliations are available?
3) Changing audience behaviour
- In what ways have audience expectations changed because of social media?
- Are we too focused on social media?
- How have audience expectations changed now that they can access the same feeds as journalists in real-time?
- Do news organisations have a responsibility to 'educate' the audience about the benefits of using social media?
- What are the repercussions of a world where people are picking the news they are interested in?
4) Technology and innovation
- From everyone's personal experience, what innovations have worked well and what has worked less well?
- Should news organisations be driving innovation or working more closely with start-ups?
- Where do we think innovation is most needed:
a. filtering information streams?
b. news visualisation?
c. engagement platforms?
- Are news organisations making the most of mobile technology: for news consumption or newsgathering?
- What are the technological barriers to telling the news in the way that we want?
These are the questions we hope to cover. What else do you think would be helpful, considering our hope to achieve these by the end?
1) Design a research agenda
2) Outline key technological needs in terms of newsgathering, filtering, curation and data journalism
3) Design shared guidelines for verification/publishing breaking news via social media
4) Design guidelines for using social media to cover disasters.
These are big plans and, with some strong group facilitators, we have high hopes! Considering we have 30 social media editors from all over the world on Day One, and 200 journalists, academics and key thinkers on Day Two, we should get somewhere even if we don't get to everything on the wish-list.
Please share your thoughts and ideas with us by leaving a comment on this blog post or via Twitter. The hastag for the event is #bbcsms. We'll also open a Google Docs file on the day where everyone can add their notes to get us off to a flying start.
Take a look at who's coming.
