Getting news on the riots at home

I live in a part of London not (yet) directly affected by the riots that have spread across the city. I know well and regularly visit many of the areas that have been hit. Friends and colleagues - many with young families - live in these areas.

So, possibly for the first time in my 20-odd years as a journalist, I find myself in the middle of a major international story which puts me at the receiving end of a process that I'm usually controlling.

It's been a revealing experience watching mainstream and social media tell the story in their different ways, and a valuable reminder about what is or what isn't good editorial practice.

Consuming the coverage on Tuesday night, there was no doubt the web was the winner. Television and radio struggled gamely to show the drama of the unfolding events, with extraordinary pictures of familiar landmarks going up in flames and breathless phone interviews with eyewitnesses.

But it was the live blogs from mainstream media operations like the BBC, Guardian and the Daily Telegraph that had the speed, immediacy and breadth of narrative that really revealed the extent of the crisis on London's streets.

They were able to pull together much faster than traditional platforms the full range of content, sources and media - video, audio, text, graphics, social media - in a compelling way. And the stats showed where the audience were turning to.

Experian report that "The News and Media category saw its highest spike in visits so far this year, with a 14% increase in UK internet visits between Monday 7 August and Tuesday 8 August."

The BBC was the biggest beneficiary, with a third of all internet traffic in the news category going to either the BBC homepage or the news website. Sky News was the next biggest recipient with 7% of all visits.

However, Experian goes on to report that on Monday:

"Although people were glued to the news sites for updates on the unrest, it was Twitter which has benefited the most from traffic as a result of the unrest in London. The real-time sharing of information through Twitter has made the platform the ideal discussion platform to spread updates on major news events like the riots, and yesterday (8 August) was Twitter's biggest ever spike in UK traffic online.."

Twitter accounted for one in every 170 UK internet visits... there were over 3.4 million visits to the Twitter homepage from the UK population alone. To put that in context, Twitter received 15% more visits yesterday than it did around the super-injunctions scandal, the previous biggest spike in its UK history

And if you look at the content linked to from Twitter (and Experian makes the point that the spike in traffic was not replicated on Facebook) you can see why.

Video like this of an injured man being mugged as he was being led away, or Sky News' Mark Stone bravely reporting on his smartphone, challenging rioters in Clapham, that appeared first on YouTube, or this video of a woman berating the rioters have all, already, become defining images of the riots.

There was the inevitable map mashups and in the aftermath Twitter became the tool for some to try to build community action to clean up the mess - with accounts like @riotcleanup amassing more than 50,000 followers in less than 12 hours.

Then there are the attempts by both the police - and the community - to identify and catch looters by publishing pictures online.

There were of course the inevitable rumours, untruths, half-truths and factoids circulating - though in general the quality of information being shared turned out to be pretty good.

The only aspect of the social media coverage that felt uncomfortable was when tweeters from outside the UK began to become involved in the coverage - either curating or reporting.

It was of course entirely appropriate for them to do so - but if there were occasional errors that's where they tended to be found. Perhaps it is inevitable because they were operating at a distance and were unfamiliar with the geography or the story. Nor could they have had the same resources and contacts that 'local' journalists had.

And that's a good lesson for all of us as we struggle with the issues that social newsgathering and social reporting raise. Social media is an essential tool that can only enhance our journalism - it cannot replace it.