Journalism and social media whitepaper
Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 14:52
Daryl Willcox publishing has today released a whitepaper about how journalists have adapted to the rise of social media over the last five years, which I wrote for them.
The report is aimed largely at an audience of PR professionals who want an insight into how journalists think about social media, and it is being published alongside a survey about how journalists use social media. I must say some of the findings of that survey surprise me:
out of the
922956 journalists surveyed, over 200 made additional comments – some scathing, slamming social media as a pointless communication channel to manage, and some pointing to the fact they are now dependent on these websites as news sources.
Other findings of the survey were less surprising:
The survey also found that little more than one per cent of respondents claimed they were using social media less than they were 12 months ago, confirmation that journalists reject the notion that social media may be a fad.
One of the great frustrations of working on this project has been that the topic is so fast moving that the paper is inevitably out of date already. In the few weeks since I finished writing this, there has been quite a lot of additional information and new examples that I would have loved to include:
- The Project for Excellence in Journalism showed how Facebook had become a critical traffic driver to US news sites in 2010, while Twitter was making less of an impact.
- The Oriella Digital Journalism study found that journalists increasingly use social media – but also that the majority still don’t.
- The sessions of the BBC Social Media Summit provided a great deal of insight into how newsrooms in Britain and around the world view social media.
There have also been some interesting case studies in journalists’ use of social media, most notably the critical role of New York Times journalist Brian Stelter’s (re-)tweeting in breaking the story of Osama bin Laden on Twitter. In Britain, we have seen Twitter play an central role in the debate about privacy injunctions.
Somewhat less dramatically, Stefanie Gordon’s images of the Space Shuttle Endeavour provided an excellent case study of how images published on social media sites rapidly becomes incorporated into news organisations’ output.
Inevitably, the best way to keep up to speed with developments in social media and journalism is by participating in the link sharing communities that social networking sites enable. So here’s one place to start: my feed of social media and journalism links.
Press Gazette: Guardian memo: 54,000 a month behind Times paywall
Thursday, 9 December 2010, 11:49
"New research from Experian Hitwise has been used by The Guardian to suggests that 54,000 people a month are accessing content behind the paywall of The Times and Sunday Times. The research was commissioned by Guardian News and Media and published internally on the company’s intranet yesterday."
IT Pro: One in six UK page views are Facebook
Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 13:59
"a new study by research firm Hitwise, which showed the social network was responsible for 16.73 per cent of the page views from our shores."
However, despite this seemingly untouchable dominance, it was still only the second most visited site in the UK, with Google taking the crown at 9.59 per cent of all visits.
Hitwise Intelligence: Times paywall: initial data and analysis
Thursday, 24 June 2010, 13:29
Robin Goad: "what has the impact [of the paywall] been on traffic to the Times website? … We have aggregated traffic to both old and new Times sites in order to cut out any double counting and provide a consistent comparison and, as you can see, the title’s market share has dropped from 4.37% during the week ending May 22nd to 2.67% last week (w/e June 19th). … since it forced users to register in order to view its content, the Times has lost market share. However, this decline has clearly not been catastrophic and none of the paper’s rivals has particularly benefitted."
Search Engine Land: Stat Rant: Does Facebook Trumps Google For News & Can’t We Measure Twitter Correctly?
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 11:10
Danny Sullivan: "Earlier this week, Hitwise put out stats suggesting that Facebook is beating Google and Twitter when it comes to driving traffic to news sites. I dug a little deeper, and I beg to differ."
Hitwise: Record week for Google News
Monday, 21 September 2009, 17:12
"[Last] week was Google News UK’s busiest ever, with Internet visits increasing 71% and the site ranking as the 28th most popular overall (up from 46th the previous week)."
Gordon’s Republic: Twitter proves major boon for media websites
Friday, 26 June 2009, 13:06
Robin Goad of Hitwise: "Although all of the newspapers have multiple 'official' feeds, these tend to be bland and have very low retweet rates. Journalists tweeting themselves and engaging with the Twitter community typically have more success in creating viral stories…"
ComputerWeekly.com: Twitter: UK’s fastest growing website
Wednesday, 24 June 2009, 14:13
"According to Hitwise, Twitter has become a key source of traffic to other websites. During May 2009, Twitter was the 30th-biggest source of traffic for other sites in the UK, accounting for 1 in every 350 visits to a typical website. Over half of this traffic (55.9%) is sent to other content-driven online media sites, such as social networks, blogs, and news and entertainment websites."
Hitwise: MPs’ expenses searches drive Telegraph page views
Sunday, 17 May 2009, 13:45
"the Telegraph’s market share of UK Internet visits to sites in our News and Media – Print category shot up when it broke the story on May 8th. It has since declined, but remained above its typical level."
ReadWriteWeb: Hitwise: News Sites Need Search Engines and Aggregators
Thursday, 9 April 2009, 07:35
"According to Hitwise, the Drudge Report is the largest single source of visitors to news and media sites. Google News (1.5%), CNN.com (1.4%) and Yahoo! News (0.8%) also drive relatively large amounts of traffic, but it is interesting that no single site really holds anything close to a monopoly here."
Hitwise Intelligence UK: Facebook the most searched for brand in the UK
Thursday, 5 March 2009, 11:18
Robin Goad: "Facebook’s UK Internet traffic has more than doubled over the last year and it is now the second most visited website in the UK after google.co.uk. The social network accounted for 1 in every 24 UK Internet visits during the month of February and traffic to the site has already increased by 18.6% during 2009. … The remaining four brands are all online retailers: eBay, Amazon, Argos and Tesco. eBay and Amazon remain the most popular online retail brands, but the more traditional high street players are gaining on them all the time. "
Hitwise: The cult of Robert Peston and BBC blogs
Tuesday, 7 October 2008, 21:41
Robin Goad: "UK Internet searches for ‘robert peston’ have shot up over the last month."
Monday, 27 August 2007, 16:16
2
Marcus Warren on the Daily Mail’s ABCe performance ("so impressive that it appeared to shock most of the blogging media pudits into silence") and again says Telegraph.co.uk ("TCUK" to its friends, apparently) remains the UK’s top paper site on Hitwise.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007, 15:23
0
"YouTube looks set to overtake BBC.co.uk in share of UK visits within a matter of weeks."
