Editor’s Note: This paper was written by IMELDA V. ABANO, president of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists (PNEJ), during her Asia Journalism Fellowship in Singapore. We are posting this paper to provide readers insights as to how social media could help advance issues concerning the environment. (copyright 2011)
A WALL of water creeping from the sea to communities and farmlands that carried anything on its path – whole families, their pets, sea creatures, cars, houses, buildings, school buses, ships, trains -– was arguably one of the most powerful images of the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11.
The image, captured by a news crew aboard a helicopter, was broadcast by the Japanese broadcasting corporation NHK over CNN and beamed to television and online audiences all over the world within four hours after the earthquake and tsunami struck.
However, as close to real time as the quake and tsunami were happening, many people who were on ground zero had started recording the wrath of nature through their video- and camera-equipped mobile phones, the only gadget they could have probably carried as they tried to outrun disaster. In that moment, the act of recording one of the most horrifying upheavals of nature was not done merely for posterity; it was the product of a citizen journalist at work, probably without these people knowing it.
As the biggest international breaking story of the year unfolded on March 11, traditional news outlets – television, radio and newspapers (and their online editions) – tried to feed the growing hunger for information of people across the globe. It took the following day, at least, for major international news organizations to send their reporters, cameramen and production crew to the ground due to the disruption in transportation and the destruction of road and rail networks to northeastern Japan.
But what filled the slack? Within the first hour of disaster, media audiences turned to social media to get an idea of what hit Japan.
The aftermath of the Japan crisis provided the latest example of how powerful new Internet tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are changing the way media are produced, distributed and consumed.
Monitoring from the New Media Index of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism showed that for the week of March 14-18, a full 64% of blog links, 32% of Twitter news links and the top 20 YouTube news videos were about the Japan crisis.
More than 9,000 earthquake-related videos and 7,000 tsunami-related videos had been uploaded to the video-sharing website YouTube in the hours since the disaster began on March 11, according to an ABC News report on its website on March 11, 2011.
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, which are social media tools traditionally relegated to sharing personal thoughts, became the bridges to connect people and direct them to the biggest and most devastating natural disaster that Japan has experienced in its modern history.
In a way, the Japan earthquake and tsunami paved the way for social media to prove its relevance, its value, especially in sharing breaking news. The disaster provided the opportunity for social media to demonstrate its power to aggregate useful information, especially in a time when the traditional news media were a few steps behind.
Over the years, social media have evolved into powerful tools for communication at least for some news organizations and journalists who are trying to reach out to a wider audience outside their conventional mediums. Most of them are now embracing YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, the most popular and widely used of social media forms, in posting updates, stories and finding news sources.
“The social media landscape is changing so quickly, it can be hard to keep up. But as daunting as it may be, we need to try to keep pace, or at least pick out a few tools we find the most useful and make an effort to really employ them,” says James Fahn, executive director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Global Director of Environmental Programs.
Fahn, however, says journalists could also take advantage of the fact that they can combine their reports for traditional media with dissemination through social media channels. He argues that channels would change in the years ahead but these would not replace conventional media, but rather supplement it.
In early April 2011, for instance, Facebook launched a page called “Journalists on Facebook” to entice journalists to use the site as a distribution and research tool. It is a new platform aside from Twitter, where many journalists around the world are using to share updates, information and links in the confines of 140-character Tweets.
In his blog post, Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s director of media partnerships, says, “The Page is to serve as an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers and advance stories.”
Osofsky says the page “will provide journalists with best practices for integrating the latest Facebook products with their work and connecting with the Facebook audience of more than 500 million people”.
Changing journalistic practices
The use and popularity of social media in news organizations and among environmental journalists are growing. Journalists interviewed for this article agree that with social media, the audience has become more involved in the news creation process, where feedback happens in real-time and users are given the opportunity to interact.
Although most of them have been using social media tools such in covering environmental issues — climate change, biodiversity, forest degradation, water and solid waste management and the ongoing crisis in Japan — their reasons vary in using them. Some argue that social media exist to supplement traditional media.
Maria Andriana, who writes on environmental issues for Indonesia’s Antara News Agency, says social media supplements her reporting. She says using Facebook, for instance, has become a constructive learning and journalistic experience.
“ There’s definitely a learning curve for environmental journalists in using new tools such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, especially on its potential to coordinate and gather coverage with other journalists in the same field,” says Andriana, who first used Facebook three years ago. She has been trying her hands on Twitter to disseminate her journalistic pieces.
Andriana, a journalist for 27 years, says her news organization has been uploading stories using new platforms in the past few years. She has been writing mostly on topics ranging from global warming, mining, illegal logging, agriculture and forest issues.
Joydeep Gupta, director of the Third Pole project of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and China Dialogue, says social media will continue to change the way journalists gather and report the news.
But Gupta, a native of Delhi, India, who has been writing on environments issues for 28 years now, says journalists should not overly rely on social media tools and they should take the extra mile to verify all facts of their reports.
Gupta has been using Facebook and Twitter to reach a wider audience for more than five years now. Among the stories he has written and shared through social media were environmental issues in Asia such as the Japan crisis, tiger conservation and adaptation to climate change in the areas of water supply and agriculture.
A veteran in the coverage of the the United Nations climate change conferences in the past few years, Gupta says “digital media are indeed driving the involvement of millions of readers, delivering invaluable information and knowledge such as climate change issues.”
He says most environmental journalists from developing countries who are attending international conferences have been reporting back to their home audiences through various social media platforms, especially the most popular YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
For Alex Pal, publisher and editor of a local newspaper in the Philippines, the MetroPost, social media have become indispensable in disseminating information as well as help bring visitors to the site, which in turn attract advertisers.
But when asked to assess the reliability of information delivered via social media, Pal, also the vice president of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists, says he is unsure of this aspect.
“People who disseminate information through the social media are usually the same people who work with traditional media. Those who have no training in information gathering and dissemination are usually hesitant to do so,” he says.
Yidong Gong, an environmental journalist based in Beijing, China who writes for Xinhua News Agency, sees social media as an increasingly important source of information and vital in monitoring developments for possible stories. He, however, admits that he does not rely on information on social media for stories that he will eventually write and file.
Gong argues that while Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms are banned in China, the use of social media for news stories “is not yet fully developed.” The use of these sites, he says, is discouraged by Chinese authorities, chief of them the Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China.
“Social media are important platforms that have transformed the conventional flow of information. These have great potentials in promoting a vibrant and influential environmental journalism, although the trend is being held back at the moment in China,” Gong says.
It is an unstoppable trend, however, as people are increasingly growing concerned about environmental issues and they want to have their voice heard.
Harry Surjadi, a freelance environmental journalist and the founder of the Society of Indonesian Environmental Journalists from Jakarta, Indonesia, says social media are becoming more and more important as a reporting tool for environmental journalists, especially in sharing story ideas on environmental issues among journalists in a country or in a region like Asia.
While acknowledging the fact that environmental journalists nowadays are embracing social media as a reporting tool, Surjadi says journalists should be cautious in using various platforms.
“I use social media networks to contact resource persons. But for my writing, I prefer to use first hand information from observation or one-on-one interviews or original documents,” he says.
Piyaporn Wongruan, an environmental reporter from Thailand’s Bangkok Post, says in her country, social media do not play a large and important role in disseminating news and information.
“Most of the general and environmental news are still reported through mainstream media, like in television or newspapers. People generally use social media for personal information and updates and for social networking. For now, [social media tools do] not have much role in reporting general news that may interest the public,” Wongruan says.
“With both environmental journalism, and now with social media, we have a serious challenge in the accuracy and usefulness of what is reported,” says John Liu, director of the Environmental Education Media Project based in Beijing, China.
Although there are occasionally excellent environmental reports, Liu says a great deal of environmental journalism has been “sensational, under-informed, inaccurate and misleading.”
“This can lead to confusion and apathy rather than clarity and action. Social media have the potential to make this situation much, much worse. That said, the changes that are happening now to traditional media are also changing the ability for individuals and smaller organizations to reach global audiences,” he says.
Experiencing social media
While accessing news reports from the Internet has become increasingly common, many journalists and news organizations are trying innovative ways to engage the modern news consumer.
An example is the way in which Singapore’s The Straits Times (ST) is engaging audiences with their data-driven interactives, delivering news as a two-way experience.
The concept of news itself, says The Straits Times Online Editor Eugene Leow, is being redefined as “hyperlocal” to strike a more active conversation with its local readers and viewers.
“Increasingly, breaking news is quickly disseminated on our social media platforms as we see increasing usage and reliance of Singaporeans on social media,” Leow says. “Interactivity is always our aim to draw news consumers to appreciate various social platforms.”
Leow says the ST RazorTV has been successful in its cutting edge open interface concept in using social networking, convergence Internet TV and video entertainment in delivering news, lifestyle and entertainment content.
Jessica Cheam, Housing and Environment correspondent of the Straits Times, says as social media increasingly become a necessary tool for journalists, this reflects the growing reliance of the general news-reading public on social media tools.
“At the Straits Times, for example, Facebook has become an important way for us to disseminate breaking news stories,” Cheam, also founder and editor of the online news Eco-Business, says. “The conversation on social media regarding certain issues and stories has also become important — it’s no longer one-way: from the newspaper to its readers, but two-way, with readers responding to stories through social media channels.”
Navin Singh Khadka, a BBC correspondent in Nepal, says social media has been very important for reporting and producing his stories as the BBC has been increasingly using new media platforms.
He, however, acknowledges that social media can be a good source of tips but one cannot rely on them for a complete and accurate picture of a story.
“This is not to say that traditional media get the full mark, but there is a professional demarcation here. Therefore, you see social media often carrying links to the origin of the story, and most of the time they are what you are saying in traditional media,” Khadka says.
He says BBC has been encouraging its correspondents to file their stories using Twitter, podcasts, as well as SMS (short messaging service via mobile devices) and email. He says these tools have changed the way BBC covers the story, providing frequent updates that allow them to build a full picture of his climate change stories, for instance, providing real time updates and infographics.
But Khadka points out that the BBC’s coverage is, in this case, focused on experimenting with the new format and tools, rather than embracing the user-generated possibilities of social media.
Same values, new tools
The use of social media among environmental journalists or journalists in general highlights the speed at which many news organizations and journalists across Asia have adapted to this new frontier in reporting and communication.
Jeffrey Wagstaff, a social media expert who lectured on digital reporting techniques in one of the sessions of the 2011 Asia Journalism Fellowship, says the volume of information can seem overwhelming on social media’s presence in journalism.
“I learned that not all stuff out there are for journalists. If you find a tool that can be useful for you, use it. Find what works for you and master it so by the time you report, you are equipped,” Wagstaff says.
He says traditional media tend to harness the power of social media.
He urges journalists, however, to verify information found on the Internet, emphasizing that “social media are not 100 percent reliable, thus a more thorough fact-checking should be the responsibility of every journalist.”
“Technology plays several media roles such as communicating with readers and sources, finding news, trumpeting news and live collating, but it tends to link to traditional media,” Wagstaff says.
“Find where the value lies. We can’t afford to ignore what technology offers but we need to think these things as responsible journalists. Social media need traditional media moreso now than ever,” he says.
Rod Harbinson, former head of the United Kingdom-based Panos London Environment Programme that has been supporting environmental journalists in Asia, says new media can stimulate debate better than conventional media as these are generally more open, inclusive and invite and encourage participation.
“Such debates may be multi-faceted and have a dynamic aspect such as exchange and interaction between different people’s experiences of aspects of climate change, like extreme weather events. New media can also be useful in alerting people in early warning systems and networks to approaching extreme weather,” Harbinson says.
Another key challenge for many news organizations is to encourage more journalists to engage using these tools, and to use them for making contacts, for crowdsourcing and as a channel for their reporting, according to the study by Nic Newman entitled, “The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism,” at the Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism.
Rather than seeing it as a time-consuming add-on, the most successful practitioners have built social media into their journalistic workflows – and made it work for them, Newman says.
“Social media [have] opened up new opportunities for some to widen the impact of their journalism; for others, it is making the sourcing of information and contacts easier and quicker. As with so many aspects of the internet, social media are providing a useful extra layer of functionality, enabling stories to be told in new ways, not changing the heart of what journalists do,” the study notes.
Ethics in the Social Media Realm
For journalists, transparency in reporting local and international environmental issues is among the most important values, says Internews’ Fahn.
“We have certainly thought about ways to try to help environmental journalists come to grips with the challenges, opportunities and ethical issues in social media. We always make sure to look for ways for environmental journalists to foster responsible use of social media,” he says.
On the other hand, Marko Skoric, assistant professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, says issues on ethics and transparency are likely to become more prominent as journalists increasingly rely on social media for information and for dissemination their stories.
“One of the key problems is credibility. Most people still perceive social media to be less credible and turn to traditional news media when they need information on important issues,” Skoric says.
“I think the example of the business press and its success in the Internet era illustrates this most vividly. How much do we know about online publishers and their business dealings? Not a lot, and far less than we know about mainstream news organizations,” he adds.
Arun Mahiznan, deputy director of the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), says in general, the main considerations would still be accuracy, issues of privacy and credibility – which are standard issues in journalism.
“Social media tend to have players of dubious intent, competence and credibility. To get into that space and maintain ethical standards is challenging but imperative for good journalism. In fact, in the long run, it is such adherence to good standards that will distinguish the credible voice from the rest,” Mahiznan says.
The future of journalism
Social media present a significant challenge to the future of environmental journalism or journalism in general in Asia and elsewhere, Skoric says.
One of the main issues, Skoric says, is the reluctance of new generations (i.e. digital natives) to pay for news content online (and other contents as well). For an increasing number of users, social media are becoming the main platforms of news delivery although most of the contents posted on Facebook and Twitter, among other platforms, still originate from traditional media organizations.
“For me, the main dilemmas are: Developing new sustainable business models to support professional journalism and discussing and deciding on the importance of professional news media for political democracy,” Skoric says.
Skoric cites the crisis in Japan as a test of the power of social media to report crisis news. Although the initial news reports included many first-hand eyewitness accounts from Japan reported via social media, he says the role of social media is still quite limited.
“The reason for this could be the fact that Twitter and Facebook are not as popular in Japan as elsewhere, so perhaps other social media platforms played a more significant role, at least for Japanese audiences. In my view, the Japan crisis reiterated the importance of traditional electronic media,” he says.
Mahiznan, on the other hand, says social media has now become “part and parcel of the public communication universe.”
As the use of social media by news organizations and journalists evolves, he says there will be continuing discussions on how best to present stories to the public.
“Journalism has to adopt social media and adapt its journalistic practices to suit the nature of social media. This is no different from how journalism responded to the advent of the Internet,” he says.
The “global village” that Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan had envisioned long ago has arrived, thanks to advances in communications technology and the media. But with the disappearance of boundaries between cultures and peoples and with the speed how information is delivered nowadays, truth and responsibility should be paramount concerns of news organizations.
In their 2001 landmark book, “The Elements of Journalism,” journalists Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, stress the importance of journalism’s major responsibilities, of going back to the basics and rethinking how media organizations perform their jobs.
The first three of the 10 elements of journalism that Kovach and Rosenstiel drew up after years of research may well be the guideposts for practitioners, especially in this wired, fast-paced world: “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth. Its first loyalty is to the citizens. Its essence is a discipline of verification.”
photo credit: Imelda V. Abano / UN
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