This should be interesting.
5 journalists, 5 days locked in a French farmhouse with access only to Facebook and Twitter for news.
The aim is to test the quality of news sourced from both sites, and also to reveal whether or not social networking sites pose a serious threat to old media.
With Twitter playing pivotal roles in events such as the Denver airplane crash, protests in Iran and the hurricane in Haiti, what would the quality of news and media be if only sourced from the site rather than professionals?
So how will this work?
The journalists will be handed computers that only connect to Facebook and Twitter, no other browsing is allowed and of course television, radio and newspapers are also kept out of reach. (Update: sources linked to from a tweet are apparently accessible)
Each day, the reporters from Canadian, French, Belgian and Swiss radio stations will each go on the air on their respective channels to comment on the news that they have found.
“This experiment will enable us to take a hard look at all the myths that exist about Facebook and Twitter,” said Helene Jouan, a senior editor at France Inter, one of the stations that is sending a journalist.
“Our aim is to show that there are different sources of information and to look at the legitimacy of each of these sources,” she said.
Update:
You can follow the journalists here.
Via MSN
And what's your source for this article? ;)
http://www.france-info.com/culture-medias-2010-…
This is going to be so great to watch progress! Do you know where we can hear their newscasts or follow of the study? Glad you guys cover more than just San Francisco & NY!
i put via MSN which is where i found it
I liked that actually, quite interesting.
but twitter gives links to other website with information, that means that they will be testing the whole web news reliability, not just twitter and facebook!
Follow these hacks here: https://twitter.com/HuisClosNet/lesjournalistes
thanks
And this is one fine source: http://www.radiosfrancophones.org/coproductions…
“Aucune consultation de site d’aucune sorte n’est autorisée, sauf s’il s’agit de suivre un lien proposé sur Twitter ou Facebook.
De la même manière, lorsqu’un l’on suit un lien proposé par un following, ou un « ami » et que ce lien amène vers un blog, une vidéo ou un site d’information, le journaliste s’engage à ne consulter que le post, le papier ou la vidéo proposée et à ne pas aller sur d’autre pages du site en question.”
http://www.radiosfrancophones.org/coproductions…
Wow! This is so interesting. Can't wait to read about their results. The only problem I have with this experiment is that, as I understood, journalists would not be allowed to follow through with any links. For me, Twitter is almost like an aggregator of good links, hence real value lies outside of Twitter, after you click on the link. So, perhaps the results wouldn't reflect social media's value properly, but we'll see.
this is f'ing ridiculous. LOL they can't follow links on twitter off-site? they are not going to use twitter and FB to supplement their reporting? to find sources about relevant stories they find elsewhere? this sounds like an experiment designed to fail. I wrote http://marshallk.com/twitter-is-paying-my-rent more than 2 years ago and these people are goobers. Also, if you don't include FriendFeed then you're totally dropping the ball! ;)
lol….that's true. I hadn't considered the fact they can't actually leave Twitter. Should be fun. :)
It should be fun to see them conclude “see, twitter is full of garbage. please keep watching the nightly news.” maybe I'm being mean and these people are going to give it a fair try, but based on your description – it really sounds like an experiment designed to fail. discussions afterwords will bring up the LA Times wikified Iraq editorial. as in, missed the point. that's my guess :)
It should be fun to see them conclude “see, twitter is full of garbage. please keep watching the nightly news.” maybe I'm being mean and these people are going to give it a fair try, but based on your description – it really sounds like an experiment designed to fail. discussions afterwords will bring up the LA Times wikified Iraq editorial. as in, missed the point. that's my guess :)
Read the f*cking manual: “Aucune consultation de site d’aucune sorte n’est autorisée, sauf s’il s’agit de suivre un lien proposé sur Twitter ou Facebook.”
In other words: they may only visit websites that are linked on Twitter/Facebook
The journalists aren't tweeting in English.
Pointless, they won't be able to get the details of the news if they aren't allowed to click through links to blogs, etc as the story develops. Seems to me a heavily biased attempt to say twitter, etc is useless without traditional media.
Ah i see – thanks again for your polite contribution. The source clearly said no browsing and access to twitter and facebook – there was no link to a fucking manual. And if you are seriously pissed off, get the hell out of here. If your swearing was tongue in cheek, feel free to hang around.
:) The swearing was tongue in cheek.
But the subject of this all is (the lack of) fact checking, so 'scuse me while I piss this high (inspired by J. Hendrix) on this matter, because what you write is biased/incorrect and unchecked.
Beats working, I guess.
Doesn't seem to make much sense if sources linked to from a tweet are allowed. Anyway. Whatever.
Doesn't seem to make much sense if sources linked to from a tweet are allowed. Anyway. Whatever.
Doesn't seem to make much sense if sources linked to from a tweet are allowed. Anyway. Whatever.
There was an earthquake in Haiti. Not a hurricane. The irony.
interesting project
haha techcrunch also now need to be put for such a test?? LOL
This sounds really interesting. But wasn't it an earthquake in Haiti?
They're probably referring to the 2008 hurricane rather than the recent earthquake.
It didn't sound tongue in cheek and the source was ultimately reliable. Biased? How the hell is it biased? And incorrect – no. I didn't once say that they couldn't visit other sources, i just failed to mention it until i found someone who clarified. Welcome to the world of blogging.
Don't care.
How exciting! I look forward to hearing the results of their experiment!
What a fascinating experiment – I look forward to the results. Thanks for the insight :)
Namaste,
Tina Louise
The person posting the information is the source, not the site itself. Twitter and Facebook are just vehicles for communication; they have no control over what their users write, so they should not be judged on the quality of of the content. Perhaps these journalists should compare traditional media with mobile phone conversations, and texting, to test the legitimacy of those news sources, as well.