Definição de Média Social

Raquel Recuero escreveu um post muito bom sobre social media, e o seu papel na emergência das redes sociais. A Raquel ainda elaborou uma lista de características dos média sociais. Um texto que vale a pena ler para melhor compreender as novas relações entre os utilizadores e o potencial que encerram.

Mídia social para mim é aquela ferramenta de comunicação que permite a emergência das redes sociais. Para permitir que as redes sociais emerjam, esses meios de comunicação precisam subverter a lógica da mídia de massa (um->todos) para a lógica da participação (todos<->todos) (como o Palacios já falava desde 1995). Mídia social, assim, é social porque permite a apropriação para a sociabilidade, a partir da construção do espaço social e da interação com outros atores. Ela é diferente porque permite essas ações de forma individual e numa escala enorme. Ela é diretamente relacionada à Internet por conta da expressiva mudança que a rede proporcionou. Mas não acho que seja, como muitos explicam, uma característica da chamada Web 2.0. Acho que foi sim, reforçada nos últimos anos, mas sempre esteve presente enquanto potencial da Internet (lembro, por exemplo, das listas de discussão, fanzines online e etc. que são bem anteriores.

O que é Mídia Social?

Must Read Links

AOP: Publishers must put digital at centre of business models, says Sly Bailey

Publishers must put digital media ‘at the centre’ of their businesses to survive the current economic downturn, Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror CEO, told an industry conference today.

Digital is no longer a ‘nice to have, it’s a must have’, but must be integrated into publishers’ business models, Bailey told delegates at the Association of Online Publisher’s (AOP) Digital Publishing Summit.

By 2011 digital revenues will represent a ’substantial part’ of Trinity Mirror’s business, Bailey said, adding that she was not concerned about digital profits replacing print revenues.

Sly Bailey dixit. Ouçam a palestra por completo | Listen to the speech in full

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The four C’s of building a new local market

Local newspaper web sites have made a lot of progress during the past 10-plus years since they were first launched. Video, blogs, comments, constant updates - the list is long.

But one area that hasn’t evolved much at all on local news web sites is … strangely … the local news section.

If you click on the “Local News” tab on most local news sites, you see the same thing you probably saw in 1998: A list of headlines, in reverse chronological order, that link to stories published in the print newspaper. (I don’t pretend to have done this on every site, only a few dozen.)

At the same time, editors and publishers emphasize their “local news franchise” as the cornerstone of their operation. So why the disconnect from mission to execution?

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Town crier, town square, and community memory

Newspapers, which replaced the town crier with what became to be known as print journalism, are slowly awakening to a second function that’s ideally performed on the Web: the town square. But there’s a third role that’s being overlooked, and that’s the role of community memory.

I’ve begun using that term lately in discussions of how we need to expand our journalistic processes. We need to move away from exclusive reliance on episodic storytelling and toward the creation of “living resources” that are updated whenever they need to be. I touched on this concept briefly in earlier posts about obituaries, which in many cases ought to be life stories of the living.

Neither the production nor the consumption of news today is necessarily tied to a schedule. We’re no longer limited by the daily print cycle or the six o’clock newscast. Most journalists see that as a “publish it now” opportunity, but miss the “maintain it forever” implications.

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Charticle Fever

For decades, news organizations have been seeking ways to stem the steady decline of newspaper circulation and woo those elusive 18-to-35 year-olds who are likely to get their news free on the Internet. Well, here’s an equation that editors and designers in newsrooms ranging from small dailies in Oregon to major metros in Florida are increasingly turning to: Chart + article = charticle. (Think Brad + Angelina = Brangelina, but not nearly as hot and quite a bit geekier.)

Charticles–as defined by Omaha World-Herald Deputy Presentation Editor Josh Crutchmer–are combinations of text, images and graphics that take the place of a full article. But in many newsrooms, the term refers to a bunch of blurbs floating around with no byline, no transitions and–gasp!–no nut graph.

Comunidades e partilha de informação

O Sérgio Santos fez esta apresentação para uma sessão de incentivo aos caloiros para explorarem novas ferramentas colaborativas, na Faculdade de Física da Universidade de Coimbra. O tema principal são essas  ferramentas e as tendências de comunicação e colaboração que estão ao dispôr de todos. Um trabalho simples e interessante, e bastante esclarecedor para iniciados.

Enredo 2.0 | Plot 2.0

Starring: Patrick Byrne, SlimVirgin and Judd Bagley

Two and a half years ago, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne penned an editorial for The Wall Street Journal, warning that widespread stock manipulation schemes - including abusive naked short selling - were threatening the health of America’s financial markets. But it wasn’t published.

Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia’s naked shorts, The Register

Esta é uma história de mentira, deturpação, dinheiro, Wikipédia e emails. Esta é uma história sobre como membros de uma instituição utilizam as ferramentas 2.0 em seu favor, e acabam por ser descobertos. Um thriller complexo, mas preocupante. Para ler aqui.

This is a story of lies, corruption, money, Wikipedia and emails. This is a story about how the members of an institution used 2.0 tools in their favor, and ended up being exposed. A complex but worrying thriller. On show here.

A soma e as partes | The sum and the parts

O novelo de informação | The information yarn

Antes as notícias eram uma camisola. Agora são um novelo. Antes os jornalistas tricotavam a informação para um formato. Agora somos nós todos que temos as agulhas. A diferença do novelo de antigamente e do de agora é que este tem mais do que duas pontas e tem város matizes. Talvez tenha sido sempre assim, mas agora é mais. Esta metáfora pode ser um pouco esticada, mas foi do que me lembrei quando li este post do Jeff Jarvis (ando a passar muito tempo com a minha avó). O que Jarvis defende é que a unidade fundamental do jornalismo deixou de ser o artigo per se, mas as ligações aos artigos, às fontes de informação, às reacções, a todas as coisas relacionadas com a história que transformam a informação numa massa viva. O artigo deixa de ser a soma para ser a parte. Os formatos continuam definidos e válidos, mas a estrutura mental que criamos com toda essa informação é agora radicalmente diferente: o ponto de partida é o tópico, ao qual se associa toda a informação, discussão e opinião à volta dele. Depois se fazemos camisolas ou cachecóis, ou uma gigantesca manta de retalhos colectiva, isso é connosco.

In the the old days, news were a sweater. Now they’re a ball of yarn. In the old days journalists knitted the information into a format. Now we  all have the needles. The difference between the old days yarn and todays’ is that this has more than two ends and several colors. Maybe it’s been always like this, but now is more. This metaphor may have gone a bit too far, but that was what i remembered when i read this post by Jeff Jarvis (i’m spending a lot of time with my granny). What Jarvis defends is that the fundamental unit of journalism is no longer the article per se, but the links to the articles, to the information sources, to the reactions, to all things related to the story that turn all that information into a living mass. The article is no longer the sum to become the part. The formats are stil valid and well defined, but the mental structure that we create with all of that information is now radically different: the starting point now is the topic , to which all the data, discussion and opinion associated with it is aggregated. Whether we knit sweaters or scarfs with it, or a gigantic collective quilt, it’s up to us.

I think the new building block of journalism needs to be the topic. I don’t mean that in the context of news site topic pages, which are just catalogues of links built to kiss up to Google SEO. Those are merely collections of articles, and articles are inadequate.

Instead, I want a page, a site, a thing that is created, curated, edited, and discussed. It’s a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s also a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides annotated links to experts, coverage, opinion, perspective, source material. It’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but that tries to accomplish something (an extension of an article like this one that asks what options there are to bailout a bailout). It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organized.

The building block of journalism is no longer the article

Dave Cohn: Entrevista em Crowdsourcing- as perguntas | Crowdsourced interview - the questions

1- Spot.us has become a success even before it’s official start. What is the current situation?

2- I’ve been following the evolution of spot.us, with all it’s episodes. Has it become a more complex task than you expected?

3- Spot.us provides a chance to report on subjects that are overlooked by the newsrooms. Is the picture of the world brought by traditional media too narrow?

4- How do you define yourself : as a journalist, an editor, an entrepreneur or something else? You are multitasking these days…

5- How has your perspective on journalism - as a business and as a service (or as a process, like you say) - changed since the beggining of spot.us?

6- Do you feel people are eager for long feature stories, investigative journalism, instead of the fluff we see every day in the news?

7- Nuno Loureiro - “In which way do you think that projects like spot.us can contribute to change the communication paradigm in the near future, regarding technological democracy and having in account the ultimate objective of total independence towards corporate media?”

8- Vera - “I’d like to ask Dave how open he is to the possibility of Spot.us expanding to other regions (and other countries) and how hard he thinks that would be.”

9 - Carlos Alonso - “I’m interested in agenda issues. Are you going to track whether a story has been covered before or not in media and the differences between media and spot.us coverage?

What I want to know is if this new model that gives the people the editorial power of choosing what they want/is going to be covered results in a agenda different of what the media are proposing, if there is a gap between what the newspapers are giving and what the people want to know, and if Spot.us fills this gap.”

10- Paulo Querido - Asks if journalists in a project like this could be hired in a  full-time basis? To which I add: who can pitch and work for/with Spot.us?

11- Laura Oliver - How aware are the offline community about Spot.Us’ activity and do you have any plans for how to market the project further?

12- One of the fundamentals in your work is the concept of democracy applied to journalism, of the crowd taking control. Wasn’t journalism democratic nor did it work for common good before?

13- How do you feel about all the reactions Spot.us has been getting? There was the NYTimes article, and some raised suspicion about the risks associated with the crowdfunding, do you think they were exaggerated?

14- What is dead wrong with the journalism business today?

15- What kind of advice would you give to young journalists and entrepreneurs?

Aqui estão as perguntas que vou colocar ao Dave Cohn, se bem que ainda tenho uma dúvida ou duas. Tenho como objectivo saber algumas coisas com isto: -como se tem desenrolado o processo do Spot.us; -o que mudou na perspectiva do Dave Cohn ao longo desta experiência; -qual é a sua visão sobre o jornalismo hoje em dia; Acima de tudo quis evitar algumas questões já feitas noutras entrevistas, e dar uma visão geral do projecto, de como se enquadra na realidade, e sobre as ideias que levaram o Dave a realizá-lo. Mas se tiverem alguma ideia, correcção ou sugestão a fazer, digam, as perguntas só seguem na sexta-feira. Usem a caixa de comentários. Obrigado.

So, here they are, the questions for Dave Cohn, even if i still have some doubts in an item or two. Here’s my purpose with these questions: -how has the process of building Spot.us evolved; -what has changed in Dave Cohn’s perspective through out this experience; -what is his view on journalism nowadays; Above all i tried to avoid some questions already made in previous interviews, and provide an overall vision on the project, how it fits in reality, and Dave’s ideas that led him to do it. But if you have any idea, improvement or suggestion, please say so, the questions will only follow on Friday. Use the comment box.Thank you.

Isto é sobre o quê? | What is this all about?

Entrevista em | Crowdsourcing | an interview - Spot Dave Cohn

A regulação dos blogs

E os bloggers do futuro?

Já falei aqui da discussão no Parlamento Europeu sobre o estatuto dos blogs, mas o Carlos José Teixeira e o Paulo Querido, que já andam nestas coisas há algum tempo, dão a sua opinião sobre o assunto em dois textos, um no Fractura.net, o outro no Expresso Online. Se a questão agora parece criar ruído na blogosfera, o que questiono é como uma regulamentação irá afectar os bloggers do futuro. Terão que criar um Blog-Na-Hora,num qualquer balcão institucional virtual?

Do Fractura.net:

A minha primeira impressão acerca do assunto tem já alguns anos e sustentava uma teoria de auto-regulação, isto é, algo que iria funcionar no ecossistema de forma a sustentar os blogues com melhor conteúdo, o que seria premiado pelas visitas e leituras, tornando-os cada vez mais influentes. Já estão a ver a que ponto ia a minha inocência.
Seguidamente, comecei a pensar que esta situação rapidamente levaria à cristalização da blogosfera em meia dúzia de espaços centrais e uma miríade de blogues satélite a lutar por um espaço ao sol na cacofonia da discussão e da endolinkagem. Já não me enganei assim tanto.
Neste momento, já não sei o que pensar acerca da forma de regulação da actividade, excepto que, como diz o Paulo, esta é necessária.

O problema da blogosfera é o de esta ser uma actividade social em quase todos os sentidos do termo. Composta na sua grande maioria por seres humanos, a blogosfera transmite incessantemente informação da mais variada espécie. Existe de tudo um pouco, desde o blogue das bundas gostosas ao da filosofia mais vanguardista, desde o humanista ao nazi.
Como sistema de divulgação das mais variadas vozes, amplifica e reproduz exponencialmente cada uma delas até ao infinito, ou pelo menos até onde as hiperligações a levarem.

(…)Também sabemos que os blogues não são todos iguais e que a forma de recompensa que estes obtêm se relaciona com os mais díspares algoritmos e com frequentes factores que nada têm a ver com a qualidade do conteúdo. Exemplos disso não faltam por aí.
Muito sinceramente, não gosto lá muito de me ver conotado com algum tipo de blogosfera que por aí circula.
A somar a isso há a aceitação de um blogue pela restante blogosfera. “Abençoá-lo”, por assim dizer. Fazer com que este deixe de ser um local obscuro e trazê-lo para a luz.
A blogosfera, sabê-mo-lo, é uma imensa casa de putas. E difícil.

Do artigo no Expresso Online:

Queiram-no ou não os bloggers, e a maioria afirma claramente, aos GRITOS, que não, a clarificação do seu estatuto é inevitável. Comes with the job. Vem com a responsabilidade crescente que os blogues, ou alguns deles pelo menos, ocupam na esfera comunicacional.
O cuidado da ERC em dialogar com a blogosfera é, numa primeira leitura, o próprio reconhecimento desse estatuto. Estatuto que aliás alguns autores buscam afanosamente, na ânsia de serem figuras interventivas, líderes de opinião e spinners merecedores de salário. Mas ao mesmo tempo parecem querer rejeitar os deveres de tais condições.
Ora, não há estatutos grátis.

Será o início da institucionalização dos blogs, depois da corporativização? Seja lá o que for que aconteça no futuro, a regra terá que ser sempre a manutenção da liberdade de expressão, independentemente dos pontos de vista defendidos por cada indivíduo. E todos conhecemos o caso americano e as suas hipocrisias, que deverá ser um exemplo a não seguir. O mercado das ideias funciona como qualquer mercado, sob a lei da oferta e da procura. Se o objectivo é regulamentar os produtos, bem, adeus queijo da serra amanteigado, que a ASAE dos blogs vem aí. Prefiro dez mil idiotas aos berros do uma pessoa inteligente amordaçada.

Mas não deverá ser caso para tanto, o meu maior receio é ver pessoas que não entendem um determinado assunto deliberarem sobre ele com valor de lei, assentes em preconceitos e na ignorância. A Internet é o grande espaço em que uma anarquia saudável é possível, e a credibilização dos seus personagens deverá acontecer entre os seus pares. Lembram-se da pornografia há 5 anos atrás? De conteúdo principal e de eleição online passou a mais um conteúdo, perdendo o lugar para as relações sociais. Se é isso que querem regulamentar agora, assim como a expressão individual, então, meus amigos, estamos no mau caminho.

Links 30-09-08

Once and for all - Jeff Jarvis BuzzMachine

Bloggers aren’t journalists. True and false. The Pew Internet & American Life survey says only a third of bloggers consider what they do journalism. But today any witness can perform an act of journalism, giving us more eyes on society - which journalists should celebrate.

People are rude on the internet. True. They’re rude in life, but perhaps more so online, thanks to anonymity. But we all know who the idiots are. The smart response is to ignore the stupid.

The internet has no ethics. True. It no more has a moral code than a telephone wire, a car, or a knife. We who use it bring the ethics and laws we live under already.

Opinion: The integrated newsroom business model doesn’t add up - Editor’s Weblog

There is an interesting article today on the Monday Note site today that examines the new newsroom business model. The author, Frederick Filloux, was part of the team behind 20 Minutes and spent 12 years at Liberation, ultimately becoming the Editor-In-Chief. He now works as editor for the Norwegian group Schibstead.

He puts together some insightful figures about the cost of a newsroom:

* Cost of a journalist (including benefits and expenses = €60,000
* Total cost of running a newsroom =  €10 million
* Per month costs = €830,000
* Average revenue per unique visitors per month appears = €0,10 to €0,25
* €830,000 costs requires 8.3 million Unique Visitors per month to break-even
* French 20 Minutes made €45m in 2007. Each reader generates €18 per year for the newspaper.
* Online site readers generate approximately €1,2 per year (if well-read site)

Newspapers: Vanishing faster than you think - Ryan Sholin, Invisible Inkling

These are the basics, the givens, of the post-industrial knowledge economy:

1. There is no mass audience.
2. There is no barrier to publication.
3. The cost of operating legacy organizations increases indefinitely as profit decreases indefinitely.
4. There is nothing cyclical about this change.

Trifecta for success in the new new journalism - Mindy McAdams

There’s more to this brave new world of journalism than technology skills.

Business sense will play a large role in the rest of your career, whether you are a journalism student or a seasoned veteran.

If journalism students graduate without an understanding of how editorial, business, and technology work together, “you have not prepared them for the world they are entering,” Mitch Gelman, senior vice president of CNN.com, told a group of journalism educators in Los Angeles on Friday.

Why ‘Friending’ Will Be Obsolete - Jeremiah Owyang

Every few days, (or hours) you probably get a friend request of some sort, the good news is, someday, this will not be relevant.

I just got finished watching this video of Renato of “E”, a device and software platform that allows you to phsyically gesture in the real world with people you meet that you are friends. Remember palm pilot back in 2001 that let you ‘beam’ contact info to each other? Similiar to that, but now with more ’social’ context.

Thinking forward a few years, “friending people” whether in Facebook, Plaxo, or will no longer be an activity that we’ll have to do. Intelligent websites (and their data) will be able to determine who our friends are from our behaviors, context, and preferences, without us verbally (or physically) having to indicate so.

Entrevista|Dave Cohn|Interview: um ligeiro atraso | a slight delay

A minha entrevista em crowdsource ao Dave Cohn atrasou-se por várias razões, em grande parte por causa de um trabalho inesperado durante a semana passada. Mas não se preocupem, o Dave só está à espera das perguntas e já disse que ia responder em vídeo. Agora é comigo, amanhã espero ter o questionário alinhado, e conto com a vossa opinião para sugestões de última hora. Entretanto, podem ver a apresentação que ele deu na USC’s School of Journalism, e em baixo, um pequeno vídeo em que ele nos dá uma visita guiada ao Spot.us como está neste momento.

My crowdsourced  interview with Dave Cohn is a bit late by many reasons, being the main one an unexpected assignment during last week. But don’t worry, Dave is waiting for the questions and he already said he is going to answer them on video, which is awesome. Now is up to me, i hope to have all the questions set up by tomorrow, and i’m counting on your opinion for some last minute suggestions. Meanwhile, you can watch the presentation he gave at USC’s School of Journalism, and below there’s a small video where he takes us on a guided tour through  Spot.us as it is now.

First look at Spot.Us in Action

This morning I had an early video chat with the developers of spot.us. I did a video capture of the conversation, which included demonstrating the basic action of spot.us for the first time.

First look at spot.us before launch

Reviewing a review on a review

Carlos Saucedo (the fellow on the video above) wrote a review on  Newstrust.net ,  and while doing so, he referred to me as a “representative from NewsTrust.net”, relying on my own post reviewing that website. And though he was innacurate, i think he raises a few good questions.

But first of all, let me clarify a thing or two: i’m not a “representative from NewsTrust.net”. The text Carlos refers to, is my own review for JournalismEnterprise.com, a project created by Paul Bradshaw. I don’t know where Carlos Saucedo got the idea i was representing NewsTrust, since we can read at the top of the post “Review: Newstrust.net - Another JE review“. But it probably slipped his attention.

But what Carlos does well is to question the principles of websites like Spinspotter.com and Newstrust.net and the ethics of journalism. His point is: why should some website proclaim that it has the best unbiased juornalism, if things should already be that way? That was the question i did when i reviewed the website. My findings? Those projects rely in the power of the crowd to pick the best articles out of the news cloud, which may not be always right, but it’s far more democratic than leaving that choice to a small bunch of people. Added to the crowd factor, i verified that the “people in charge of NewsTrust are experienced, reputable professionals, which gives extra credibility to the project.” They have journalism backgrounds, and a past of civic engagement. NewsTrust is the marriage between those two sides, to provide the best news chosen by the people, for the people. Do i think it’s an interesting idea? Yes i do. Do i believe it’s perfect? Not at all, but it’s good, and it is also a good example of how things work now in news distribution: we no longer rely in just one brand, but we also follow the recommendations of others, we go to one website to find views and news from different sources. The fragments all glued together by ourselves and the crowd, to build our own news reality, instead of the monolithic model that ran for decades.

He also questions ethics: “Has the field of journalsim changed so much that no one can be trusted anymore?  I guess we are all to assume that journalism and ethics in the same sentence is an oxymoron.” He’s being naive, of course. Or he never saw Fox or any other TV station, radio, newspaper, website pursuing a biased perspective. No, that wouldn’t happen in the United States. Journalism is powerful, because it shapes people’s perception of reality, and that is what rules people’s actions, or inertia, for that matter. Journalism is not always ethical. I’m sorry to say that out loud because it can break a few hearts, but that’s the truth. Most journalists try to do things right  though (i hope not to be the naive one now). And it has never been so powerful, because we can know in seconds about something that happened across the world, and there has never been such a great load of information. Should we leave the choice of the important news to the crowd? Well, what makes news is something that will affect the largest number of people. If the crowd doesn’t know what is important for them, who will? And if the crowd can choose from the noise, why won’t they? Maybe there aren’t many people with the proper training to be journalists. But even the “respected news organizations that have prefessional experience in journalism” must be questioned by the amateurs, because they are the destination, but no longer the end of the line of the news cycle, because now the amateurs can ask, comment, give their input back.

Unlike Carlos, I have journalistic experience. Not as much as i wanted to, but enough to recognize that this is all grey area. Carlos admits: “I have no professional or student experience in journalism whatsoever!”. And he is not the paradigm of impartiality: “As the ardent activist I was on campus, I plan to continue my enthusiasm for change into the field of journalism.  The lack of diversity in American newsrooms is a call for drastic change.” So he has his own agenda. And for what i’ve seen, Carlos has little knowledge of how things work nowadays. But now i’m just being biased.

I admire enthusiastic young journalists who believe that this job is fitted to induce a change for better in the world. Carlos is one of those, and i am too, apart from the fact i’m not as young as he is. The role of journalism is to present facts so that people can exercise their rights: the right to vote in their favorite candidate, the right to demonstrate against or for public decisions, the right to be aloof.

What i liked about the post Carlos wrote is that he is willing to pose the questions that bother him, and makes them public for the common good: “Are we so idle nowadays that we need a site to tell us what is bias and what isn’t in news?” Well, Carlos, sometimes we do, but i like the  question, because it’s thought-provocative . I wish the best for him, and i hope he keeps enthusiastic about journalism and the power it has to improve things, but i’ll leave one piece of advice: get the facts straight before publishing them, or you’ll be paying journalism a poor effort.

Alexandre Gamela, who appears to be a representative from NewsTrust.net, wrote in a blog that the online site provides “quality news feeds, news literacy tools and a trust network to help citizens make informed decisions about democracy.”

Well, isn’t that what the press is for?  Has the field of journalsim changed so much that no one can be trusted anymore?  I guess we are all to assume that journalism and ethics in the same sentence is an oxymoron.

Are we so idle nowadays that we need a site to tell us what is bias and what isn’t in news?

You would think that respected news organizations that have prefessional experience in journalism, would have the capacity to produce unbiased, high-quality reporting and not be questioned by amateurs.

Reviewing A Reviewer of Journalism

Links:

What the Heck Was I Thinking??

Carlos’ Profile at crashtheparties08.com

Review: NewsTrust.net

Spinspotter.com

Newstrust.net