I will be speaking tomorrow at the Media Futures- Policy, Politics and Power conference about the business of news and how to monetize social media. In the 20th century we spoke of the 24-hour news cycle with the advent of cable news stations and the internet. But the 21st century news cycle is best measured in minutes, not hours, making this the decade of the 1440 news cycle. The obsession with scoops that has dominated news media for much of its modern history has been amplified in the era of the 1440 news cycle. This accelerated news cycle feeds off mobile, video, and social, once considered by the news business as separate audience or revenue categories but now better understood as dimensions of the convergence phenomenon that is occurring both at the hardware level, with internet-connected mobile phones and other devices like tablets that defy categorization within existing frameworks, as well as the content level, as news becomes multimedia, user-generated and integrated within our social spaces.
Worldwide people spent 110 billion minutes per month on social networks and blogs, with 60% of all mobile internet usage spent on social networking sites. Of these sites, of course, Facebook is by far the most popular with more than half a billion users. Forrester Research predicts that by 2016, social media will be a $4.4 billion industry. And according to Justin Kistner of WebTrends, Facebook currently has 50% of all social market share.
Social media are the building blocks and amplifiers of citizen journalism. Many more people are offering information as a product than ever before in human history, challenging MSM outlets to distinguish themselves in an information-saturated context. Engaging with and collaborating with these social-media empowered citizen journalists is one key to monetizing social media. Now there are legions of people around the world willing to help the MSM better cover their communities, meaning that MSM can spend money training their reporters and editors how to use social media for reporting assess veracity and credibility on social media platforms.
The juxtaposition of the term “citizen,” with its attendant qualities of civic mindedness and social responsibility, with that of “journalism,” which refers to a particular profession, to describe online and digital journalism done by amateurs underscores the link between the practice of journalism and its relation to political community and democracy. Amateur journalism, on the other hand, situates the amateur journalist in the journalistic field and implicates them in the reification of that field and its attendant rules and practical logic. The term citizen journalist, or citizen journalism, however, situates the subject in a field in which civic identity and one’s relationship to the state are implicitly implicated in the practice of journalism.
The conference is the closing event of a four year multi-million dollar European Union media development initiative that aimed to provide training and networking opportunities to media professionals from the southern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and southern Caucuses through the European Neighbourhood Journalism Network (ENJN).
ENJN Closing Conference from European Journalism Centre on Vimeo.
Worldwide people spent 110 billion minutes per month on social networks and blogs, with 60% of all mobile internet usage spent on social networking sites. Of these sites, of course, Facebook is by far the most popular with more than half a billion users. Forrester Research predicts that by 2016, social media will be a $4.4 billion industry. And according to Justin Kistner of WebTrends, Facebook currently has 50% of all social market share.
Social media are the building blocks and amplifiers of citizen journalism. Many more people are offering information as a product than ever before in human history, challenging MSM outlets to distinguish themselves in an information-saturated context. Engaging with and collaborating with these social-media empowered citizen journalists is one key to monetizing social media. Now there are legions of people around the world willing to help the MSM better cover their communities, meaning that MSM can spend money training their reporters and editors how to use social media for reporting assess veracity and credibility on social media platforms.
The juxtaposition of the term “citizen,” with its attendant qualities of civic mindedness and social responsibility, with that of “journalism,” which refers to a particular profession, to describe online and digital journalism done by amateurs underscores the link between the practice of journalism and its relation to political community and democracy. Amateur journalism, on the other hand, situates the amateur journalist in the journalistic field and implicates them in the reification of that field and its attendant rules and practical logic. The term citizen journalist, or citizen journalism, however, situates the subject in a field in which civic identity and one’s relationship to the state are implicitly implicated in the practice of journalism.
The conference is the closing event of a four year multi-million dollar European Union media development initiative that aimed to provide training and networking opportunities to media professionals from the southern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and southern Caucuses through the European Neighbourhood Journalism Network (ENJN).
ENJN Closing Conference from European Journalism Centre on Vimeo.
According to the conference website, more than 200 senior journalists working on European and international affairs along with editor-in-chiefs of major news outlets in the ENPI region are being brought together to discuss the recent developments in the ENP region and media related topics including:
- Future of journalism: media policy and democratic legitimacy
- Press freedom: the effectiveness of current regulatory policies and instruments
- Social media and 2011 revolutions: reshaping world politics
- Discussing the business of news: how to monetise social media
- Global communications, development and transition
- Revised European Neighbourhood Policy
** update: the hashtag for today's conference is #ENJN
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