Can social media be safe and sane?
TBH, Betteridge's law applies to that headline. But there are ways of avoiding the worst of it.
Kids today…
Hold The Front Page's Paul Linford:
The new generation of journalists lack the confidence to carry out traditional tasks such as phone interviews or cold calling, journalism tutors have warned.
I've seen this — but I've also seen that those who gain the confidence put themselves ahead of the pack in a competitive industry…
In an age where everyone reaches out by social media or email, the person who can find a phone number and get a source on the phone has a massive advantage in getting and delivering the story.
And sometimes, it's better not to do everything in public. Here's a case in point:
Never post in haste, part 257
It's a good rule of thumb on social media that you should never post when you're angry, upset or even very irritated.
Sadly, someone with control of Reach's Cornwall Live X account, did exactly that. They responded to an X post (can I just call the tweets, still?) from Dr Rebecca Tidy criticising the framing of a story with pure snark:
To be fair you should be ashamed of pretty much everything you write.
Perhaps not surprisingly, both the post she was replying to a that reply are long gone. But, my God, you do not want to do that sort of thing from a brand account unless it's absolutely in the the tone of the publication. A gossipy politics site? Maybe. A regional news web site? Nope. As one of my City colleagues puts it:
Matt Capon, video journalist and a visiting lecturer in journalism at City University, said: “For a regional ‘news brand’ account to make such a juvenile remark – to what is a perfectly fair and legitimate comment from @DrRebeccaTidy – is astonishing, to put it politely.
If you're posting in anger or irritation, write the post, step away from the keyboard for 10 minutes, and come back to it.
Most of the time, you'll be deleting what you wrote with a great sense of relief.
Honestly, I could have written this same piece in 2010, when it was still common for newsrooms to hand their social media accounts over to junior staff members, because it wasn't seen as important. That it still happens in 2024 is both shocking, but also indicative of how much of a trap social media use can be for the unwary.
The Telegram/TikTok axis
If you're less chronically online than me, you might have missed that the founder of the messaging app Telegram is currently being held in France. Why? The app has been allowing criminal activity.
A case in point: an unholy conjunction between Telegram and TikTok is causing issues:
An extremist Telegram channel with 12,000 followers urged members to promote the neo-Nazi documentary Europa: The Last Battle by blanketing TikTok with reaction videos in an effort to make the film go viral. Researchers from ISD found dozens of videos on TikTok featuring clips from the film, some with over 100,000 views. “One account posting such snippets has received nearly 900k views on their videos, which include claims that the Rothschild family control the media and handpick presidents, as well as other false or antisemitic claims,” the researchers wrote.
This is the modern political dynamic to watch:
- organise on messaging apps
- build a community
- use that community to promote propaganda
- recruit more people to the community…
Or, to put it another way:
- The great thing about the internet is that it allows communities to find each other.
- The terrible thing about the internet is that it allows communities to find each other.
I think it's fair to say that TikTok's Nazi problem may much worse than Substack's… (That particular kerfuffle seems to have died down completely.)
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