The AIB is enthusiastic about the possibilities for social media tools such as Twitter and Ushahidi to enhance news reporting and the creation of factual programming. We have already seen Twitter used for breaking news in countries from Haiti to Ukraine (and I am hearing about some interesting tools being developed to analyse Tweets to discover changing opinions – I will be giving more details when we are allowed to). They are also great tools for promoting broadcasts and we will be using them extensively to publicise the People’s Choice award in this year’s AIBs.
However, I remain to be convinced about Twittermedia‘s enthusiasm for the new ability to be able easily to enter Tweets in a news story. They highlight ReadWriteWeb’s story on HP and Palm as a great way to convey reactions to a story without having quotes from different people spread round a story. While it is great to be able to provide accurate quotes and Twitter helps in this, a key role of journalism and factual broadcasting is to provide a context and develop a story around individuals’ comments. I hope that we do not see the rise of articles which rely just on picking out a number of Tweets without explaining them and referring as well to those who are not Twittering (yes, they still exist).