Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Networked journalism is an opportunity but no panacea
Networked journalism seems to the new big thing.
Spawned from Web 2.0 — the idea that media should interact with their audiences on a parity basis — it could well become Web 3.0 as it involves folksonomy (“the wisdom of crowds”) and crowdsourcing.
But a quick SWOT analysis shows some potential minuses as well as pluses.
Strengths -
- Obviously, it leads to more free user-generated content.
- Having readers more involved will make them more committed to the brand, with a deeper relationship with it, more likely to keep their involvement up.
- Being involved in the process should build greater trust from participants in the brand and, hopefully, more too from passive readers who see stories sourced more widely, including people they may know and trust.
- It would allow the brand to harness the skills (intangible assets, if you will) of readers, some of which it may not already have in-house e.g. ultra-local or other specialist knowledge.
- It harnesses far greater manpower resources than the brand can afford to pay for.
Weaknesses -
- Not everyone wants to have that level of commitment/relationship with your brand – some will just want to be passive receivers.
- It’s asking for a bigger commitment than reading the product in an already fairly rivalrous attention economy.
- It risks a big fall-off in numbers of those involved once the true level of commitment is realised. And that could affect its credibility and ability to function at all. Charities see a fall-off in volunteer commitment all the time.
- Some may feel actively excluded if they aren’t online or can’t keep up with the pace of a story via offline methods.
- Those taking part are a self-selecting group and are therefore likely to bias the coverage to some degree. It could become a focus for activists and interest groups, overtly or covertly.
- There’s a risk a disproportionate percentage of those taking part will be from interest groups.
- It’s resource-hungry on sifting/editing time.
- Experience so far has shown the yield of quality journalism is about .0.1%.
Opportunities -
- More free user-generated content.
- It could help you find new columnists, bloggers or reporters.
- More committed readers may spend more cash with your brand on products and services.
- It could enable bigger campaigns and at a more local level through the greater human resources at hand.
- It could lead to more balanced reviews of films, music and even cars through more opinions being aired.
Threats -
- What if people taking part feel they aren’t being rewarded enough or their content isn’t being used in a way they approve of? There’s a risk they could disintermediate you by setting up their own citizen site.
- It poses a huge libel risk, especially from the hobby horse brigade or interest groups, if not mediated and posted online without checks.
- It could lead to your best contributors being poached by the opposition.
- It could lead to copyright disputes unless that’s agreed as a condition of participation.
- The mindset of existing editors could stifle the true spirit of Web 2.0 being involved.
Conclusion
Networked journalism is an opportunity but no panacea. But it should at least be tried in order to empower those who want to take part in their media brands as it has potential benefits for everyone.
Labels: crowdsourcing, folksonomy, networked journalism, SWOT
