Liquid Journalism in a Changeable Society
Analysis of Pop-Up Newsroom Project #Election2016
In less than a century our society has changed in ways that were never experienced in generations before. Liquidity is the metaphor the sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman uses to describe the contemporary era. He defines liquid modern societies as ‘‘a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvigorate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long.’’ (Bauman in Deuze, 2007)
Liquidity in modern societies influences people as individuals and as a collective. It reflects a reality, in which there is constant change, instability, and fragmentation, and simultaneously, it mirrors the infinite ways of interconnection and participation people experience nowadays.
Traditionally, journalism has been a profession rooted in established parameters and well defined rules. However, in the last twenty years, people have changed the ways they access and share information especially due to the internet and new information and communication technologies (ICT), which have deeply influenced the role of journalists as gate-keepers and distributors of information. The media landscape, thus, became a heterogeneous and diverse space, in which participatory journalism with new formats and tools were introduce in the communication arena.
The ubiquity and the network structure of the internet are the new bases in which news stories are constructed. “Liquid news can therefore be defined as an erratic, continuous, participatory, multi- modal and interconnected process that is producing content according to journalistic principles. This involves liquid news stories being published in different drafts, created in cooperation with users, told in multiple modalities, having hyperlinks to different sources, documents and organizations and essentially consisting of ever-changing and unruly processes that, in theory, never find a truly finite form.” (Karlsson, 2012) The liquidity of modern times has permeated traditional newsrooms and has empowered freelance and citizen journalists, who can be producers and consumers of news at the same time.
As journalism students in a digital era, it is important to explore alternative ways of practicing this profession, which is continuously changing itself, in order to develop skills that combines accurate journalism with the new platforms and media. The 2016 United States presidential election was an opportunity to put into practice participatory journalism by engaging with students from eight universities around the world in the temporary virtual newsroom PopUpNewsroom
Four days before the elections and on the election day, the journalists of this temporary virtual newsroom generated content in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks. The content was the product of previous reporting or street reporting on the election day, stories that were articulated into different narrative structures and by using a variety of applications.
I had the opportunity to engage directly in the project by being the voice of a group of Mexican farmers, known as Braceros, who came to the U.S. with the program called Mexican Farm Labor Program to work in the fields since 1942 till 1964. Their message for this election was a call to not be forgotten by the new government and to give continuity to some programs that have benefited their community during the Obama administration.
Furthermore, Pop-Up Newsroom gave me the chance to interact with students from around the world and an opportunity to see the views that people abroad had about the elections. We retweeted and liked our content as we gave our contribution in the most trending topics of the day #Election2016 followed by our own hashtag #popupelection. Three students from the Newcastle University located in England shared their experience working for the project.
Morgan Ayre (@Morgan_Ayre), is originally from North Ireland, she was one of the local coordinators for this project. Her experience was a “bit of a challenge but really fun and I thought it was a relevant and engaging topic that I enjoyed covering.” The topic her team chose was linked to a well know personality of the U.S. history. “As my university was the first outside the US listed by Martin Luther King, we looked at the speech he gave where he talked about the problems facing the world: war, poverty or racism. We went out into the streets of Newcastle and grabbed local people for vox pops to hear their opinions on it or if they had anything else. We then tied it into the elections by seeing how they felt about each of the candidates in the US elections, what they knew about their policies and if they think it would make a difference to those problems mentioned. We also asked how the extent to which the UK and US’ relationship would change or remain the same depending on who got elected.”
Juan Trillos (@juantrillos11), a Colombian student, said that his “experience was amazing. It was my first time reporting via Twitter in English.” He was “in charge of reporting about Hillary Clinton’s roots in the North-East of England. She has some distant relatives here. Therefore, we interviewed them as well as some professionals that know her British roots. All our videos were recorded with our mobile phones. It is a fact that digital journalism will be, in a short time, mainly throughout them.”
Dave Ye (@daveyeyyh), a Chinese student found more than one reason to enjoy the project. “This was certainly a fantastic experience for me, a Chinese student to use Twitter to cover this US election. Firstly, this is a worldwide coverage using digital tools, and also my first time to use social network covering news. Secondly, it enhanced my English skills as an overseas student in the UK. Lastly, it was quite an interesting experience because of the group work, that is, it enhanced the friendship among our group.” He interviewed U.S. citizens who live in Newcastle. “I found three people from the U.S., and interviewed them individually. Furthermore, our group also interviewed local citizens in Northumberland, which is a high street near university, and made a vox pop video. Basically, we used Twitter and Facebook but also WeChat and Weibo which are more popular among Chinese people.”
Even though they encountered some challenges to cover their stories and find the right people to interview, they acquired some skills necessary to bring ahead the project as a team. “I learned a lot more about teamwork and leadership 100%.” said Morgan. “As team leader I had to do a lot of organizing of meetings and making sure everyone knew what they were doing and they were in the right place and trusting my team. It also gave me a real feel of what it could be like in a newsroom.” One of the things Juan learned was “that Twitter is an easy tool to do digital storytelling. That you can reach a big audience if you know how to use it.”
They all had different views regarding the impact of Pop-Up Newsroom. Juan believes “that we had a significant impact. However, we need to see the analytics.” Morgan thinks the impact of the project was positive because of the topics that were chosen and the engagement with students from other universities. “Everything on the website was relevant to people in several countries with several languages and because it was a such talked about event people were interested in it.”
Instead, Dave thinks, “it is hard to say that our group work has made great impact among audiences seeing from the reaction from followers in Twitter or Facebook. I think the reason is that we don’t have an influential platform just using our own network account. However, to some extent, this project has deeply influenced these people who have been interviewed and those who have looked through our works. The feedback from them is pretty good.”
Morgan suggests that future Pop-Up Newsroom projects should have more previous planning among the participants. “I think digital journalism is definitely something that could take off, however it (along with popup news) needs to be carefully planned and I think pop up news could improve digital journalism practice if the international collaboration was carried out sooner to actually plan the topics and how each centre would cover them.”
All of them think that digital journalism is the future of news. “Well, it represents the evolution of journalism. It is where we need to go. We need to focus on it,” says Juan. Dave as well thinks that, “digital journalism is the future, but still needs to be developed because you know that the reliability of internet cannot achieve the same level as traditional press. Furthermore, it is much more efficient and convenient than other platforms.”
Pop-Up Newsroom gave us a glance of what digital and citizen journalism means. Even if for some of us it was the first time reporting using this style, it showed us the usability and convenience that some platforms offer in order to reach larger audiences and enlarge our network.
However, as Dave commented, digital journalism is a changeable field that needs to constantly revised. In fact, reliability and accuracy were undermined during this year’s presidential elections. The elections generated an unprecedented amount of traction in different internet platforms and social media. In May 2016, a Pew Report showed that “a majority of U.S. adults — 62% — get news on social media, and 18% do so often.” However, the phenomenon during this election campaign was the amount of fake news that circulated in social networks. A BuzzFeed News analysis published on November 16th, showed that in the last three months before the elections “the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News, and others.”
After the election results the traditional and digital media needs to reevaluate their performance and role in future campaigns. Liquid modernity demands flexibility and readiness to change, but at the same time, it is a call to find ways to optimize the service journalists offer to society in the present digital era.
References
Deuze, M. (2007) Journalism in Liquid Modern Times. An interview with Zygmunt Bauman. Journalism Studies Vol. 8.
Karlsson, M. (2012) Charting the liquidity of online news: Moving towards a method for content analysis of online news. The international Communication Gazette.
Pew Report. (2016) News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016. Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/
Silverman, C. (2016) Viral Fake Election News Outperformed Real News On Facebook In Final Months Of The US Election. BuzzFeed News. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm_term=.nqqZ1b33B#.jigZpNnna
