MediaMarkup

Today's Solzhenitsyn tweets & works for Google

2011-02-09T09:40:00.031-05:00

Watching events in Egypt unfurl on Monday was surreal on several levels. It also demonstrated what Twitter can deliver when used correctly. As with most power tools, Twitter requires proper handling, and there were many good examples of that on Monday.

First, let's start with the most obvious and surreal event of Monday. I witnessed the release -- in real time -- of a political prisoner who is an executive at one of the biggest companies in the world. What's most astonishing - my ability to "see" this event did not involve a major news network, cable TV, or even a moving image.

What I witnessed was just nine words of text, tweeted from the released prisoner himself, via a blackberry, and straight into my Twitter dashboard. I had this information before anyone else retweeted it, before CNN or Al Jazeera could broadcast it, before the papers and news web sites across the world could even digest it.

It was immediate, and with no intermediaries.

The release of Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian and Google's Middle East and North Africa marketing head, has potentially profound implications for the Egyptian protests, for the flow of media during crises and quickly emerging events, and for global companies like Google, whose employees, through the use of technology, can quickly become political icons.

Watching the creation of an icon

Exactly three hours after Ghonim's freedom tweet on Monday, one could watch in real time as Twitter users live-blogged Ghonim's interview on an Egyptian television station. They then took photos of the television with their iPhones, and posted images to Twitter -- which I could immediately see -- of Ghonim as he broke down and created the iconic, very human and heart-wrenching image of a young Egyptian weeping for his fallen fellow citizens -- an emotional outpouring no doubt heightened by having just been released from captivity.

This is Solzhenitsyn in the global new media age -- today's Solzhenitsyn works for Google. And he tweets.

Here's what's incredible - with a properly curated Twitter feed, I was able to see on Feb. 7th at 4pm pretty much the same thing posted to Wall Street Journal's web site at 3pm on Feb 8th. With Twitter, I had a 24-hour head start over the WSJ, even with the WSJ using a blog format and YouTube. That's not to say the WSJ entry or those of other media serve no purpose - they do, by memorializing the event in English in a stable, easy-to-find and easy-to-share location. But it's not the only way anymore.

The power of trusted curation

The "truth" of Ghonim's release was something instantly authenticated by his own tweet. Earlier on Monday morning, rumors were circulating wildly and being reprinted in all manner of press outlets and retweeted without proper fact-checking. Even government officials couldn't resist the Ghonim-has-been-released bandwagon.

Luckily, I was following the twitterstream of NPR's Andy Carvin, who on Monday was diligently scrutinizing every retweet and third-hand report about Ghonim's status. Andy had assembled a trusted network of twitter correspondents on the ground in Egypt and with close ties to Ghonim and his family, which Andy used to fact-check relentlessly. Moreover, because twitter is completely open, Andy's sources of information become your own. You could shadow a journalist and his sources as the story develops. It was incredible.

This is what I mean about the proper use of a power tool. For some who dive into Twitter, it can seem a never-ending chaos. Blindly following hashtags related to major global new events or crises can connect you to the world instantly, but keeping up or making sense rapidly becomes fruitless. Following 3 or 4 well chosen twitter accounts makes all the difference.

Twitter's power as an information delivery tool and the ways members of the media are using it to lay bare the news gathering process were on clear display Monday. And it continues.

Verify and trust

A lesson for those in government is that twitter can provide a powerful means for tracking events and crises in real time. It requires careful selection of sources and an abundance of skepticism. When done right, though, the results can be amazing.

Public Diplomacy and Electronic Perestroika

2009-02-03T14:18:00.021-05:00

I spent the morning in the Newseum at the Media as Global Diplomat panel discussion, an event organized by USIP and ITVS, and moderated by Ted Koppel.

My key takeaway is "Networks" (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC) have been replaced by "networks" (the myriad channels through which words and ideas propagate) -- and everyone, from print and TV media to Web 2.0 gurus and PD practitioners, is still grappling with the implication.

To borrow a phrase from one of today's participants, the "electronic perestroika" that enables today's media to reach so many people so quickly also results in a system that's a bit unwieldy to manage.

First, some definitions...

Ted Koppel, ever the devil's advocate, prodded the panel into motion by proffering his own definition: that public diplomacy is "an oxymoron." He said that publics are involved in many things, but "diplomacy" is never one of them. This yielded up a variety of working definitions of PD from the panel.

Edward Djerejian, Founding Director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, said PD includes explaining and conducting official outreach, listening, informing, engaging and influencing.

James Glassman, former Under Secretary of State Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department, said PD is "understanding, engaging, informing and influencing foreign publics" and added later that listening is "important, but condescending." He sees much more value in participation and involvement -- in "conversing" but not "preaching."

The Washington Bureau Chief for Al Jazeera, Abderrahim Foukara, emphasized the importance of actions in his formulation of public diplomacy, citing the recent presidential election as an example of the American political system's capacity for "change and self renewal." He said the election was so powerful because Arabs and Muslims can "see the American democratic system at work, and they say 'Yes, please, more of that.' "

James Zogby, Founder and President of the Arab American Institute, placed a great deal of importance on listening as well as cultural exchanges, but said the U.S. often suffers from a kind of "jilted lover syndrome," whereby expectations are so high and people want to like the U.S. so much, that they feel that much more hurt when disappointed.

Keeping it real...

One issue quickly emerged as both the most important and the most nettlesome of the morning. How to make PD authentic when it is government funded, especially in overseas markets that have both a checkered history with and a natural suspicion of state-run, state-funded media.

Ambassador Djerejian said an element of Al Jazeera's success in the Arab world stems from the perception that it is not directly funded by a particular country's government. He said it was like "electronic perestroika" and broke through the state-run system seen in so many Arab countries.

In fact, Sydney Suissa, Executive Vice President of Content for National Geographic Channels International, acknowledged when pressed by Koppel that outside of developed western countries, citizens have little experience with the notion that their own governments can fund an independent, impartial media in the style of the BBC or CBC.

Panelists struggled even to agree on the best way to fund quality news television domestically in the United States. Some, like Suissa, called for aggressive plans to increase funding to PBS to make it more like the BBC (which Koppel challenged by asking: who will pay? and where's the need to fix it if Frontline already has the best documentaries in the business?).

Others, like Smita Singh (Director of the Global Development Program for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation), felt it would be better to have an approach whereby public funds can help create demand and "catalyze networks" to get the message out to a wider audience.

Something about Singh's comment fascinated me. Fifteen years ago, when media circles talked about a Network, it was capital "N", referring to one of the big three national TV broadcasters. Today, and in Singh's formulation, a network is lower-case; its members innumerable. They are Internet-based, word-of-mouth, SMS, professional and/or personal -- this network is indelibly part of today's media equation.

Medium, please...

Edward Borgerding, CEO of the Abu Dhabi Media Company, cited the still-relevant cliche that today's media outlets risk trading "analog dollars for digital dimes." Borgerding also noted the economics of media is very different in the Middle East, where TV is dominated by "vanity" models instead of business models, where media owners launch a station just to keep up with their friends. The additional lack of audience metrics means TV advertising in the Middle East gets 25 cents on the dollar, while print remains a robust target for advertisers.

Despite the assertion by Google's Andrew McLaughlin (Global Public Policy and Government Affairs Director) that broadcast television as a medium is "sinking like the Titanic," Foukara pointed out that low connectivity and low literacy rates pose a significant barrier to text-based Internet media in much of the world. Satellite TV will continue to dominate in the Middle East for some time to come.

And while agreement on solutions was hard to come by, the day's panelists very quickly identified some of the greatest challenges facing PD practitioners.

500 Club - The Most Followed Government Twitter Streams

2009-01-28T17:12:00.015-05:00

When I read this morning Jeffrey Levy's tweet that the RSS feed for EPA's Greenversations blog had reached its 1000th follower on Twitter, it got me thinking... what's the level of "followship" for other U.S. government Twitter streams.

Using the excellent government Twitter list maintained by BearingPoint's Steve Lunceford as a starting point, I dug into the list to find which executive branch sites had more than 500 followers -- what I've dubbed the 500 Club.

I stuck only to Twitter accounts officially used by executive-branch agencies. (Hence, TheWhiteHouse does not make the cut. But if I've left out from the analysis any with more than 500 followers, please let me know.) Also, follower numbers are as of about 4pm today, so the figures below are subject to change.

The results were a bit surprising.

First, NASA dominated the list, appearing in all of the top five positions. One stream in particular -- the NASA Phoenix mission to Mars -- was light years (sorry) ahead of every other site. Clocking in a whopping 41,300 followers, it left the next site, the NASA general information stream, in the Martian dust with only 9,377 followers.

Moreover, NASA had four streams with more than 5,000 followers; the Mars Rover and Saturn Cassini missions helped propel (again, sorry) NASA into the lead.

But in the number 6 slot, it wasn't DoD or State. It was HHS.

And no, it wasn't the CDC or the FDA.

In fact, barely edging out USA.gov was the National Women's Health Information stream with its 1,513 followers. This shows what a valuable public-service function Twitter can serve, and the extent to which Twitter users hunger for such information.

In all, I counted 34 different executive-branch government sites with more than 500 followers. I set up a quick google doc with the full list if you want to see the others.

It will be fun to track these in the coming weeks as Gov 2.0 initiatives continue building more momentum.

White House 2.0: Blog is In, News is Out

2009-01-22T11:49:00.009-05:00

Barely seconds after noon on Tuesday, there was loads of buzz about the launch of the new whitehouse.gov web site.

A subtle but fascinating change to the site is that content which had previously been delivered under rubrics of "News" and "Press Briefings" is now under a single, simple title: The Blog.

In fact, the word "news" is now completely absent from the White House's online briefing room.

It was not always so. The last administration's site frequently used the word "news", while the Clinton administration lexicon focused on "press", as in "press briefings", "press releases" and "press office".

And while you can't comment on the new site's blog entries, there is indication that other parts of the site will allow such interactivity. Check out this White House blog post, and read under the header "Participation" -- the White House pledges to "publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it" [my emphasis]... I wonder if comments will be moderated or not?

Converting the White House's primary communication tool into an RSS-enabled blog certainly reflects the changing face of today's media, which includes not only the traditional press, but also citizen journalists and bloggers.

We are truly living in the era of the blog cycle, not the news cycle.

Old Media Jump-Starts New Media to Cover Inauguration

2009-01-16T19:52:00.004-05:00

The Washington Post is launching a hash tag campaign on twitter called #dcalert during the Inauguration to keep locals and visitors in Washington up-to-date on bottlenecks, mass transit issues, crowding and other incidents.

The Post says it will then check into reports to confirm their newsworthiness, and then tweet confirmed updates onto @drgridlock, its mobile web site and a blog.

Obviously, for folks who use twitter, it's much faster simply to follow the #dcalert tweets than to wait for the Post to vet the stories and redistribute them. But those who aren't on twitter will clearly benefit from the extra eyes and ears the Post musters.

It will be interesting to see if the Post can successfully jump-start the hash-tag into widespread use during the Inauguration. Anyone who wants to monitor the tipping point of a twitter hash tag, here's your chance!

Zimbabwe Reporting Tax - A Boon to Blogs?

2009-01-14T13:40:00.010-05:00

ForeignPolicy.com is reporting (via AllAfrica.com) that Zimbabwe has begun to require staggering accreditation fees for reporters in that country:

on Jan. 9, Zimbabwe imposed new fees on all journalists -- between $1,000 and $3,000 for accreditation of local journalists, and $30,000 for foreigners.

Will be interesting to watch how this pushes reporting underground or spawns a new wave of blogs. Hyper-excessive taxes usually result in black markets, and this will probably be no different. (The FP.com story also sports an incredible image of a 50-billion-dollar bill.)

Behind the Scenes of FEMA's Twitter Conference

2009-01-13T14:40:00.008-05:00

FEMA has released a fascinating verbatim transcript of FEMA Administrator David Paulison fielding tweets in a FEMA media conference yesterday. Its content is noteworthy on several levels.

First, it shows the behind-the-curtain mechanics of managing agency principals through a twitter media conference. The transcript makes clear that this was a group effort, with Paulison's staff helping him answer questions. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's important to note this dynamic was not readily apparent by simply following tweets online, whereas it would have been immediately clear in a video conference or traditional press conference.

This brings me to my second point. Twitter can't replace having reporters and journalists on the ground, staking out Edward R. Murrow's "last three feet" to convey the whole story. True, twitter enabled a large, global audience yesterday to ask a government official direct questions, which is terrific for democracy. But we must not ever lose the "eye witness" in our news reporting.

Finally, if you read some of the transcript, it will become clear that certain nerdy terms that many of us consider commonplace -- like RSS and Web 2.0, for example -- were explained to Paulison during the event. This isn't necessarily a problem... the key takeaway here is that while many of us run around Washington with "geekcronyms" coursing through our heads, many high-level officials are not living and breathing this stuff on a daily basis. No one should take for granted that everyone is operating with the same level of knowledge and experience when it comes to cutting-edge communication technologies.

This is perhaps the greatest benefit of such twitter events. They serve as fantastic learning experiences for those on both sides of the conversation.

Feed Me Overseas

2009-01-12T14:16:00.026-05:00

In a recent post, I wrote about the power of one-to-many technologies like twitter to broadcast critical messages during a national crisis. Other folks, like Steve Radick, have also written about twitter's ability to act as an early-warning system to rapidly distribute crisis information to relevant audiences faster than conventional media outlets.

Today I followed FEMA's bold and effective twitter media conference and asked FEMA Administrator David Paulison about this topic. He replied FEMA has indeed developed RSS feeds (here's the page - it's pretty cool) as a new communication platform, and that FEMA welcomes comments.

This got me thinking... what about U.S. Government crisis resources for Americans abroad? If I'm traveling and a dangerous situation or emergency unfolds, it would be great if there were RSS feeds or other subscription-based services from the U.S. government to help me.

The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs has long provided thorough and robust travel information on its web site.

But I specifically wondered, does State -- or any of our embassies and consulates overseas -- provide RSS feeds, mobile web pages or twitter feeds for broadcasting emergency information to U.S. citizens abroad during a crisis? The answer: None that I could find, although email alerts are available.

The State Department's Bureau of Consular affairs does an excellent job of publishing a wealth of information on static web pages. Content is divided into three categories: Country Specific Information, Travel Warnings and Travel Alerts. But on none of these pages is there an RSS feed, a dedicated twitter account, etc, to receive automatic, pushed updates from State for specific countries.

Country Specific Information exists for every country and provide such details as visa requirements, general security risks, travel restrictions, embassy information and an opportunity to register your trip. Trip registration is recommended, according to the site, so that "when an emergency happens, or if natural disaster, terrorism, or civil unrest strikes during your foreign travel, the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate can be your source of assistance and information." This implies that by registering, the embassy or consulate overseas will be able to pass along pertinent information to you during a crisis situation. It doesn't say how, though I would assume by email.

Travel Warnings, according to the site, "describe long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable." They are also issued when "the U.S. Government's ability to assist American citizens is constrained due to the closure of an embassy or consulate or because of a drawdown of its staff." Again, these are presented in list format, but no RSS feeds exist.

Travel Alerts "are issued to disseminate information about short-term conditions, generally within a particular country, that pose imminent risks to the security of U.S. citizens." The State Department's alerts are updated relatively frequently when new info is available. So they are keeping the content current -- that's the great news. But the even better news would be syndicating the content so travelers using today's mobile technologies can have those updates pushed out to them. This in no way would replace the existing web pages -- rather, it would merely extend them in a powerful way that is platform neutral and low bandwidth (two highly desirable factors during a crisis).

Another issue is timeliness. While these updates are fast by bureaucratic measures, they are glacial when viewed in "tweet-time". For example, the current Travel Alert for Israel, West Bank and Gaza is dated January 6, 2009. But as the bulletin itself points out, IDF operations began on December 27 and expanded to ground operations on January 3. Obviously, the State Department works to balance quality with speed, and hence employs a rigorous clearance process. But people on travel today who find themselves amidst the break-out of war probably expect communication that competes with CNN and twitter in terms of speed, even if it only includes basic info like consulate phone numbers.

The Travel Alerts on State's main web site also point to "Warden Messages" on the web sites of the individual embassies and consulates. Again, just taking the Gaza example, the embassy in Tel Aviv posted three warden messages from December 27 - January 8, which are full of detailed information for travelers in the region. But there is no RSS feed. In the fine print of some of the announcements, we read there is a link to sign up for email alerts. This a good first step in deploying a "push" model, but an RSS feed would take that model one step further and leverage all the RSS-enabled tools that are in the hands of travelers today.

After a bit of googling, I did find another U.S. government site - osac.gov - that does an excellent job of aggregating embassy warden messages from across the world onto a single page. But again, no RSS feed is provided. I find this curious, and perhaps there's a good explanation.

RSS feeds are a simple and powerful way for governments to communicate with their citizens. RSS also steers well clear of potential snafus that plague government users of third-party technologies.

Bottom line: any government organization tasked with crisis communication to U.S. citizens should adopt and deploy RSS with the same gusto that FEMA has.

Update (Jan. 15th): The U.S. Embassy in London has a twitter account that delivers daily headlines and updates on an ad-hoc basis. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack can also be found on twitter.

Update (Jan. 16th): Two other embassies with twitter sites: Lusaka (Zambia) and Ottawa. Ottawa tweets very actively, and it also has an excellent RSS feed page on its web site.

Who Will "Free the Nerds" in DC?

2009-01-09T15:25:00.004-05:00

Today I attended a panel discussion called “Wiki White House:
Can Obama Use Technology to Transform Government?” organized by the New America Foundation and held in Google’s downtown DC office. (You can watch the video replay here and catch up on the live-blog tweets here.)

It was an all-star showing (at least in terms of inside-the-Beltway geek wonkdom). Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was on the panel, and Bev Godwin (director of usa.gov) took to the mike during Q&A. The other panelists were Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation; Sascha Meinrath, Research Director at the New America Foundation; and Mindy Finn, who served as Director of E-Strategy for the Mitt Romney campaign. (Though not mentioned in the official panel bio lines, it looks like Ms. Finn has teamed up with former RNC eCampaign Director Patrick Ruffini to form a strategic communication group called Engage.) Nicholas Thompson from Wired moderated the discussion.

Ms. Godwin's appearance during Q&A was especially timely since the panel and room had been very much abuzz about a document making the rounds among Government 2.0 followers. (Ellen Miller was even waving a copy of it on stage today.)

The document, called "Social Media and the Federal Government: Perceived and Real Barriers and Potential Solutions", is dated December 23, 2008, and was prepared by the Federal Web Managers Council. You can find a copy of the original pdf file on usa.gov, and a forum for soliciting comments has been set up on TechPresident.

A point that emerges from this document, and a theme frequently echoed by the panelists, is the fact that government officials today face a bureaucratic nightmare with regard to using social media applications: there is no single, coherent set of policies governing these activities, and in many cases agencies have created an inconsistent and ad-hoc set of limitations that at best leave the waters murky, and at worst outright prohibit the use of social media tools.

There are scores of new media success stories inside the federal government. But a lack of high-level (i.e., White House) guidance for cabinet agencies has meant a patchwork approach. A few are sprinting forward, some are dipping toes, while others are simply staying on the sidelines.

Today's panel seemed to agree (and indeed, the paper mentioned above explicitly recommends) that there is the opportunity for a huge win if the Obama administration issues clear guidance to provide both the top-cover and the impetus necessary to start transforming the way government uses social media technologies.

I'm willing to bet that the new administration will speak loud and clear on this point. Among Craig Newmark's many quotable moments today, his exhortation that best resonated with the crowd was the call to "free the nerds!"

But as anyone who has ever worked for or with government can attest, there is no monolithic Government. Each agency, and each agency's myriad departments, operate rather autonomously, which can surprise outsiders. An approach that requires every agency and every department to adhere to a single standard or platform will be extremely difficult to implement in practice.

Rather, if the new administration defines bright boundaries and unambiguous ground rules that enable a diversity of approaches to blossom, we might see Government 2.0 can be just that.

Twitter, Citizen Journalism & Mumbai: 4 Lessons

2009-01-08T16:34:00.000-05:00

More details emerged this week about how the Mumbai terrorists used mobile technology during their attacks. As the world continues to grapple with the political and security fallout of the brazen Mumbai attacks in November, the digital media community has been wrestling with its own set of questions.

Does Twitter represent a new citizen journalism? What role do Twitter and other social media platforms serve during a national crisis? How can governments take advantage of these technologies?

I always like digging into data and primary sources to help answer such questions and see what insights emerge.

So I played with the Twitter search engine and was able to track down the very first live Twitter posts made as the Mumbai attacks unfolded. (You can see what I found here.)

After looking directly at how Twitter was used in the first moments of the Mumbai crisis, and witnessing how much Twitter usage has evolved and grown in popularity in recent months, 4 key points emerge that media property owners and government officials should bear in mind. (I'll expand on some of these points in future posts, but here's the summary.)

1) Twitter is a traditional media amplifier, not substitute. If you read them closely, the first Mumbai tweets were effectively an alert system that served to redistribute snippets of info from CNN & IBN television broadcasts. A few eye-witness tweets are interspersed, but the vast majority of messaging content on Twitter during the Mumbai crisis was an amplification of traditional media content.

2) However, Twitter does enjoy an important competitive advantage over traditional media distribution: it’s an extremely painless way to instantly telegraph a short message to a large, captive audience. These are the same economics that made web publishing so compelling 10 years ago. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s wide-reaching. So while we may not “watch” Twitter as we would CNN, individuals on Twitter can very effectively communicate with their network of followers -- a fully rapt, opt-in audience.

3) Traditional media outlets and governments should take careful note of the Twitter model, especially for crisis communication. That doesn’t mean use Twitter per se, but the model is proven and robust. One-to-many, low-bandwidth messaging platforms are an extremely powerful tool, especially with an opt-in audience. Whether through dedicated low-bandwidth web pages, RSS feeds, or Twitter, there is an opportunity to greatly enhance communication effectiveness.

4) Twitter is evolving into an always-on, device-independent and location-neutral platform for collaboration. Twitter’s instantaneous, chat-like feel and community-bolstering network of “followers” make it as addictive as text messaging, IM, chat rooms, or (my personal favorite from the last century) unix talk. And since Twitter is a platform very much optimized to today’s ever-increasingly mobile digital user, it’s no surprise to see Twitter becoming a collaboration tool in professional settings.

The most important thing to remember is that Twitter's strength derives from its being a highly distributed communications network. This means as a "viewer" we can't tune in to a "Gaza channel" as we might with more traditional online news sources. Searching for "Gaza" on Twitter right now results in a cacophony -- but then that's what listening in on the whole world sounds like.