Discussion: Challenges of Social Nets

The main speak­ers were Mary­na Zahorskaya, edi­tor of the web­site Zau­tra Tva­joj Krainy, and Vol­ha Miadzvedze­va, deputy edi­tor of news­pa­per Zvi­az­da.

Mary­na Zahorskaya told what chal­lenges Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists faced with after social nets emerged.

More con­tent regard­less of time and dis­tances

As a jour­nal­ist and edi­tor, I can see that today offer of infor­ma­tion­al con­tent has sur­passed read­ers’ demand. The flow of con­tent increas­es thanks to social nets and new media on the Inter­net. Infor­ma­tion is dis­sem­i­nat­ed imme­di­ate­ly, despite geo­graph­ic dis­tances.  For exam­ple, no soon­er had the edi­to­r­i­al office of Media-Polesye left the bap­tiz­ing ice-hole in Luninets than Andrzej Poc­zobut liked the post in Hrod­na.

Jour­nal­ists are no longer the only sto­ry cre­ators

Nowa­days, not only jour­nal­ists, but all peo­ple in gen­er­al take part in cre­ation and dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion. We reg­is­ter in social nets and in blogs where pub­lish pho­tos, news, hopes. We adjust a video cam­era to our com­put­er – and here you go, we’ve got our own mini-stu­dio. It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly that our news will be inter­est­ing for every­one, but for some­one it will be more inter­est­ing than all reports of top mass media.

So, today jour­nal­ism involves a new role: not only to gen­er­ate orig­i­nal con­tent, but to aggre­gate on media pages what oth­er peo­ple cre­ate. Based on this, jour­nal­ists are oblig­ed to do proac­tive fact check­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of rumors.

Why tra­di­tion­al mass media have to like social nets?

Social nets allow shar­ing our own con­tent there

It seems that peo­ple on Twit­ter or Face­book don’t go there specif­i­cal­ly to find news. But around 78 per cent say that, see­ing curi­ous infor­ma­tion, they click on the link to pro­ceed to this or that web­site. Thus, social nets become couri­ers who bring con­tent to read­ers.

At the recent meet­ing, edi­tor of Meduza Gali­na Tim­chenko admit­ted that 55–60 per cent of their audi­ence came from social nets. A large part of audi­ence of the web­site Zau­tra tva­joj krainy also come from social nets. It should be not­ed they are very good read­ers view­ing 3.5–4 pages, which is com­pa­ra­ble to the vis­i­tors who load the web­site pur­pose­ful­ly.

Most Belaru­sian media have their pages in social nets. I’d like to men­tion the most suc­cess­ful ones. For me it came unex­pect­ed, but the first place in Belarus goes to the Radio Svabo­da with 45 000 friends on Face­book, then goes TUT.BY with 35 000 friends, Citydog.by – 21 000 friends, Onliner.by – around 15 000, Naviny.by – 10 600, etc. (note — all the fig­ures are giv­en for Face­book).

Social nets sim­pli­fy com­mu­ni­ca­tion between peo­ple

Here, you can always access nec­es­sary experts, opin­ions, com­ments. Before the meet­ing, I ana­lyzed my phone calls and came to the con­clu­sion that I tend to com­mu­ni­cate more with peo­ple through social nets. No mat­ter where the per­son is – at a meet­ing, in trans­port, or even abroad: if the light is green, I can always request and urgent­ly get the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion.

To tell the truth, the spe­cif­ic of the Belaru­sian web is that there are hard­ly any offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of state bod­ies. Even when some of them have social pages, usu­al­ly they are not about pub­lic affairs and offi­cial work. How­ev­er, even in the neigh­bor­ing Rus­sia, Ukraine or Poland it is con­sid­ered to be bad man­ners for an offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive not to have a social page and not to use it as a con­tact with the press.

Besides, social nets are a great instru­ment to fol­low a person’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in some events. I recall my per­son­al expe­ri­ence when on April 11, 2011, I turned out to be near the place of bomb­ing in Min­sk sub­way. I was head­ing for lessons in the Belaru­sian Col­legium, and post­ed then the infor­ma­tion about the explo­sion. Just in a few min­utes, my stu­dents start­ed to call me ask­ing if the les­son would take place – they saw my post in social nets.

Chal­lenges for ethics

Mean­while, new tech­nolo­gies make us think over jour­nal­ists’ behav­ior in social nets. Sev­er­al years ago, a col­league of mine post­ed a ques­tion on Face­book: “How to make jour­nal­ists keep silent about some infor­ma­tion before they sub­mit it to their edi­tors?”

I think, for the time being, the issue has been set­tled – edi­to­r­i­al poli­cies include the point that first a jour­nal­ist has to write for the media out­let, and then han­dle the infor­ma­tion the way he or she wants. Some jour­nal­ists even got the skill to heat up inter­est before the soon-to-be pub­li­ca­tions. For exam­ple, the mas­ter here, with obser­va­tion of all eth­i­cal stan­dards, is the cor­re­spon­dent of the Euro­ra­dio Zmitser Lukashuk: he posts very good starters about those who he has talked to, and announces that the pub­li­ca­tion has appeared on the web­site.

But here, a new ques­tion aris­es: how far jour­nal­ists can go in open­ing up their back­stage in front of read­ers and col­leagues? Many jour­nal­ists in Belarus con­sid­er that they can talk in social nets about the process of writ­ing this or that mate­r­i­al. I see noth­ing bad in that, but some edi­to­r­i­al man­agers fear that, this way, rela­tions with offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives can be spoilt, and the media out­let will scarce­ly get any more infor­ma­tion from the agency.

I should admit that I don’t know any Belaru­sian edi­to­r­i­al office which would have writ­ten pol­i­cy reg­u­lat­ing jour­nal­ists’ behav­ior in social nets. Until now, these have been spo­ken agree­ments con­cern­ing how it should work. Jour­nal­ists say they feel much more free­dom in social nets rather than on pages of mass media. Although, there is the reverse side of the coin.

For exam­ple, Radio Svabo­da cor­re­spon­dent Vital Tsy­hank­ou keeps a very inter­est­ing page on Face­book. He says it takes him much more time to write a post than an arti­cle for the web­site, and he applies much more self-cen­sor­ship in social nets. Because, the web­site of the Radio Svabo­da has the edi­tor who spellchecks and edits the mate­r­i­al.  A jour­nal­ist pub­lish­ing his own mate­r­i­al on Face­book has no edi­tor. But the mate­r­i­al can spread imme­di­ate­ly.

And final­ly, one more alarm. The jour­nal­ists who I talked to say that infor­ma­tion from social nets should be ver­i­fied before pub­li­ca­tion. But the same very peo­ple admit­ted that some­times they pub­lished infor­ma­tion from social nets, and then sought to ver­i­fy it…

Vol­ha Miadzvedze­va from Zvyaz­da says she is not a very active user of social nets, although she looks through her Face­book feed dai­ly.

I start­ed to use social nets after I liked a pub­li­ca­tion of my group­mate Vital, and he write to me. We straight­away start­ed to dis­cuss some events, friends…

That day became a turn­ing point, after which I pay much more atten­tion to social nets. I sim­ply read some reports on Face­book, ignore oth­ers and repost some­thing of inter­est to my wall. I unfriend­ed only one per­son. It was in the mid­dle of the Ukrain­ian-Russ­ian con­flict, and I decid­ed that I did not want to come across aggres­sive incor­rect attacks.

The scan­dal in social nets with Uladz­imir Chudziantsou trig­gered the dis­cus­sion between BAJ and BUJ about the neces­si­ty to update codes of ethics.

We spec­u­lat­ed then that West­ern media have quite strict edi­to­r­i­al poli­cies reg­u­lat­ing employ­ees’ behav­iors in how to write per­son­al blogs and accounts in social nets. In par­tic­u­lar, it is not wel­comed (and some­times sim­ply for­bid­den) to crit­i­cize com­peti­tor mass media, jour­nal­ists from oth­er out­lets, let alone to insult them.

The tough­est code of ethics is at the BBC, which bans its employ­ees not only from express­ing polit­i­cal views in social nets, but also from adding politi­cians into friends.

Hav­ing ana­lyzed all these nuances, I came to the con­clu­sion that if we intro­duce such rules in our edi­to­r­i­al office, we’ll have to fire sev­er­al peo­ple. Per­haps, even me, because I have some politi­cians among friends in social nets, includ­ing offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Some employ­ees can some­where express views that are dif­fer­ent from the edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy of their out­let.

I think that, for the major­i­ty of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, social nets are in the first place a means to pro­mote their pub­li­ca­tions and out­lets. Although, some­times it is just a pos­si­bil­i­ty to declare their views. But for some our col­leagues social nets is just a per­son­al ter­ri­to­ry where the per­son is no longer a jour­nal­ist or observ­er, but an ama­teur of cin­e­ma, music or just cats.

Pho­to of the press ser­vice of BAJ, illu­tra­tions from delovoi-etiket.ru, etika-estetika-moral.jimdo.com