Social media insights for journalists

The Project for Excellence in Journalism recently studied the content of blogs, Twitter and YouTube to get a feel for the relationship between mainstream media sources and social media.  Even more specifically, the researchers were able to determine how the content is different (or the same) between the two.

Here are some of the findings:

• Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda – the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied. On YouTube, the top stories overlapped with traditional media eight out of 49 weeks. 

• The stories that gain traction in social media do so quickly, often within hours of initial reports, and leave quickly as well. Just 5% of the top five stories on Twitter remained among the top stories the following week. This was true of 13% of the top stories on blogs and 9% on YouTube. In the mainstream press, on the other hand, fully 50% of the top five stories one week remained a top story a week later.

• Politics, so much a focus of cable and radio talk programming, has found a place in blogs and on YouTube. On blogs, 17% of the top five linked-to stories in a given week were about U.S. government or politics, often accompanied by emphatic personal analysis or evaluations. These topics were even more prevalent among news videos on YouTube, where they accounted for 21% of all top stories. On Twitter, however, technology stories were linked to far more than anything else, accounting for 43% of the top five stories in a given week and 41% of the lead items. By contrast, technology filled 1% of the newshole in the mainstream press during the same period.

• The most popular news videos on YouTube, meanwhile, stood out for having a broader international mix. A quarter, 26%, of the top watched news videos were of non-U.S. events, primarily those with a strong visual appeal such as raw footage of Pope Benedict XVI getting knocked over during Mass on Christmas Eve or a clip of a veteran Brazilian news anchor getting caught insulting some janitors without realizing his microphone was still live. Celebrity and media-focused videos were also given significant prominence.

These findings may prove useful for journalists trying to figure out what works in social media and what doesn’t.  For example, if you are working on a technology-related story, that may be perfect fodder for your Twitter feed.  If you have a juicy political story going or a local celebrity sighting, get it up on YouTube.

For decades, mainstream media have studied their audiences to get a feel for what interests viewers or readers.  This research seems to me to be the start of an important new body of research, which may allow journalists to more effectively use social media tools.