While Julie Posetti wants us to believe in the power of the twitterverse to achieve significance in the way news is reported, I think her comments overlook some aspects of how news is made and she asserts a significance for twitter which seems to gloss over some of the “noisy” aspects of that particular internet space. Although a claim that Twitter was the centre of the media universe during a week of political/media hyperbole seems extravagant it certainly is another avenue for media dissemination.
Mark Bahnisch at LP seems more circumspect in his comments. He describes the read/reflect approach to reporting news as
a normative pronouncement
compared to twitter,
a description of social reality
without advocating one as better than the other while still acknowledging the relative strengths of each. What Mark seems to be saying is that the social aspect of the new media landscape, its degree of interactivity that is perhaps illustrated by Twitter and blogs, represents another equally valid form of news reporting. Julie’s and Mark’s comments both reflect a shift in the reporting of some news but while tweets have become another instant message that can alert us to something and social interactivity can drive to a certain extent a political agenda, I think both points of view ignore the role of the professional gatekeepers and PR bots.
In a comparison between old media or MSM and the new media world, the role of the gatekeepers and key players play in disseminating news does not appear to be significantly different. Our sources of news are still filtered by privileged media professionals and media savvy players who can manipulate their particular media strength to reflect a particular agenda. The tools might have changed but so far there seems little evidence that the changed tools have actually produced a more participatory democratic system. Not that a rumoured 100,000 emails from the Bolta camp in support of Tony Abbott isn’t significant, but just how many emails and messages flow from the public on this issue is really hearsay and therefore cannot be confidently articulated.
The popular adoption of twitter as a conversational tool amongst media makers does seem to allow the public to see a broader picture of the news, one which seems to overlap generally with other internet media, if they so choose. The new media makers who engage with the web as their primary tool also tend to overlap in various new media platforms even if they are also active in traditional non-internet msm. For the new media makers, tools like twitter, blogs, websites, fb and so on differentiate the message and audiences to a certain extent, but that’s just the push-model side. The speed of adaption and change is much faster in the online space which is why I think some traditional msm media makers are perhaps not as keyed into things like twitter. Their interests are ultimately not particularly well served if they break their news on that medium since it has a very limited reach and if they do break news on twitter it is almost always as a pointer to a more significant source.
The news coming out of Parliament house is a strange beast in one way. Elsewhere, if something newsworthy happens in the public domain then members of the public have pretty much the same level of access as a professional media maker to the basics of the event, the when, where and who, for example a large public demonstration. On the other hand, Parliament House and the associated private media spaces that are the sources of this political story, and others like it, are largely off limits to the public. Sure the public can attend the chambers of parliament, but the business side of Parliament House is restricted. The Press Gallery occupy a privileged position courtesy of the political system and they are not likely to sabotage that.
Why is this relevant? Well it seems to me that the much vaunted democratisation of the news media via things like twitter fails to acknowledge that in some areas, the public is utterly dependent on professional media makers to tell them what’s going on. Sure we can tweet and blog about what we see or hear or read in the msm but that information is already filtered. I suspect the discretionary tweets from a few journalists out of Parliament House is more about building audiences (followers) than it is about dissemination of information to the wider public even if that is a by-product. Things like the Liberal Party leadership woes are significant stories only because the media says so, and we must rely on the media to provide almost all of our primary information. Social commentary while important is still dependent of the gatekeepers to break the news. If David Spears had not read out a sms live on air half the tweets on #spill would never have been written but if he did so and twitter didn’t exist then we can only speculate about how his peers in the rest of the MSM would have responded. In this scenario (a parallel universe where twitter doesn’t exist) it seems far-fetched to assume that other news sites who are most likely also watching Sky would not have reacted in a similar fashion to the newsworthiness of David’s impromptu news break.
Whether or not any of this new media or old media coverage of the subtleties and nuances of a political party’s internal machinations makes any real difference to what the public ends up thinking in a week’s time when the dust settles is doubtful. The headline news come monday or tuesday on the leadership is probably the only thing of real interest to anyone outside of the small coterie of political junkies that comment on blogs or tweet their hourly thoughts and especially when the story in question has little bearing on anything affecting the public’s daily reality. What the last week has demonstrated to this writer is that PR and media professionals are quickly adopting and adapting to the new forms of media without a substantial change in the fundamental relationship between politicians, the media and the public. The political bunfight is still an event publicised and produced by media professionals (would be or actual) for the distraction of the public. Compared with real issues such as climate change and keeping body and soul together, who said what to who and why during a week of political cloak and daggery in Canberra and Sydney is, a relatively small matter.
