Only now there is a complement to the TV – social media, and especially Twitter. Yet that has of course not stopped a whole host of nay-sayers bemoaning the role of social media.

Here then is a practical guide to following a breaking news story via social media, and what to watch out for.

1. Social media can tell you when something is happening, and where the good coverage is
Perhaps the simplest of all – use social media to give a pointer towards the best coverage in the traditional media. On Sunday night Twitter was full of news about the rebels’ advance on Tripoli, a cue to turn on the TV for some live video. Secondly, tweets from across the UK political spectrum were wondering why BBC had no up-to-date footage, while Sky’s Alex Crawford was on a Tripoli street with gunfire in the background. I wouldn’t normally touch Sky News but this time it was the best bet.

2. Follow people you trust
This sounds easier than it can prove to be in practice. On social media you have everything from the journalists on the front line to the equivalent of a drunken conversation in a pub, so you need to cut through the noise to get to the good content. Chances are that NPR’s Andy Carvin (@acarvin) is going to be aggregating coverage of any major story, so he’s a good person to start with. I’ve met Andy – he’s a pro and I trust his judgment.

Beyond that look at what people you know personally are writing – my good friend in Oslo Bente Kalsnes (@benteka) mentioned Rune Håkonsen (@runehak) and his live tweets about Utøya. Rune’s biog states he works for NRK, he’s reputable, so follow. For the London riots Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) was mentioned so widely that he was a must-follow. In short trust people who people you trust also trust.

Services like Klout or PeerIndex might be able to tell you if someone is generally reputable but won’t help you much when a news story is breaking.

3. On social media, verification of facts happens in public – don’t be drawn in unless there is good reason
The number of observations and comments online can lead to contrary points of view being expressed simultaneously, best summed up in the case of the Tripoli advance in this tweet by @gdwilliamson:

So Gadaffi is both dead and captured according to Twitter. Truly, he is Schrodinger's Dictator.

21.08.2011 21:08 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@gdwilliamson

Graham Williamson

Conversely the intelligence and analysis of people online can beat the mainstream media to get to the bottom of a complex event, as shown in response to the Oslo and Utøya attacks when the mainstream media was slow to reject the jihadist terrorism link.

As an individual, make sure you only write what you can yourself verify, and do not assume things you read are true. However be ready to analyse trends and thoughtful reflections – these may turn out to be correct, and opinions may be aired online that simply are not available in the mainstream media.

4. Social Media can provide information you cannot easily get any other way
On one of the nights of the London riots I was in west London and had no idea what was going on in Bow, the area of east London where I normally live. I asked for news about Bow on Twitter, adding #londonriots to my tweet. Two individuals I have never met and do not follow were in Bow and tweeted their observations. Of course all of the points above about trust etc., needs to be applied to their response, but conversely no mainstream media was complete in its coverage (as Dave Hill explains in relation to Woolwich).

For Utøya I wanted to know if all my Norwegian friends were safe, and here Twitter could not help me, and sending an e-mail to a few dozen people would have been an over-reaction. But a quick glance at all my Norwegian friends’ Facebook profiles showed they were all ok.

5. Have a sense of humour
Perhaps not as important as the other four points, but – even in times of difficulty – comments on social media can sometimes make you smile. Can you imagine the BBC calling Gadaffi Schrodinger’s dictator? Or tongue in cheek connections between London and Tripoli?

Now there's a way to check if these rebels are political and genuine. Is the Tripoli outlet of JD sports intact?

21.08.2011 21:23 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ByrneToff

Thomas Byrne

1. Freedom of speech
Nick Clegg pledged a return of British freedoms. Freedom of speech is a crucial part of this. Any effort to close down or censor the internet or social media is a restriction on the free speech of the population, and as such is dangerous. Remember that upwards of 30 million Brits (more than half the population) use social media. We do not want the UK emulating Belarus and China.

2. Social media is useful, but not vital, for emergency communications
Parallels have been drawn in today’s debate between the response to the riots and the 2005 terrorist attacks in London when access to mobile phone networks was restricted. In the latter this was so as to ensure emergency services could communicate with each other. No emergency service’s communications are dependent on any social media technology, and there is no evidence that net access needed to be restricted for this purpose, so there is no emergency case for closing social media sites.

3. Restricting social media deals with the symptom, not the cause
There is no way to stop people communicating within a community. If they want a riot they will find ways to do so. Networking via social media is the symptom of anger shown by people – social media is not the cause of the violence. People have always had ways to organise violence or protest, and they will find ways to do so with social media or without it.

4. Targeting any system(s) will not work
Even if BlackBerry Messenger had been closed during the violence in Tottenham (as local MP David Lammy advocated, wrongly in my view), other technologies could have been used instead. BlackBerry Messenger is not – strictly defined – social media anyway. It’s more akin to Skype or MSN Messenger. But the issue here is clear – if you shut one means of communication, another can be opened very swiftly. Anyone with a basic understanding of technology can see that.

5. Social media can be used to reassure a population, and to organise a cleanup
I used Twitter to check on the situation at home in Bow when I was in West London, and to plan a route to Kentish Town by bicycle to avoid any flash points. Other Twitter users were happy to help. Stella Creasy MP has done brilliant work networking with and reassuring the people of Walthamstow, while across London cleanups have been organised primarily via Twitter. Cutting off social media cuts off all of these tremendous solutions.

So then, David Cameron and the vast majority of backbenchers, it’s time to learn a few lessons about social media and technology in light of the riots!

Feel free to comment on / improve upon the list below!

• Sharing on social media – quick buttons to share content on Twitter, Facebook, Google +1, LinkedIn. The emphasis here is to make sure the design is neat and consistent – the buttons to the left of a post at Mashable are the best I’ve seen. Question is how to make this happen – some combination of plugins and coding from the sites’ own widget systems is going to be the solution I think. E-mail to a friend will be added alongside these buttons.
• Social Media integration – tweets referencing a post will appear below comments on a post (probably using Topsy), and tweets will be referenced in posts using the excellent Twitter Blackbird Pie.
• Publishing to social media – not a blog feature as such, but new blog posts will be auto-tweeted using TwitterFeed, imported into Facebook as Notes, and posted to LinkedIn.
• Mobile and iPad friendly – easy to understand why, perhaps harder to make it work! The simple and free way is to use WPTouch (free version) to create a mobile site, and OnSwipe (free) for an iPad version. The problem is that neither of these plugins gives a very configurable design – worth forking out for WPTouch Pro? Or just stick to the regular site for the iPad?
• E-mail integration – all too easy to overlook in the social media world, but subscribe to post comments and a notification every time something new is posted will be added. This will be done with plugins Post Notification and Subscribe to Comments.
• Design – for the main site this is delicate. The main column of text needs to be 640px wide so as to accommodate Youtube videos, but wider images breaking out of the grid (Wu-Wei style) would also be desirable. Meanwhile a right sidebar design, with a total width of no more than 960px is a must.
• Topics – I have three main topics: EU politics, UK politics and tech Politics. I need to find a way – in a sidebar perhaps? – to draw attention to these issues more closely. Yet I want to keep a traditional blog style homepage, not completely change that in the way Mark Pack has. Some differentiation of sidebars (for blogrolls, links to Twitter lists, perhaps even a link to Google+ Circles?) is also necessary here.
• What I’m writing elsewhere, and what I’m reading – I’m writing more and more for other sites, so the blog needs a way to gather this content in one place. I also read masses of brilliant stuff everyday, and a simple way to present this would be excellent. WordPress 3.2′s Post Formats are probably the best way to accomplish this, although using Delicious would be another option.
• Other odds and ends – an import of where I am currently from Dopplr, latest pics from Flickr, current Klout and PeerIndex status, and clearer pages about what I do also need to be included.

Simple really!

Anyway here are – now – my rules for who I’ll add where.

Facebook – you can find my profile here, and my new page here.
Previously I would be happy to add anyone as a friend on Facebook I had actually met. This started to get ludicrous, with more than 1000 ‘friends’. So I now have a new criterion, and a reduced number of friends: Facebook friends are people I know well enough to conceivably meet for a coffee or a beer if I happen to be in the city where these folks live. If you don’t meet that criterion you’ll be kindly declined. If you want to follow what I do professionally – in EU politics, UK politics or tech and politics – then the page should do the job (although one of the networks below should be a better bet!) Plus you can contact me on Facebook anyway if you want to, you just don’t need to know what I am doing here and now.

Twitter - you can follow me here.
This remains more or less unchanged – I do not automatically follow anyone that follows me, but do go through to work out who to follow on the basis of the biographies of people following me. If you sound interesting from that then I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and if I build real engagement with you I’ll add you to a list. I do not have to know you to want to follow you. At the time of writing I’m following 2515 and have 3589 followers – expect both numbers to increase. Twitter is more of a professional tool for me than Facebook, and what I write goes across all the three of my main areas of interest – EU politics, UK politics and tech and politics. I’ll do my best to respond to any valid question posed to be on Twitter, but that’s not always possible. You can be sure I read all @replies though.

Google+ – my profile is here.
The new show in town, and – so far at least – the one with the best tools to manage all these different social groups. I’ll follow anyone who seems interesting (Twitter-style) but will add close friends to more restricted circles (Facebook-style, and even more narrow), and can work out what to share with whom on the very same network. Each professional area I work in has its own circle, with a little overlap between them. I’ve only just started out here, so don’t yet have even 100 people in my circles – you’re welcome to add me if you think a connection would make sense for some reason.

LinkedIn – my profile is here.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of LinkedIn – 446 connections (much less than Facebook or Twitter) is testimony to that. I take the approach that if people search for me they are welcome to connect as nothing on LinkedIn is not available elsewhere on the public web. Tags help me separate out the different professional interests from each other, and I am yet to determine the right strategy for LinkedIn groups. You’re welcome to add me as a connection.

I also have profiles on XING (70 contacts), Quora (approx 200 following / followers), Plaxo (30 contacts), Diaspora (5 contacts), Path (1 contact), but am not actively using any of these. I’m also on Foursquare and Dopplr, but my use of both of those is for informational rather than social networking purposes.

First of all, a hybrid blog-website should be at the heart of any politician’s web presence. All the information that is also to be used across all social media should be put there – the website remains the place to go for whatever information any citizen, lobbyist, journalist would possibly want about a MEP. The site should list all engagements a MEP is attending and contain details of all the person’s legislative activity in the Parliament. By default as much information as possible should go online – openness should be the point of departure.

I say it should be a hybrid blog-website because there is no legitimate expectation that the politician themselves does everything, and this can be distinguished on a site – with first person prose on a blog and third person elsewhere, similar in style to ex-MEP Caroline Lucas. Every MEP must determine their own level of engagement; no engagement from a MEP themselves is not acceptable these days in my mind. It’s not as if the tech is hard – I’ve taught people who didn’t know how to copy-paste how to blog! Further, MEPs should make it clear their researchers are part of the web team (as Simon Busuttil does).

For the tech of a politician’s web presence costs need to be kept low – there is nothing I’ve listed here that cannot be done with the excellent free and open source WordPress. I’m yet to see a genuinely interesting website of a politician who uses a central system provided by a national party HQ – these should be avoided.

Then on to the other points of the diagramme above.

First of all RSS feeds of all aspects of a MEP’s work should be provided – by theme keyword, and by type of work. If you don’t know what RSS is, or why it’s important, see this. If I want to know what Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė is saying about Nord Stream only I can get this via RSS here (although this is not explicitly shown on her website). This allows visitors to keep track on one aspect of a MEP’s work and – secondly – allows content to be aggregated from a politician’s website into blog aggregators such as BloggingPortal.eu

Thirdly, the same targeted approach should be taken when it comes to e-mail communications. The standard monthly newsletters sent by most MEPs are no good – they are too long, too impenetrable, lacking in focus. E-mail bulletins should hence also be organised by theme, and also by target group – party activists, journalists etc. An open source solution such as phplist or a paid service like MailChimp would allow further accuracy of targeting. Also vital is that the communications should be web to e-mail, and not the other way around – news should be on the web first and then collected for e-mail communications. In the fast paced worlds of politics and social media there is no sense in holding back information for the sake of sending it out later by e-mail.

Fourth, a MEP needs to develop a presence on the relevant social networks in their national context. This basically means Facebook anywhere in Europe (and a Facebook page, not a profile), Twitter towards the Brussels environment (lobbyists and journalists) and possibly towards national audiences, and then other social networks (LinkedIn, XING, Hyves, Draugiem etc.) according to their use in the country a MEP represents. Selected information can automatically be fed onto these networks using RSS – blog entries make good content as Notes in Facebook, and it is worthwhile to tweet links to new blog entries. Standard press releases in the format “Kristiina Ojuland MEP said XYZ” should not be transmitted this way (should they even be written…?) as this style does not match the informal nature of social networks.

An individual politician needs to decide their own personal engagement in social networks, and under no circumstances should content be written on social networks by staff without a politician’s explicit approval. MEPs such as Marietje Schaake write all tweets and Facebook content themselves – that’s a best case scenario. MEPs sit in plenty of long and boring meetings – that’s the time for social networks, ideally off a smartphone.

It is a delicate issue but I would say that broadcasting alone (and no discussion) does not come close to making the most of the potential of social networks, but it is probably better than nothing. A politician’s staff can assist collating comments and feedback, and to determine which questions from citizens merit a reply. The use of Twitter lists can help make Twitter workload manageable.

Lastly, each MEP needs to determine their language preferences for their web presence – own language only eliminates the Brussels networking potential of the technology, so a combination of English (and French?) and national language needs to be used. This is easy enough to accomplish on a website with multi-language functions, and also onto a Facebook page, while on Twitter 2 separate accounts could be the best solution.

Right, that’s all for a quick overview! Would be good to hear comments from MEPs, politicians at other levels, and anyone who wants good web comms from their politicians!

I’m often asked how I follow 2900 people on Twitter. You can’t read that much! Sorry you 2900, but I don’t read all your tweets. Nor does anyone who follows a lot of people.

So what do I read, and how?

First of all, life is too short to read old tweets. So anything written now, while I’m writing this blog entry, or you’re reading it, I won’t look at. Except mentions (tweets mentioning @jonworth) – I’ll read all of those, always.

Secondly, I don’t use twitter.com to manage my account. I use Tweetdeck for Chrome, although regular Tweetdeck or Hootsuite will do the job just as well. These are the only Twitter Clients I’ve come across that give a decent overview of Twitter lists, and also explain why Tweetdeck is a valuable firm just now. No-one using Twitter effectively and professionally is going to be using the regular Twitter website, it just does not offer adequate functionality.

Thirdly, group the people you follow into lists. There are practical guides about how to do this from Mashable and Twitter itself. But why should you do this?

Think of the things that matter to you. For me that’s UK Politics, EU Politics and how tech impacts politics. Depending on the time of day, or the day of the week, my interests will vary. If it’s a European Council in Brussels my focus will be on EU. If it’s budget day it will be the UK. If I’m looking for inspiration on web projects then it will be tech.

So think of your interests, and work out who the really interesting people are on Twitter in those areas, and make a list for each.

For example my techpolitics list has 34 members (you can see their tweets here), the UK list 66 and so on. The total on all my lists is a couple of hundred. Anyone I follow will be considered for a list, but not that many make it. You can also see that while 3300 people follow me, 238 have listed me – i.e. 238 people who have gone beyond the basics of Twitter are really paying attention.

Last but not least, get an overview of your lists in Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. This is shown in the screenshot above – you can display each list in a separate column, giving you an overview of what’s happening on all of your lists, whenever you want it. This is much better than the separate clicks you have to make in most Twitter clients, or at twitter.com. You can also make columns for Twitter searches, although that’s a topic for another post.

So – in short – work out your interests, make a list for each, add columns in Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, and enjoy a busy but manageable experience with Twitter!

Twitter is a great place for sharing links. But there’s no way to really systematise what’s particularly interesting… It’s see it this moment or it’s gone.

So I’m trying once again with paper.li to do something about this. My new experiment is called The #DailyEuropean (giving the newspaper a hash-tag on Twitter too). The newspaper is made from a new Twitter list – Daily European. The idea is that anyone who tweets links to English stories about the EU anywhere on the web should be added to that list. This includes accounts that broadcast only.

I’m going to tweak the list to see how it works (today’s paper has too much from Roger Helmer for my liking!) but if this works out then it should be a crowdsourced paper about the best of EU politics.

Labour MEP for London Claude Moraes in today's @guardiannews on lack of Tory support for EU crime fighting agency http://bit.ly/eGHVhk

07.04.2011 10:44 via ÜberSocialReplyRetweetFavorite

@TheBrianDuggan

Brian Duggan

I followed the link to the letters page of The Guardian, and this is what I get:

Your report on the conviction of John Sweeney should be essential reading for some of my colleagues in the European parliament who have consistently argued against the very programme that brought this murderer to justice (Report, 4 April). Last year the Guardian reported that the UK requested Eurojust’s help in more cases than any other EU country. Yet time and again, the Conservatives and Ukip in Brussels have refused to support the organisation, a body set up to help the police work more effectively with their colleagues in other EU countries. Perhaps they don’t see the link between abstract agreements in Brussels and the reality of fighting crime.

Claude Moraes MEP

Labour’s European spokesperson on justice and home affairs

The link on the Guardian site leads here, not exactly informative about the processes behind the case. So how about Moraes’s website? That has just a copy-paste of the letter. His briefings page contains no information about Eurojust or this issue more widely. The link to his Twitter account from his website is broken.

So what do I learn from all of this? Well it shows my MEP is at least active – he’s writing to the newspapers. But I don’t actually learn anything. How are the Tories and UKIP blocking Eurojust? Does Labour, the EPLP, PES or S&D group have a proper policy? How should Europe-wide judicial cooperation work? Not a clue.

Now I can understand why a letter to a newspaper has to be short, but surely the website or Twitter account of a politician should be just the place to add that extra context?