Far from cannibalising news & media traffic, social media helps drive traffic
Raymond Snoddy asks whether the mainstream media plays a crucial role in defining the agenda of social media – rather than the other way around?
Most in the media already know it instinctively, but a new study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows just how important social media is for distributing news from traditional news organisations.
Referrals from the likes of Facebook and Twitter are rising rapidly compared with search as a means of accessing the news.
In fact the latest 2011 Oxford Internet Survey shows that the percentage of UK internet users turning to search to get information fell from 64% to 61% – the first time there has been such a fall.
According to Experian Hitwise, 16% of referrals to news sites are now driven by the social media – 5% for The Guardian and 10% for The Economist. Experian argues that “far from cannibalising news and media traffic, social media has helped drive traffic to news sites”.
There is one newspaper, however, which has lost out in the rising trend of referrals. The Times’ numbers have unsurprisingly fallen off the edge of a cliff since going behind its paywall last year.
Predictions that news on Facebook and Twitter could somehow, on their own, supplant traditional news sources now appear wide of the mark. Everywhere he looked, the author of the Reuters Institute study, Nic Newman, found that although news might first break on social sites such as Twitter, users then turn to the mainstream media to “verify, contextualise and amplify these stories”.
One of the most telling case studies is that of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The attack on Abbottabad was first twittered by local café owner Sohaib Athar, while back in the US the likely death of Bin Ladin was revealed by Keith Urbahn – a former chief of staff to former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
His tweet went viral with the help of Brian Stelter of the New York Times – all before President Obama went on television to confirm the news. Though the element of surprise may have gone for many, the President’s address was still watched by 56 million people on nine networks – the largest audience since his election.
It later emerged that Urbahn’s source had been a television producer.
US research from Stanford University and HP labs also supported the idea that the mainstream media play a crucial role in defining the agenda of social media – rather than the other way around.
The Stanford/HP work found that most big news trends can be traced back to the Twitter accounts of big-breaking news brands such as CNN, ESPN, Reuters, the BBC and Sky News.
Newman found that some publishers – The Economist was a case in point – are becoming adept at providing material that tickles the fancies of the social networks.
The Economist provides a daily chart to tell an unusual story, puts out information showing how much heads of state earn relative to the average wage, or units of alcohol consumed per head per year in different countries. The Economist even loads stories into a carousel and fires them automatically into Twitter feeds in response to terms trending at the time.
There is a real worry that the allure of the social networks will increasingly dominate the agenda of news organisations by encouraging them to provide stories that work particularly well – quirky news, celebrity gossip.
Andrew Currah, in a research paper – What’s Happening To Our News- has warned that some news publishers are in danger of becoming “digital windsocks” shaped by the direction of the prevailing clickstream.
Currah notes how the publishers of Daily Mail Online have developed a markedly different feel with more celebrity news – and that even the Telegraph, the Times and the Guardian have introduced sections such as Lifestyle, Celebrity and Weird.
But are referrals good? Or bad?
Social networkers referring others to the sites of the traditional news media are obviously great for visibility and reputation but how about the economics.
At last night’s presentation and debate in the BBC Council Chamber, one member of the audience boasted how he had bought The Economist and the FT for the past 20 years but no longer spent a penny on either because he could get most of the information he wanted for free on the internet.
Referrals – and therefore increased spread of news – is clearly good for the BBC because of licence fee funding. It is not bad for Reuters, subscription funded, as long as the organisation isn’t giving away for free the sort of information its subscribers pay hefty fees for.
The Economist believes its activity on social networks helps to introduce new people to the magazine, and indeed the publication must be doing something right with 26 years of uninterrupted circulation increases. Tom Standage, digital editor of The Economist, takes a very long-term view of the social network phenomenon.
Throughout most of history communication has been social – from person to person using trusted sources. The period from the introduction of the steam-powered rotary press in 1833, and with it successive forms of one-way communication including radio and television until around 2000, had been the exception. Only now in the current century, Standage argues, have social networks been rediscovered.
News in a way has returned to its roots – back to the “conversational culture of the coffee house”, though in fact what is developing is a symbotic relationship between the new electronic coffeehouses and the mass media, feeding off and amplifying each other.
Referrals might not be nearly so good for mainstream, advertising-supported publications. Finding the money, everyone admits, is still work in progress. Some publishers are looking at changing the rules around metered-paywalls, such as creating special deals for social networks.
One of the toughest questions came from Neil Fowler, former editor of papers such as the Western Morning News and the Derbyshire Telegraph: “In this new world who is going to pay for reporters to cover Hartlepool Magistrates court on a wet Wednesday afternoon?” Answer came there none.
Mainstream media and the distribution of news in the age of social discovery: Nic Newman.