As regular readers will know, social media is influential not just for the readers, participators and networks around blogs, wikis and communities but for the fact that they are so useful as a source of information and opinion to mass media and other influencers.
Channel 4 News in the UK is a prime example over the past couple of days. Naturally, there are videos and vox pops when the Google/YouTube story is being discussed. But also there was a story about soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday filming low flying harrier jets, then there was a story about Sion Simon, a Labour MP, filming a spoof of the leader of the Conservatives’ Webcameron video blog posts.
Today the story about the head of the British Army’s assertion that troops should be pulled out of Iraq. The piece included details of posts on the British Army Rumour Service web community, which has several forums in which soldiers discuss various issues (it failed to reveal that the site’s name is actually ARRSE).
It is becoming second nature for journalists to turn to the web to quickly add depth to their stories. Best to bear that in mind really.
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