Media Helping Media

Watching current affairs play out on Twitter

Published on Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Written by David Brewer

  

Journalists are attracted to the word 'first'. It's a claim that either needs challenging or celebrating, either way it probably needs covering. Amnesty UK is claiming a Twitter first with a tweet campaign against Shell, and they've thrown down a tweet gauntlet to the oil giant. So does this mean journalists can just sit back and watch battle commence on their PC screens?

This time Amnesty UK is claiming a Twitter first with a tweet campaign against Shell , and they've thrown down a tweet gauntlet to the oil giant.

So does this mean journalists can just sit back and watch battle commence on their desktops or handhelds?

The first few tweets in the campaign, which came through around 14:00 on Tuesday 30 June, pointed to Amnesty's campaign page entitled ‘Make Shell Come Clean '.

In the first tweet, Amnesty, which tweets under the address @AmnestyUK , appealed to its followers.

"We need yr help to make Shell come clean about their devastating impact on human rights in #NigerDelta."

The tweet included a shortened link to the campaign (above).

Amnesty quickly followed this up with another tweet, this time with Shell's Twitter account ‘copied in' and a challenge to Shell to respond.

"We're also relying on you lot to make our first real twitter action a success. Are @shelldotcom listening?"

Again there was a short url link to the same campaign page (link above).

By adding @shelldotcom the message will be delivered to the Shell team.

Following the link to that Shell Twitter account link leads to the Shell Twitter site where they describe themselves as:

"the team that manages Shell's corporate websites. Keep up to date with the latest news and Shell.com updates via our Twitter feed.”

Shell's most recent post (at the time of writing), dated 24 June, was to draw attention to its work with HIV/Aids in the [[Niger Delta]].

"Shell in Nigeria has received an award for the Niger Delta AIDS Response (NiDAR) programme."

The tweet ended with a 'read about it' invite and a link to the HIV/Aids work story (above).

So the journalist can sit back and follow both to watch this Twitter campaign either take off, or fizzle out. Either way, there is a story here.

Digging deeper

If investigative journalists want to dig deeper they can use some neat tools to find out who is following each side and what they recently said.

This can be fun. Go to the Twitter Friends Network Browser.

Enter shelldotcom and see who is following them.

The screen grab to the left is just an illustration, but when you do your own online search, hover over the icons and greyed out text to see what they have tweeted recently.

Find any interesting? Click on the follower and it will expand again to show their network.

You can do the same for Amnesty Uk entering AmnestyUK in the search field.

Loads to go on, in fact, with tools like this the challenge is knowing where to stop. I am not intending to cover the story, so I am stopping here.

Implications for current affairs

But does this mean that the social networking current affairs journalist just needs to follow both sides in a campaign, check out who following each party, read what they have recently said, lift a few quotes and watch the drama unfold?

Well, no, not quite, a journalist will want to dig deeper, make some contacts and develop the story.

Of course the journalist could write a piece like this (much better of course) pointing out what is claimed to be a 'first' by a global human rights organisation against a global oil producer.

And where will the story go?

Well, for Amnesty, whether Shell is listening is not really the point, I guess. Their first call to action was to call on all their followers to join the campaign. One clue will be how many re-tweet the original message.

What is new is that journalists can watch both sides in a story slug it out. Of course, if one side decides not to respond the story could tail off, but if both go for it then following and reporting on the battle on Twitter could produce interesting headlines.

[important color=green title=David Brewer]The author, David Brewer, set up and runs this site, Media Helping Media. He also runs Media Ideas International Ltd and tweets @helpingmedia.[/important]

  

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