Overview: Social Media Strategy

what more than 12,000 people[i] told us about comment sections on 20 different news sites.... 81% ... would like it if journalists clarified factual questions in the comment section... 73% ... would like it if experts on the topic of the article responded... 58%, would like it if journalists actively contributed to comment sections...

the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet... doesn’t serve people... it’s not designed to... “content” we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result…

Americans almost always think that the year coming to a close is the worst... Many misunderstand how the world is changing or ignore positive change... Surveys from long before 2016 — the era before the world turned “post-factual” — show the same levels of ignorance. .. There are several reasons for this...structure of the media means negative sub…

THE WASHINGTON POST on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system...media reactions... were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations ... It did not happen. There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” ... The level of groupthink, fearmongering, coercive p…

... no one has direct access to reality. The real world is nearly impossible to see in this maelstrom ... because human minds need to “construct” their own version of reality — and each of us does this within a community of shared experiences and beliefs... there are many social worlds and each is built on its own version of what is real and true.…

the idea that fake news was central to the outcome of the campaign has little basis in fact... it’s mostly likely to be shared by people who have already bought into a partisan or ideological worldview... Clinton’s campaign ... problem was ... coverage that dwelled overwhelmingly on a bullshit email server scandal, devoted far fewer resources to…

Broadsides against fake news amount to a rearguard action from an industry fending off competitors who don’t play by the same rules... an independent, powerful, widely respected news media establishment is an historical anomaly... Fake news is but one symptom of that shift back to historical norms... Just as Watergate gave the media a bright stor…

fake news wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t fall for it and share it. Unless we understand the psychology of online news consumption, we won’t be able to find a cure... online news readers don’t ... care about the importance of journalistic sourcing ... “professional gatekeeping.”... I mocked up a news site and showed four groups of partici…

Most people in the news industry hate comments.... yet audience engagement ... is so worth the investment ... trust in media and journalists has sunk to a new low. Talking to each other can help build relationships and therefore trust. What business leader out there doesn’t want to earn more per user? And what journalist doesn’t want to have the b…

For a term that is suddenly everywhere, “fake news” is fairly slippery... government propaganda designed to look like independent journalism... any old made-up bullshit ... a hoax meant to make a larger point... only ... when it shows up on a platform like Facebook as legitimate news? What about conspiracy theorists ... satire intended to entertai…

We have ideas for sponsored Codas, that are of interest to specific groups.

Do we really want to set up Facebook or Google as censors ... to decide what is real and fake, true and false?

Seven years ago I started working full time at the Guardian in the glamorous role of SEO editorial executive. ... very like being in the Matrix but with less kung fu and more Polly Toynbee and Nigel Farage... here are a few of the things I’ve learned…

information bubbles didn’t burst on 8 November, but ... mainstream media and polling systems underestimated the power of alt-right news sources and smaller conservative sites that largely rely on Facebook to reach an audience... fake news is not a uniquely Republican problem... What is ... is the validation given to fake news by the now president-…

many of us have burrowed into our own echo chambers of information. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 81 percent of respondents said that partisans not only differed about policies, but also about “basic facts.”... if you study the dynamics of how information moves online today, pretty much everything conspires against truth... when confron…

Two convergent trends are making populism a potent negative force. First, democracies have morphed into unrepresentative plutocracies that lead growing numbers of people to feel shut out and voiceless... Media ... business model is now based on social media and clicks, not facts. Clicks depend on theatrical performance, stunts, celebrity, ent…

Segregated social universes, an industry moving from red states to the coasts, and mass media’s revenue decline: The disconnect between two realities shows no sign of abating... American political discourse in 2016 seemed to be running on two self-contained, never-overlapping sets of information... today’s media ecosystem encourage that separatio…

The debate on whether Facebook is a media company or not is not new... My take: it matters how users perceive Facebook, not how others — Facebook insiders or not — define it.

“So far, the growth around online video news seems to be largely driven by technology, platforms, and publishers rather than by strong consumer demand,”

using Facebook to repackage some of its magazine stories into video form... takes advantage of a Facebook tool that lets publishers merge a series of photos into videos... kept things simple... roughly 30 seconds and rarely going beyond a few words, a chart, or a photo in each individual slide... take as little as two minutes

Referral traffic to publishers from LinkedIn ... has been on a steady uptick... In January, publishers saw traffic to their sites from LinkedIn explode, in some cases tripling...puts LinkedIn into the top-10 referrers of the web... Publishers are now in a better position to make decisions on LinkedIn editorial strategy... a very particular traffi…

Facebook wants to have the responsibility of a publisher but also to be seen as a neutral carrier of information that is not in the position of making news judgments... when Facebook was still censoring the napalm photo ... the site’s trending bar began posting ... a story suggesting September 11 were caused by a “controlled demolition”.

Another controversial Facebook takedown, another muddy explanation for an erroneous removal.

“a monopoly of content distribution that will be mainly driven by user-generated content, and by professional content by commercially interested players.... pretty traumatic scenario of information or propaganda. It will be very painful for democracies.”

“the news on Facebook is what Facebook says it is.”... before the arrival of the internet news in newspapers was what newspapers said it was... the controllers of news outlets - newspapers, TV and radio, online - make choices about what to publish and, more significantly, what not to publish. Facebook’s increasing dominance over advertising is c…

at The Information, the subscription-based tech news publisher, comments and community aren’t just intact — they’re a selling point... The Information puts its members front and center. Subscribers get their own bio pages... its subscription call to action entreats visitors not to get access to great information or level up their tech and media k…

One small tag for Facebook, one giant disaster for your favorite publishers... For publishers sharing native ads ... have to tag the brand in the post... that brand’s marketing team gets access to the post’s insights... allow savvy marketers to calculate just how big a margin publishers are taking on these campaigns — and potentially walk away fe…

Since Facebook made its livestreaming feature widely available earlier this year, publishers have been experimenting with on-the-spot video in a variety of ways... we are starting a series of in-depth articles chronicling their experiments IBTimes UK has been working on three different live video formats: Q&As; with columnists and reporters, panel…

media outlets are using different strategies when it comes to Instagram Stories versus Snapchat... I talked with The New York Times, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated ... to understand how they are trying to make use of Instagram Stories for a new kind of visual narrative.

Facebook found itself in the middle of another media controversy last week... like watching an old couple fight: they are nominally talking about the same episode, but in reality both are so wrapped up in their own issues and grievances that they are talking past each other... Facebook screwed this up. But that doesn’t change the fact that Facebo…