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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/15/manual-retweets-self-promotion-twitter-embeds-journalism
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| Manual retweets are self-promotion and Twitter embeds aren't journalism | Manual retweets are self-promotion and Twitter embeds aren't journalism |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Twitter provides an endless source of fascination for journalists. It's an ego boost, seeing ideas and quips propagated, cheered, pored over. It allows for effort-free crowdsourcing for a "trendwatch." It's a real-time mirror that can quantify who among us is the fairest. And it's the way journalists have to do business now. | Twitter provides an endless source of fascination for journalists. It's an ego boost, seeing ideas and quips propagated, cheered, pored over. It allows for effort-free crowdsourcing for a "trendwatch." It's a real-time mirror that can quantify who among us is the fairest. And it's the way journalists have to do business now. |
| Last week, a piece on Romenesko, Stop Bitching And Start Tweeting! said as much. Another, about an NPR warning that reporters' tweets can undermine the image of NPR's reporting, inspired hand-wringing about ethics and expression. | Last week, a piece on Romenesko, Stop Bitching And Start Tweeting! said as much. Another, about an NPR warning that reporters' tweets can undermine the image of NPR's reporting, inspired hand-wringing about ethics and expression. |
| Because NPR management had concluded that retweets equal endorsements, the memo inspired a debate on what constitutes personal expression and who ultimately takes possession of the ideas in a tweet. New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo went so far as to elevate tweets to the level of reporting: | Because NPR management had concluded that retweets equal endorsements, the memo inspired a debate on what constitutes personal expression and who ultimately takes possession of the ideas in a tweet. New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo went so far as to elevate tweets to the level of reporting: |
| I can't understand how any journalistic org can think of RTs as endorsements. RTs are broadcasting other tweets; that's called reporting. | I can't understand how any journalistic org can think of RTs as endorsements. RTs are broadcasting other tweets; that's called reporting. |
| But this kind of handwringing discussion about expression and ownership never carries through far enough. For a profession enamored of examining how the sausage gets made – via gossip and high-mindedness – few people want to address whether a large part of that process, when it comes to Twitter, is theft. Appropriation, lifting, bigfooting, whatever you want to call it – it happens on scales large and small. Read journalist Twitter feeds long enough, and you'll start to see this sort of thing an awful lot: | But this kind of handwringing discussion about expression and ownership never carries through far enough. For a profession enamored of examining how the sausage gets made – via gossip and high-mindedness – few people want to address whether a large part of that process, when it comes to Twitter, is theft. Appropriation, lifting, bigfooting, whatever you want to call it – it happens on scales large and small. Read journalist Twitter feeds long enough, and you'll start to see this sort of thing an awful lot: |
| MT @repjohnlewis: 53 yrs ago today I was released from penitentiary after being arrested for using "white” restroom pic.twitter.com/qL3OIsLW2p | MT @repjohnlewis: 53 yrs ago today I was released from penitentiary after being arrested for using "white” restroom pic.twitter.com/qL3OIsLW2p |
| Now, God only knows why a white Automobiles Editor at the New York Times felt that a civil rights message delivered by a man who had his head fractured by racist sheriff's deputies on the Edmund Pettus Bridge needed some intercession. The retweet button is right there; he could click it and move on, and John Lewis' message would go out via John Lewis alone. Or he could, as he did, go manual: trim the tweet to fit the character limit, write "MT" (for "modified tweet") before Lewis's handle, and push it out under his own name (or in the journalist parlance, "byline"). But that requires a lot more effort. So why would anyone do it? | Now, God only knows why a white Automobiles Editor at the New York Times felt that a civil rights message delivered by a man who had his head fractured by racist sheriff's deputies on the Edmund Pettus Bridge needed some intercession. The retweet button is right there; he could click it and move on, and John Lewis' message would go out via John Lewis alone. Or he could, as he did, go manual: trim the tweet to fit the character limit, write "MT" (for "modified tweet") before Lewis's handle, and push it out under his own name (or in the journalist parlance, "byline"). But that requires a lot more effort. So why would anyone do it? |
| One explanation is that James G Cobb is an old person who doesn't understand the internet. Journalism is filled with old people who don't understand things (just look at Henry Blodget). The kindest explanation is that Cobb altered the tweet to remove a provocative political statement whose retweeting would sound dangerously like advocacy. But the original tweet, to which Cobb's modified tweet doesn't link back, contains no such message. | One explanation is that James G Cobb is an old person who doesn't understand the internet. Journalism is filled with old people who don't understand things (just look at Henry Blodget). The kindest explanation is that Cobb altered the tweet to remove a provocative political statement whose retweeting would sound dangerously like advocacy. But the original tweet, to which Cobb's modified tweet doesn't link back, contains no such message. |
| Thus we're left with the cynical explanation – that retweeting John Lewis earns James G Cobb nothing of substance – it makes him just an amplifier, some e-membrane vibrating at someone else's frequency – and every ensuing retweet and favorite redounds to John Lewis. But if Cobb manually retweets something, suddenly every ensuing retweet and favorite improves his own stats and gets his name and avatar echoing throughout Twitter. And, really, no one will call him on it, because we think of words as cheap. Use someone else's picture to drive traffic to your brand, and people get mad. Slap an RT in front of someone else's words, and that's apparently just how the world works. | Thus we're left with the cynical explanation – that retweeting John Lewis earns James G Cobb nothing of substance – it makes him just an amplifier, some e-membrane vibrating at someone else's frequency – and every ensuing retweet and favorite redounds to John Lewis. But if Cobb manually retweets something, suddenly every ensuing retweet and favorite improves his own stats and gets his name and avatar echoing throughout Twitter. And, really, no one will call him on it, because we think of words as cheap. Use someone else's picture to drive traffic to your brand, and people get mad. Slap an RT in front of someone else's words, and that's apparently just how the world works. |
| Writers all know that they need to tweet to promote their work – and we know that someone, somewhere is counting. Less established writers (my friends and I among them) even include their follower counts on resumes, knowing that they effectively say to editors, This is how many people I can virally leverage to drive traffic to any story that I write for you; it is safe to give me your money. | Writers all know that they need to tweet to promote their work – and we know that someone, somewhere is counting. Less established writers (my friends and I among them) even include their follower counts on resumes, knowing that they effectively say to editors, This is how many people I can virally leverage to drive traffic to any story that I write for you; it is safe to give me your money. |
| It would be idiotic to suggest that other, more established writers remain unaware of that. Some certainly operate out of arrogance – I have manually retweeted this article and included this negative-value-added "whoa check this out" because I think my approval will affect your behavior – but the fact is that just retweeting other people's work doesn't rack up your Favstar favorites count and give you another metric for your audience engagement come contract-renewal time. | It would be idiotic to suggest that other, more established writers remain unaware of that. Some certainly operate out of arrogance – I have manually retweeted this article and included this negative-value-added "whoa check this out" because I think my approval will affect your behavior – but the fact is that just retweeting other people's work doesn't rack up your Favstar favorites count and give you another metric for your audience engagement come contract-renewal time. |
| But if we want to call this journalistic appropriation via Twitter, these are minor examples. The more obvious case is the "Twitter Reax" column, which provides a reliable source of ad revenue with almost zero work. Huffington Post perfected the formula years ago: screenshot a bunch of tweets on a popular event, add a sticky headline and as many as three sentences of explanation, then watch the pageloads roll in. Take 20 pictures and put them into a slideshow – Bleacher Report's version of longform journalism – and each click magically transforms into 20 pageviews, all without compensating the people creating 95% of your "article's" content. | But if we want to call this journalistic appropriation via Twitter, these are minor examples. The more obvious case is the "Twitter Reax" column, which provides a reliable source of ad revenue with almost zero work. Huffington Post perfected the formula years ago: screenshot a bunch of tweets on a popular event, add a sticky headline and as many as three sentences of explanation, then watch the pageloads roll in. Take 20 pictures and put them into a slideshow – Bleacher Report's version of longform journalism – and each click magically transforms into 20 pageviews, all without compensating the people creating 95% of your "article's" content. |
| (Twitter eventually added an embed feature to at least directly link to original tweets and give people their fair share of attention, but on any controversial issue the original tweets may be deleted, so "writers" screenshot away without compunction to preserve the record.) | (Twitter eventually added an embed feature to at least directly link to original tweets and give people their fair share of attention, but on any controversial issue the original tweets may be deleted, so "writers" screenshot away without compunction to preserve the record.) |
| I realize of course that this is an unintentionally hilarious serious opinion to have about a medium where people make fun of National Novel Writing Month or describe Judi Dench clowning fools at streetball. But, if I may mount a serious defense: someone else started it. | I realize of course that this is an unintentionally hilarious serious opinion to have about a medium where people make fun of National Novel Writing Month or describe Judi Dench clowning fools at streetball. But, if I may mount a serious defense: someone else started it. |
| This March, Twitter user @steenfox asked her followers to tweet about what they were wearing when they were sexually assaulted, crowdsourcing a repudiation to the notion that women shouldn't dress certain ways in order to prevent rape. Buzzfeed, as is its wont, aggregated many of the replies, publishing a post that garnered (as of now) 500,000 pageviews for what is – by Buzzfeed listicle standards – a virtually Dickensian 306 words (not counting caveats about approved/removed tweets). | This March, Twitter user @steenfox asked her followers to tweet about what they were wearing when they were sexually assaulted, crowdsourcing a repudiation to the notion that women shouldn't dress certain ways in order to prevent rape. Buzzfeed, as is its wont, aggregated many of the replies, publishing a post that garnered (as of now) 500,000 pageviews for what is – by Buzzfeed listicle standards – a virtually Dickensian 306 words (not counting caveats about approved/removed tweets). |
| The Buzzfeed piece ignited a backlash against a perceived invasion of privacy and a discussion about whether Twitter is public. Because the discussion involved fraught issues like personal safety and exposure, it ultimately focused on whether broadcasting these stories worldwide comprised another form of violation. So while the author, Jesssica Testa, (eventually) went above and beyond standard practice when compiling her piece, verifying that each tweet's author consented to appearing on Buzzfeed, the debate centered on ethical feminism and stopped short of engaging ethical journalism. Because at a certain point, the question isn't about privacy and is instead about whether relying on a revenue stream built on writing 300 words of what are essentially captions on someone else's work is essentially larceny. | The Buzzfeed piece ignited a backlash against a perceived invasion of privacy and a discussion about whether Twitter is public. Because the discussion involved fraught issues like personal safety and exposure, it ultimately focused on whether broadcasting these stories worldwide comprised another form of violation. So while the author, Jesssica Testa, (eventually) went above and beyond standard practice when compiling her piece, verifying that each tweet's author consented to appearing on Buzzfeed, the debate centered on ethical feminism and stopped short of engaging ethical journalism. Because at a certain point, the question isn't about privacy and is instead about whether relying on a revenue stream built on writing 300 words of what are essentially captions on someone else's work is essentially larceny. |
| There are three standard defenses for slapping a headline on a bunch of other peeple's tweets and calling it a day. The first is that everyone else is doing it and, hey, listen to our defeated sigh of ethical worry as we struggle to keep up. The second is that aggregated tweet articles are just updated internet versions of classic Vox Pops pieces – except that, given the rate at which sites update daily, it's more akin to an 80-page daily running 10 pages of Vox Pops. The people defending doing this digitally probably wouldn't give a second thought to condemning someone else who did exactly the same thing in print: given the ability to see that ratio, it becomes transparently less like publishing and more like Xeroxing. | There are three standard defenses for slapping a headline on a bunch of other peeple's tweets and calling it a day. The first is that everyone else is doing it and, hey, listen to our defeated sigh of ethical worry as we struggle to keep up. The second is that aggregated tweet articles are just updated internet versions of classic Vox Pops pieces – except that, given the rate at which sites update daily, it's more akin to an 80-page daily running 10 pages of Vox Pops. The people defending doing this digitally probably wouldn't give a second thought to condemning someone else who did exactly the same thing in print: given the ability to see that ratio, it becomes transparently less like publishing and more like Xeroxing. |
| The third defense of tweet aggregation is at least a bit more aspirational: that these sorts of pieces offer a demographic, voluntary measure of a national mood. But that hardly applies to tweet roundups of shared public events like the Grammys, and even tweet aggregation about serious topics rarely achieves a meaningful sampling of responses. Instead, you see a lot of "the 20 best replies to X made or retweeted by other New York journalists like me that I choose to follow." For instance, the regular "Twitter Reacts" pieces on Salon, a site that I enjoy, are rarely more broadly representational and statistically rigorous than an internal GOP poll. | The third defense of tweet aggregation is at least a bit more aspirational: that these sorts of pieces offer a demographic, voluntary measure of a national mood. But that hardly applies to tweet roundups of shared public events like the Grammys, and even tweet aggregation about serious topics rarely achieves a meaningful sampling of responses. Instead, you see a lot of "the 20 best replies to X made or retweeted by other New York journalists like me that I choose to follow." For instance, the regular "Twitter Reacts" pieces on Salon, a site that I enjoy, are rarely more broadly representational and statistically rigorous than an internal GOP poll. |
| More to the point, even well-intentioned looks at Twitter trends can rely on skewed, non-representative data. Deadspin (a site I have written for) found out after the fact that the statistical eruption in use of the n-word after a hockey game came more from people commenting on its use by a few people than from a large number of people using it in the first place. | More to the point, even well-intentioned looks at Twitter trends can rely on skewed, non-representative data. Deadspin (a site I have written for) found out after the fact that the statistical eruption in use of the n-word after a hockey game came more from people commenting on its use by a few people than from a large number of people using it in the first place. |
| Plus, in reality, rigging Twitter is easy. In December 2011, a bunch of clowns and I managed to trend the supposed death of Ron Paul globally out of sheer trollish boredom. The next day, many of the same people used the same "stung to death by wasps" jokes to "kill" Scott Baio. If journalistic organs are tempted to rely on Twitter as an endlessly fecund content farm or social barometer, they should stop to consider that its yield is largely useless mutant flora produced by people screwing around. | Plus, in reality, rigging Twitter is easy. In December 2011, a bunch of clowns and I managed to trend the supposed death of Ron Paul globally out of sheer trollish boredom. The next day, many of the same people used the same "stung to death by wasps" jokes to "kill" Scott Baio. If journalistic organs are tempted to rely on Twitter as an endlessly fecund content farm or social barometer, they should stop to consider that its yield is largely useless mutant flora produced by people screwing around. |
| None of this is meant to open some Pandora's Box of curator's code wankery. All journalism relies to some extent on explaining to an audience what someone else said or did the work on – and all sharing carries with it a whiff of self-promotion: Look what I found. But if NPR, Manjoo and others want to open the door to calling tweets reportage as part of some broader ethics, they should have the courage to walk all the way through it. | None of this is meant to open some Pandora's Box of curator's code wankery. All journalism relies to some extent on explaining to an audience what someone else said or did the work on – and all sharing carries with it a whiff of self-promotion: Look what I found. But if NPR, Manjoo and others want to open the door to calling tweets reportage as part of some broader ethics, they should have the courage to walk all the way through it. |
| At its best, Twitter is next week's thinkpiece today: you're seeing the bulk data from which a conclusion could be extruded. At its worst, it's a collection of non-representative data nuggets from which unsustainable conclusions could – but shouldn't be – extracted. At its utter nadir, it's tomorrow's reax piece just waiting to be screenshotted (or have an RT slapped on it by a third party to tie it to their "brand"). Without a lede to draw people in, without narrative and any challenge to the reporting – without visible work on the reporter's part to convert others' words into a narrative/analytical context – that's just pageviews and profit from someone else's labor, however frivolous. | |
| And at that point, it's just plagiarism. | And at that point, it's just plagiarism. |