If you’re reading this, you probably got to it through an algorithm. That’s really common these days – and it’s a trend with a surprising dark side. Either you came here through a social media link, or you found it via a search engine. In either case, the algorithms that determine who sees what on those platforms […]
Read more "The Narrows – Four trends changing how information flows and news spreads"There’s a very interesting protest happening right now: Six women are climbing the Shard in protest at Shell’s arctic drilling plans. Of course, Greenpeace and others have done this sort of thing before. What makes this different is the scale of the activist media operation around the event. It’s a great example of citizen journalism […]
Read more "Lessons in citizen media from Greenpeace: #IceClimb"I’m starting to see patterns in people’s memories of the 9/11 attacks. I’ve been reading a lot of people’s stories lately, as we’re collecting them over at Citizenside. When you’ve read enough of these recollections, you start seeing patterns. One motif keeps coming back time after time: the phone call from a loved one. At […]
Read more "The intimacy of disaster: why journalism is personal, and the main challenge of 21st century media"Cross-posted from the Citizenside blog. Here’s a story: today we received a series of great photos from our contributor pete_riches. He was in central London this weekend and saw one of the visually most impressive demonstrations I’ve seen in quite a while: thousands of UK Sikhs marching to Trafalgar Square in memory of the violence […]
Read more "Can citizen journalism ever be objective? . . . Should it?"It’s official – I’m the new Editor in Chief of Citizenside. There’s even a press release, if you’re into that sort of thing. Citizenside is a Paris-based startup that has become one of the world’s largest citizen journalism agencies. The concept is simple: now that many people carry a phone capable of taking photos and […]
Read more "Hello Citizenside"It has begun. After over a year in the making, last week we launched the Great British Class Survey for the BBC. The response has been excellent. It’s already the biggest investigation into class ever performed anywhere in the world, by a huge margin. The survey is the first stage of Britain’s Real Class System, […]
Read more "Journalism Without Story: Uncovering Britain’s Real Class System"This is, more or less, the text of my presentation to the news:rewired conference at Microsoft HQ in London today. UPDATE: The BBC College of Journalism has posted video of my talk. Maybe journalists shouldn’t tell stories so much. Stories can be a great way of transmitting understanding about things that have happened. The trouble […]
Read more "Stop Telling Stories"I believe WikiLeaks made a mistake in releasing the diplomatic cables the way they did. But the combined US response has been positively frightening. I can imagine Assange’s position a few weeks ago, before the diplomatic cables went live. Assange was in charge of an up-and-coming website that had broken several important news stories. He […]
Read more "WikiLeaks – Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right"Comedy gold. In anticipation of this documentary and ensuing flame-wars, the head of communications for BBC Worldwide, Phil Fleming, has announced that the BBC’s own games are “absolutely not addictive”. Fleming suggested the firm’s own game output is completely safe in the hands of minors. “The games that we do are family-based, they’re not about […]
Read more "Update: BBC Video Games “Not Addictive”"Tonight, BBC Panorama will air an episode about video game addiction. Here’s the trailer: That trailer is meant to shock, grab your attention and make you watch the piece – so naturally it exaggerates the tone of the documentary, for effect. It’s supposed to be incitatory. As always with this topic, the trailer has kicked […]
Read more "BBC Panorama: Addicted to Games?"
Philip Trippenbach 