Live Coverage
CJF Forum: Social media meets traditional election coverage
Q&A panel discussion featuring Mark Blevis, Chris Boutet and Kenyon Wallace. Moderated by Jesse Hirsh.
- Good evening everyone. Lauren here. We're almost off. Here are the bios for tonight's event, courtesy of the CJF:
MARK BLEVIS has seven years of experience providing counsel on digital communication and engagement for companies in the high-tech, pharmaceutical, financial services, energy and publishing industries, foreign embassies and Canadian government departments and agencies. His February 2010 research report House of Tweets and 2011 follow up Peace, Order and Googleable Government have recently positioned him as an analyst of social media in politics and public affairs. Prior to becoming immersed in digital communication, Blevis worked in information security, risk management and privacy for both the private sector and government.
CHRIS BOUTET is the senior producer for digital media at the National Post. In his five years with the organization as a page editor, news blogger, home page director and audience engagement strategist, Chris has helped to establish a collaborative newsroom environment that encourages online innovation, whether it’s creating new ways to engage with casual readers or turning a static graphic into a runaway viral hit. Leading the National Post’s social media strategy, Chris’s team has cultivated thriving networks on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Tumblr that have helped the Post reach and engage with vast new communities of readers. You can follow him on Twitter @chrisboutet.
KENYON WALLACE is a journalist and web editor with the Toronto Star. He is the primary editor of the Star’s newly-launched online Politics Page, and one of two coordinators of the Star’s Youth Nation 2011 initiative – a website and online forum aimed at engaging young people and candidates running for office under the age of 30 in a conversation surrounding the federal election. In 2010, Kenyon was nominated for a National Newspaper Award in the Breaking News category for his coverage of a helicopter crash that killed 17 people off the coast of Newfoundland. Kenyon recently returned to the Star after a stint as a general assignment reporter at the National Post. He has a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University and a Bachelor of Commerce from UBC.
ABOUT OUR MODERATOR
JESSE HIRSH is an internet strategist, researcher and broadcaster based in Toronto, Canada. As a freelance journalist, he's been doing radio and television work for a decade and a half, having worked for CFRB, Jazz FM, TVO, Global TV, Citytv, Rogers, OMNI, and MuchMusic. Currently, he has a weekly nationally syndicated column on CBC Radio explaining and analyzing the latest trends and developments in technology. Educated at the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto, his passion is educating people on the potential benefits and perils of technology. - I'm liveblogging the #cjfforum with @jsource, starts in a few minutes #elxn41by danalacey via twitter 4/19/2011 10:42:55 PM
- Heckling has been officially invited
- Blevis kicks it off: "I like to put slides up so it gives people another place to look" First slide: Peace, order and Googleable government
- Blevis: Last election, if you weren't aware, Twitter lit up. The results in Canada went up ... if nothing else for social media we can expect that on election night
Blevis
- Blevis: Back in Feb, 13 MPs who didn't have a website, now if you run an election you're at sever disadvantage if you don't have a place where people can find you online
- According to Blevis: Debate night there were 38,000 tweets on the debate -- he hasn't done the math, but that's about one every two seconds for the duration of the day
- 38,000 tweets on debate night...just a taste of what's to come.
- Other memorable moments to set the framework: Facebook profile of the young women who was screened (and then outed) because of Facebook profile pic with Ignatieff
- In our first 20 days of election campaign there were almost 400,000 tweets
- Most traffic night for Twitter was debate night. When you look at share of voice Twitter is where the action is -- goes a long way toward explaining the so-called Twitter debate, says Blevis. It has about 80 per cent of overall online voice when it comes to election.
Blevis is now interrupted by Q from audience: what does that mean for substance and content?
Blevis: Substance and content don't matter ... when you talk about quality of signal vs. quantity ... I haven't really gone into the measure of quality, because there's too much quantity. - Liveblog url for #elxn41 and #sm panel: t.coby danalacey via twitter 4/19/2011 10:51:28 PM
- Blevis: this isn't a social media election, it's a velocity election
- First heckler of the night asks, "why is 400,000 considered a big number? The national gets twice that many viewers in a night"
- Blevis: When you talk about 400,000 tweets, that's about 308-million impression reach (measures opportunities for people to see that tweet)
- Blevis answers, numbers actually represent 308 million "impressions" or measure if number of eyeballs see the message
The crowd of potential hecklers
- Blevis: With respect to election campaign I believe there's an epicentre of people in the political conversation from which everything is emanating
- Blevis: suddenly, #elxn41 tweets are filtering into feeds of Canadians who might not otherwise have sought them out
- Q from audience: Is the technology really expanding the conversation, making an expanded conversation possible?
Blevis: Everybody talks about conversation, people can engage with each other and have discourse ... but if you look at the pie chart 40 per cent [of tweets] is original content, and 16 per cent are responses. The rest are part of the amplifier effect (retweets) - First big Twitter spike is Elizabeth May being excluded from the leaders' debate
- Blevis: What we see on Twitter are two things: issues on Twitter gain traction very quickly, and very quickly we lose interest in them
- "You don't create viral. It happens because something is said and it resonates with people." #cjfforumby mawilson via twitter 4/19/2011 11:06:37 PM
- Are you intimating that one can manage the conversation?
Blevis: They can try, absolutely. See: Harper and Ignatieff tweet-off 
Cjf photog extraordinaire roger cullman
- Social media has spring up startups such as social media dashboard hootsuite and analytics tool klout
- According to Blevis:
Despite Harper's 130,000 followers, when he tweets he can count on about nine people to do something about it, i.e., retweet, visit the link, reply... - Blevis: In social media world, people like to see a different side of politicians. Example: minister Tony clement tweeted that he met an NDP competitor and they knocked on doors together (awww)
- I think that's true with anyone on Twitter — people want to see your personality on social media no matter what you do for a living.
Use these twitter lists Blevis so kindly created to follow #elxn41 tweets by party
- After Blevis's presentation we
open up the floor - Boutet: There's a perception that issues are lasting longer than they actually are ... I feel it speaks to the immediacy of the media ... "
It's interesting to see how something can live and die in 24 hours" - Wallace: We're seeing to an extent than we never have before ... social media actually influencing the choice of stories that actually make it into the paper
- Interesting suggestion to use lists to remain non partisan and still follow political coverage. via @markblevis #cjfforumby ebonysager via twitter 4/19/2011 11:22:18 PM
- #elxn41 lists by party compliments of @markblevis t.coby danalacey via twitter 4/19/2011 11:22:45 PM
- Wallace: I think part of the reason why the election story cycle is so quick is because there's one tweet after another that you pounce on ... tweets actually translate into something physical ... it does impact what journalists do
- Blevis: We're going to see more policy statements published on twitter first. Journos have added stress to make sure they don't miss it. But a tweet confirms the scoop was yours
- Politicians now recognizing power of getting msg out public w/o media filter. Via @markblevis #cjfforumby jackiejohnstone via twitter 4/19/2011 11:26:26 PM
The panellists from l to r: Blevis, Wallace, boutet
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