Turning News Into Knowledge

With the growing influence of social media and the growing dominance of online news media, do news editorial positions still matter?

In 2006, Angela Jeffrey, David Michaelson, and Don W. Stacks published a case study that drew a correlation between news editorials and their ability to encourage women to have mammograms.

A pie graph of the top ten most Tweeted online Globe and Mail stories over the past 24 hours.

The study showed that, indeed, editorials had an overwhelming influence on behaviour. But with the rapidly changing media landscape and emergence of social media and ubiquitous online news, is this still true?

Firstly, it’s important to note that not all issues resonate equally. But in this case, I was motivated to write this post based on the latest developments within the MediaMiser election Twitter chart.

Last week, MediaMiser launched a page on its website displaying a chart tracking the influence of traditional Canadian news web sites on Twitter.

The information is harvested in near real-time from the MediaMiser’s monitoring and analysis solution.

For the past week, the chart showed CBC as the most referenced news site on Twitter regarding the federal election. However, last night, the chart showed The Globe and Mail overtook CBC for top spot.

I decided use the MediaMiser platform to find out why.

Interestingly, the major driver was The Globe and Mail‘s editorial endorsement of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party.

In the past 24 hours, the editorial comprised half the tweeted links to the Globe for their top ten stories. It tweeted almost 14 times more often than CBC’s top story, a blog post by Kady O’Malley on the bogus Ignatieff photo.

On a related note, a Globe live chat page on the topic of why the Globe endorsed the Conservatives was the tenth-most Tweeted link.

So do editorials still have an influence? Only time will tell what effect, if any, The Globe and Mail‘s endorsement will have on the electorate. But in this case, the editorial definitely had effect on motivating individuals to tweet.

The top ten most-Tweeted Globe stories of the past 24 hours were:

1. The Globe’s election endorsement: Facing up to our challenges
2. Whiz kid Patrick Muttart leaves Tory campaign after fake Ignatieff photo flap
3. Soaring Layton outpaces Harper in leadership rankings
4. Layton jumps well ahead of Ignatieff as voters get off ‘the political couch‘
5. On the Internet, it’s anybody but Harper
6. NDP candidate takes mid-campaign vacation in Vegas
7. Now within six points of Harper, Layton faces ‘trial by fire’
8. Sun Media honcho calls out ex-Harper operative on bogus Ignatieff Iraq photo
9. Election Ringside, April 27: Prime Minister Jack Layton?
10. Why did the Globe endorse the Conservatives?

MediaMiser, a leading media analytics and monitoring firm, has launched its Spreading the News election tracker with CBC News currently holding top spot.

The module – which utilizes the company’s patented media monitoring and analysis technology – tracks the number of news story links each online media outlet garners on Twitter during the Canadian federal election.

It’s designed to refresh every 15 minutes, thus giving a real-time perspective on which media outlets are getting the most social media action as it happens.

CBC holds a very slim lead over second-place The Globe and Mail, with the Toronto Star, Canada.com and CTV.ca rounding out the top five most mentioned publications (as of Tuesday, April 26 at 10 a.m.).

The Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Cyberpresse, Macleans and the Ottawa Citizen comprise the rest of the top ten.

MediaMiser is based in Ottawa and was incorporated in 2003.

The twin issues of ethics and a potential minority government coalition were the highest gainers in MediaMiser’s latest Twitter Issues Index, with each jumping 218 and 203 per cent from August 19 to 20, respectively.

As of midnight last night ethics was the highest-ranked issue on the index, spurred by news that a  Conservative aide had flagged concerns about former Stephen Harper adviser Bruce Carson to the Ethics Commissioner.

Student and youth voters was the second-highest mentioned issue in the past few days, though it had trended downward 24.5 per cent since April 18.

The issue of the economy and employment, as well, has trended steadily upward since April 15 but dropped by 14 per cent between April 18 and April 20.

The MediaMiser analysis is comprised of a sample of Canadian federal election-related tweets defined by keywords and the hashtags #elxn41 and #cdnpoli, and was conducted using the company’s patented monitoring and analysis software.

You can see our Issues Index for April 19 here.

I attended the most recent Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa event with three panellists from Open Data Ottawa, an organization that works to take publicly available data and turn it into useful apps.

When I chatted with Mary Beth Baker, one of the group’s organizers, she gave me more information both on Open Data and on what inspired those who created it.

Q: How did you get involved with this organization?

A: I first began attending events with my boyfriend, who is a software developer.  He is always coding and was looking for opportunities to take on new projects when he heard of this group.

Q: Do you also have a coding background?

A: Not at all. I’m a librarian by trade, but like I said, my boyfriend was interested and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get out and network with people in other fields.

Q: So can anyone get involved with Open Data?

A: Absolutely. Even kids can draw pictures of apps they would like, and developers can look at those drawings to determine what they would need to create the app. They then can tailor it to the audience so it’s appealing and, most importantly, easy to use.

Q: Not needing a computer background to contribute must make this group unique.

A: It definitely does. Open Data is all about connecting people in the community through data. It brings them together through the common goal of making our lives easier. We want to take existing information and change its format to make it useful and easily accessible for everyone. We are always trying to focus on “how people use this to benefit the city,” so having people from different fields come together really helps to provide ideas for how we can improve our community.

Q: What’s your favourite thing about the group?

A: That it’s so easy to get involved in. You can come to our meetings, follow us on Twitter, show up for our Hackfests or even just send us your ideas. Even if you don’t want to do any work on the app, you can send us your suggestions and we can look into it. We’re here to get different groups working together to make all of our lives easier by taking data that already exists and putting it in a practical format.

If you want to learn more, visit www.opendataottawa.com or check out the Twitter feed @opendataottawa.

You also can follow Mary Beth on Twitter @bethmaru.

I do.

Health care and the issue of getting out the youth vote turned front and centre over the past six days of election talk on Twitter, according to MediaMiser’s most recent Issues Index.

The issue of students and young people, in particular, rose over the past few days thanks to media coverage of an unauthorized ballot-casting exercise at the University of Guelph. Fueled by this event and the frenzy of interest that ensued, mentions of keywords related to the issue spiked 214.5 per cent from April 12 to April 15.

By late April 18, however, chatter on the issue had decreased nearly 60 per cent. But it was still the second most-popular issue tweeted during the past week as of 11 p.m. Monday evening.

Health care, the public’s number-one issue in this Issues Index, also received a recent boost in Twitter interest – most likely due to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s pledge on Sunday to hold a national health care summit if elected.

Interest in health care on Twitter has trended quickly upward since then, with popularity surging 52.3 per cent since late Saturday.

The top two issues of the April 14 Issues Index, ethics/accountability and the economy, stayed strong and among the top five issues of Canadians tweeting about the election but did lose some steam.

As of the end of April 18, ethics and accountability had dropped 84.8 per cent from its April 11 high at the time of the leaked Auditor-General’s report of G8 spending. The issue of the economy and jobs, as well, dropped to middling status, sinking 25 per cent in popularity since Saturday.

The issue of democracy and democratic values, as well, has dropped by more than 44 per cent in the past two days. The issue had received a spike in popularity thanks to the related news item of the University of Guelph polling station and the right of such unauthorized polling stations to collect ballots.

Other issues such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, crime and prisons, campaign advertising, the coalition and the environment had each trended out of the top five as of 11 p.m. on Monday.

The MediaMiser analysis is comprised of a sample of Canadian federal election-related tweets as defined by keywords, and the hashtags #elxn41 and #cdnpoli, and was conducted using the company’s patented monitoring and analysis software.

Check out last week’s Issues Index here.

Issues trend meter

HOT: Student voting, health care

NOT: Crime and prisons, environment

When Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara slammed Montreal Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty into the edge of the Bell Centre’s glass divider on March 8, 2011, he did more than injure a well-known fellow hockey player.

He also reignited a long-running controversy in the NHL – namely, that of blows to the head and just what on earth the league should do about them. Enter the latest questionable hit by Vancouver Canucks forward Raffi Torres, which occurred in a game on April 17, and the NHL headshots debate has once again flared up.

Which is why we at MediaMiser figured it would be a great day to release our latest social media report, entitled “The NHL headshots issue: A social media and online news analysis”.

In the report (which analyzed  Twitter, Facebook and online news activity from March 12 to March 27), we look at which news events, news outlets, journalists and other tweeters drove the headshots debate in March.

Here’s a brief breakdown of some of the report’s findings:

The incident to cause the most social media and online media activity was the Matt Cooke hit on New York Rangers defenceman Ryan McDonagh, and subsequent suspension.

The journalist that wrote on headshots the most: Joe Yerdon, NBC Sports

The Canadian journalist that wrote on headshots the most: Damien Cox, Toronto Star

The Canadian media outlet that wrote on headshots the most: Ottawa Sun

Some of the most prolific Twitter users in regard to NHL headshots: @NHLSpies, Greg Wyshynski (writer for Puck Daddy on Yahoo! Sports), Dave Stubbs (Montreal Gazette), Renaud Lavoie (RDS) and Jeff Marek (CBC)

The Twitter user to have his post retweeted the most: George Stromboulopoulos (CBC)

Click here for the full report.

World Entrepreneurship Day – April 15 – is a 24-hour celebration of entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a natural fit for us not only thanks to our natural entrepreneurial spirit, but also because it’s also MediaMiser’s birthday. Today, we celebrate that spirit that resulted in our firm’s formation in 2003.

To mark the occasion, the partners are making two loans through kiva.org that will make a difference to two fellow entrepreneurs.

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

This year we selected two individuals in Mali, a western African country landlocked between Niger, Algeria, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. It’s a relatively drought-prone nation located at the foot of the massive Sahara Desert.

The first is Mrs. Afou Togola. To generate income for her family, this mother of six began selling yams. As her business grew, she joined the micro-loan program, and to date has repaid all five loans she has received. With this sixth loan – now funded in full – she will buy 800 kg of yams and resell them at a local market.

Our second entrepreneur – Mr. Abou Sanogo – left school at an early age to go into business purchasing and selling grain. With eight years of experience behind him, his product is in high demand. The father of one plans to use his loan to buy four tons of grain and expand his business.

MediaMiser’s support of kiva.org and the hard-working individuals who are “learning how to fish” is one prong in our corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. It’s a Triple-E (entrepreneurship, education, and environment) approach to philanthropy.

So today, happy birthday to us!  And best wishes for good business to our kiva.org entrepreneurs.

You too can make a difference. Register for kiva.org. While you’re there, check out our MediaMiser Lending Team.

According to MediaMiser’s first Issues Index for the 2011 Canadian federal election, ethics and accountability holds a slim lead as Twitter’s most talked-about election issue.

Several issues trended up and down in the aftermath of this week’s French and English leaders’ debates. But concern on the subject of ethics and accountability spiked dramatically around April 11 – jumping in volume by 845 per cent – when news broke of the pending Auditor General’s G8-G20 spending report.

And though that issue has trended downward since peaking that day, dropping 70.8 per cent by April 12 and another 66 per cent from April 12 to 13, it was still garnering hundreds of tweets per day by April 13.

The data – collected and analyzed by MediaMiser’s patented media monitoring and analysis software – indicates that between April 3 and 10:30 p.m. on April 13, chatter centering on the economy, jobs and economic issues was a solid second in terms of election issue-related tweets.

Indeed, tweets focused on the election and the economy increased 310 per cent since April 6 to propel that issue into second place. Earlier in the study period, the economy had sat below the issue of democracy and democratic values within Canadian society.

The concept of democracy and democratic values is the third most-talked about issue, according to MediaMiser’s analysis, though the issue trended slightly downward (by 18 per cent) since April 12.

Health care and health care-related issues sit in fourth spot, more or less unchanged from April 12 but up considerably from the day before. Health care’s real spike on Twitter came on April 8, when it jumped 152.5 per cent on the same day the Conservative Party of Canada released its election platform.

Crime and prisons, a hot-button issue in the lead-up to the election, rounds out the top five but was apparently losing steam by the evening of April 13.

Issues such as the environment, the coalition, leadership and character, Afghanistan and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter purchase currently sit out of the top 10 as of the evening of April 13.

The MediaMiser analysis is comprised of a sample of Canadian federal election-related tweets as defined by keywords, and the hashtags #elxn41 and #cdnpoli.

MediaMiser issues trend meter:

HOT: Ethics, economy

NOT: Afghanistan, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

It probably won’t come as a surprise that the two words most of us enjoy reading and hearing are “thank you.” And they most certainly are a pleasure to say and write as well.

I’m not talking about responding to all emails with a “thank you.” That lends itself to a farcical “After you, Alphonse.” “No, you first, my dear Gaston!” charade. But here are four scenarios where a thank-you email is a crucial ingredient in good public relations communications.

Scenario #1 – Someone compliments you on a job well done, an award you won, or a promotion you earned. While a simple thank you may suffice, if the person is effusive in his/her praise, you may want to devote a minute or two to thank her/him for the kind words. It’s also an opportunity for you to express your admiration (if true) for the sender as well.

Scenario #2 – Someone goes out of his or her way to be thoughtful. It could be unsolicited information on a job opening, a link to a site you might find useful or enjoyable, or a relevant event you might want to attend. Expressing a simple thank you for that information is simply good manners.

Scenario #3 – Someone has done an exceptional job on your project, going well beyond the call of duty. While you should say “thank you” in person if possible, consider putting your appreciation in an email and copying the employee’s direct supervisor. This sets up a win-win-win situation that makes the employee feel good, enhances her/his satisfaction with you as a project manager, and speaks well for the company overall.

Scenario #4 – Someone responds to your email granting a favour you have requested. It may have involved just a bit of effort, or it may have taken a lot of time and thought on her/his part. In the case of a relatively easy request, a simple “thank you” – that takes less than 30 seconds to type and send – is appropriate. If nothing else, it acknowledges that you received his/her response.

If the favour was larger, a more heartfelt note of appreciation is both warranted and usually very much appreciated.  And if the favour was very large, involving a lot of time and thought on the part of the respondent, there can be consequences to skipping the niceties.

Take the example here: http://www.buchananpr.com/2011/03/why-you-will-never-get-hired-at-our-pr-firm. Please do check it out, but in the meantime, here’s the gist of it. A “friend of a friend” approached the president of a PR firm to ask that she do an “informational interview” with her niece (a college student). One of the firm’s senior employees emailed a detailed and thoughtful response to the student. She copied another employee who also wrote a lengthy reply.

Time passed, but neither heard a peep from the student. There was no acknowledgement that she had received the responses – certainly no thank you (heartfelt or otherwise).

Note that in this instance it was a student who committed this faux pas, but this type of behaviour, of course, is not restricted to students.

Thank-you emails never are a waste of time. Just think of them as 30- 60-second investments in relationship building and maintenance.

Emails may be viewed by some as old-fashioned, but courtesy never goes out of style.”

Open Data Ottawa and Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa came together on March 30 for an engaging evening of great discussion on open data, and how it can be harnessed to create apps we all can use to make our lives richer and easier.

Left to right – Tracey Lauriault, Mary Beth Baker and Emily Daniels

The monthly event, organized by Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa, featured a panel discussion with Open Data Ottawa’s Emily Daniels, Tracey Lauriault, and Mary Beth Baker. This group works diligently to increase the amount of open data the public can access, and encourages everyone to participate in the process. As the group says, if you can’t build an app, you can suggest an idea, point out a need, or help with usability or design.

After Ms. Daniels gave a vibrant presentation on Ottawa Pastoral – her winning app at Hackfest 2010 – Ms. Lauriault took the floor to discuss the importance of making public data “open.” (Open data is not necessarily the same as public data. For data to be “open”, it has to be readily available to be converted into something useful and without copyright.)

Ms. Lauriault, a Hackfest 2010 judge and extremely passionate speaker, stressed the benefits of open data for everyone. She also touched on another of her passions – having women involved in the male-dominated tech world. She reassured us that there are ways to be involved even if you’re not tech-savvy, pointing out that often – while the people who recognize the need for an app may not be able to technically build it – they certainly are able to describe the need for it, what information it would require, and maybe even offer design suggestions.

As Ms. Baker said, open data is about working together to share ideas and information. So, the mom who wants an easy place to discover local activities for children can see that an app providing this information would be useful for other parents. She could take this idea to someone who has the skills to build the app, and together they could create something that addresses a need – all using open data.

Overall, it was an informative and engaging evening with speakers who not only challenged us to become more involved in the open data process but also showed us how easy it is to get involved.

It certainly was easy for MediaMiser to be involved with these awesome groups, and it was our pleasure to help out with a door prize, won by @kristahouse.