But twitter is hardly used here despite the fact that it is
a far more effective way (when used correctly) to tell a mass audience when
something happens in Palestine that they want the UK to know about.
Did you know...?
-
40
million people signed up to twitter in 2013 alone
Not only are there are lot of people to reach on twitter, credible
journalists in the UK use twitter to find stories. The Guardian has publicly
stated that on average, one in 10 of the stories they report originate from
twitter.
We discussed twitter, how it works, and how we could use it to
tell journalists in the UK when something worth reporting has just happened in
Palestine.
Working through a real life scenario
To understand how to use twitter to break news, we worked
through a real life scenario of an incident that had happened a few weeks ago
in Palestine. A 14 year old boy was killed just south of Hebron a few weeks ago
when he was climbing the partition wall reportedly to collect herbs for his
mother to cook with.
This
story appeared nowhere in the UK but eventually ended up in an article by Press
TV where they highlighted how terrible it is that this never made it into the
UKmedia. Of course there are issues of biased reporting, but we talked about how it is often the case that a story is not reported because the information, evidence and sourcing is simply not good enough for the journalist to feel confident about publishing the story. If that evidence does eventually come to light, time has passed and the news has moved on so the story gets lost.
Step 1:
BEFORE you tweet, get the vital information you need
to make sure your contact with a journalist has the best chance
of becoming a news story:
-
Location
-
Time
-
What
was he doing when he was shot? Was he armed (even with rocks)?
-
Confirm
his age
-
Who
told you and how do you know it is true?
-
Was he with anyone and are there any eye witnesses who can talk about the
incident - Do you have contact details for someone who knows him personally or was there at
the time who can
speak about him or what happened?
Other information it is good to have if possible:
- Has anyone reported the
story outside of the UK (e.g. local news site)?
- Are there any photos available? (if not it is ok, but good to know if there are any)
- Are there any photos available? (if not it is ok, but good to know if there are any)
Step 2:
Find the best person/people to tweet at:
-
Which
journalists in major news outlets have written sympathetically about Palestine
before?
-
Are
there any advocacy groups that are really good at getting attention and can
help
promote your
message?
Step 3:
Compose your tweet and
do it quickly – the ‘newer’ the news the better:
-
If
the ‘story’ happened more than 24 hours ago, and it isn’t in the news yet, the
chances are you are too late.
-
Get
the attention grabbing information with key facts in the tweet and don’t worry
about the details
-
Use
hashtags that help you appear when people are searching for information about
Israel/Palestine
-
Use
‘@’ to directly get the attention of one or two key people
The tweet they composed
”14 yr old unarmed boy killed 2 hours ago
in #Hebron#Palestine by #israel soldiers @BBCWorld @ [PressTVjournalistname] PM
for details”
This tweet has all the key facts to get the attention of the
journalist and by saying ‘PM me for details’ you are letting them know
that you can back up your story with more information for them to report. The
tweet uses @BBCWorld because the Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly is
not on twitter (ideally we would get his work email address and email him
directly too!). By adding a Press TV journalist, we are more likely to get some
coverage because they are very pro Palestine will go out of their way to build
the story. From this, it may go on to get reported in the UK more widely.
