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Another video - same theme. Here is a short clip of a group of professional journalist discussing how social media is changing journalism.

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Another video - same theme. Here is a short clip of a group of professional journalist discussing how social media is changing journalism.

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How Is Social Media Changing Journalism?

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Some interesting Youtube videos for you on the subject of social media and its effect on news.

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Some interesting Youtube videos for you on the subject of social media and its effect on news.

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The Impact of Twitter on Journalism | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios

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The world of journalism has changed in the internet era. Newsrooms are significantly smaller now than they were 10 years ago, and news is no longer a once-a-day product, but instead a constant flow of information. The rise of Twitter brought concerns within the industry - would this overwhelming source of direct raw information put professional reporters out of business?

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here is another Blog from a Guardian journalist discussing how Technology has transformed newsrooms.

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here is another Blog from a Guardian journalist discussing how Technology has transformed newsrooms.

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For mainstream media organisations like the BBC, engaging with social media and wrestling with the issues that ever-evolving relationship throws up has become a daily task. Speaking to the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, Kevin Bakhurst, deputy head of the BBC Newsroom, outlined how the BBC is responding to these challenges. Here is an edited version of his speech.

BBC News, like all major news providers, has been transformed by technology and the opportunities it has offered over the last 20 or so years. Social media is the latest tectonic plate to move and change the landscape.
The practical role and influence of social media in the BBC's multimedia newsroom and for BBC News as a whole
It may seem like restating the obvious but looking in our rear-view mirror back along the road of technological change shows just how news has changed: typewriters out, computers in; newspaper cuttings libraries closed as the internet opened access to information; mobile phones rather than messages at hotel receptions; satellite technology to feed material rather than tapes put on planes and so on.

Powered by these changes, news has become 24 hours a day; immediate; available on new platforms; mobile. And now the latest powerful tool to change news - social media.

All big news organisations are plunging into the world of social media, looking at its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news.

The BBC, as an early presence on the web, also spotted the possibilities of social media quickly and it has become a highly important and fast-moving part of our multimedia newsroom.

Social media poses a range of new challenges and questions for the established news providers - like the BBC, CNN, Sky and Al Jazeera.

For BBC News, social media currently has three key, highly valuable roles in its journalism:

- Newsgathering: it helps us to gather more, and sometimes better, material; we can find a wider ranges of voices, ideas and eyewitnesses quickly

- Audience engagement: how we listen to and talk to our audiences, and allowing us to speak to different audiences

- A platform for our content: it's a way of us getting our journalism out there, in short form or as a tool to take people to our journalism on the website, TV or radio. It allows us to engage different and younger audiences.

The BBC already has a fair track-record of inviting the audience to get involved in our journalism - web forums; debates; blogs and comments; and, most recently, incorporating comment within our website story pages, particularly on the live pages.
A little context to the growth of social media for the audiences of BBC News
We are proud of the standards we have set in processing, sifting and verifying material sent to us and sourced through social newsgathering, giving us a new dimension when telling some of the major stories of recent times - the Japan tsunami, the 'Arab Spring', the Burma uprisings, the Norway shootings, the riots in England.

The team we have allows us to fully engage in using this material, and reinforce the BBC values that our audience expects, in particular accuracy. So we managed to avoid, for example, use of the photo-shopped Bin Laden body photo after his killing.

Many of our leading journalists and presenters now incorporate social media platforms into their work: Tim Willcox, Lyse Doucet, Robert Peston and, until recently, Laura Kuenssberg (who has now been joined by her Twitter followers, with our blessing, at ITV News).

We've innovated, experimenting with branded hashtags to curate coverage; visualising Royal Wedding day tweets on our website; and work is under way to seamlessly integrate field dispatches from our correspondents and reporters into our core news services and social media output.

And, like many established news providers, we have created an open and modern set of guidance to help our staff engage, gather news and spread their journalism, working within the BBC's editorial values that are at the core of our journalism.
The wider challenges presented to so-called 'traditional' media by social media
Since its launch Twitter has obviously seen rapid growth.
Privacy
Look at the @BBCBreaking account which has increased its number of Followers very rapidly even in the last 12 months.

It looks impressive, and it is, but compare that with consumption via the website, which has also grown very rapidly - now attracting an average of 9 million users a day.
Anonymity
And still the home of our biggest audiences by a country mile is TV news, with the BBC News Channel's average weekly audience up 50% in the last year, and the BBC1 TV bulletins reaching 17.5 million viewers in a week.
Ethics
Social media has strong growth and huge potential - it's a great tool for our journalism, as we've seen - but, for the BBC, it still draws relatively small numbers. I would say a 'small' but highly engaged, dedicated and vociferous part of our audience.
The Rule of Law
For good or for ill - and sometimes it is for good, and sometimes not - social media has trashed many of the foundations on which 'traditional' media stands. And, in all honesty, I can raise questions about this, but I don't think we yet have all the answers:

In particular privacy of the individual: where are the boundaries? Are there any areas that are off limits? It seems we can all discuss pregnancies, affairs, ethics, finances, abilities, families. It's out there on Twitter and Facebook and there's no real protection for what, until now, has been largely personal or private.
The role of traditional media
It leaves traditional media in a very different universe. We mitigate this via very clear guidelines to our staff which state that, although content placed on social media or other websites "may be considered to have been placed in the public domain, re-use by the BBC will usually bring it to a much wider audience". They go on to say that: "We should consider the impact of our re-use, particularly when in connection with tragic or distressing events."
Audience interaction
Many people joining the debate or discussion, or sometimes accusing, or attacking, have no name and no face, and therefore no seeming personal responsibility for the impact or truth or validity of what they say publicly. Professional journalists, like ours, encouraged to engage in social media spaces but held to account for their views and values, often find themselves engaged in a wholly uneven discussion on coverage or stories with an invisible opponent.

Most of us work within an ethical framework. We won't report the death of a loved one until the family know; we won't just steal material from others; we try to establish facts before pushing a story out there. These are all fundamental and long-cherished principles of the way BBC News operates. But not the ground rules of many using social media.

We work within the laws of our land - we avoid libel, or contempt of court, or revealing the names of young victims or juveniles accused of crimes. We don't break court injunctions. Some social media users do many of these things.

Sometimes it has been argued that they show up the failings of the laws of the land, and they may do. But often it is done in ignorance of the law, or simply on the assumption that it doesn't matter. And that can leave traditional media looking slow or stick-in-the-mud, or somehow part of an 'establishment' that doesn't tell the whole truth. Look at the case of Ryan Giggs.

Some of our role has probably gone. Will we be 'first with the breaking news'? Probably not in many cases. Someone on Twitter will be. Will we have the first still of a hero or victim? Facebook will probably have it. Will we get the first video out of Syria or Burma? YouTube will almost certainly have it posted first, although we'll often be one of the first to verify it's genuine (or not).

This can be a great way of hearing what your audience has to say, and answering questions or engaging. We have sophisticated ways of measuring what our audiences consume, and we keep an eye on what's being said to us and about our content; all of which we consider in our editorial discussions.
A full transcript of Kevin Bakhurst's speech is available on the BBC News website.
However, there's a real danger lurking here - namely that we mistake the squalls on Twitter or the views of ten or 20 vociferous tweeters for the view of the audience as a whole. It may be that it is, but it often isn't. And we shouldn't necessarily be swayed in our editorial judgments by a noisy but small row on Twitter.

These are some of the challenges we face with social media and we grapple with them every day.

But you can take those challenges and say that the uncertainties they introduce can actually underline the strengths that established news organisations have, for a very large part of the audience.

In the sea of many voices and stories of claims and general noise, we know there remains an appetite for a journalism that is based on the values that news audiences of 'traditional' organisations' like the BBC value most highly of all: truth, accuracy, integrity, verification, independence and, yes, speed. The new environment we are all living in can underline in the audience's mind the values of our journalism.

Lastly, social media shines a powerful light on all that we do. It can be uncomfortable at times but it is ultimately a great thing. It will help keep us all honest. Those traditional organisations which abandon those core values and aspirations will be found out - there is unrelenting examination of all we do - and those which don't live up to their values will quickly surrender their value to audiences in this new world.

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How has social media changed the way newsrooms work?

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For mainstream media organisations like the BBC, engaging with social media and wrestling with the issues that ever-evolving relationship throws up has become a daily task. Speaking to the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, Kevin Bakhurst , deputy head of the BBC Newsroom, outlined how the BBC is responding to these challenges.

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Listen to this Podcast about the Future of Journalism. What do you think?

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Listen to this Podcast about the Future of Journalism. What do you think?

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So You Want to Change the World

The Podcast

Robin is Founder & President of Thinking Beyond Borders, an educational institution helping young people develop the capacities to be exceptional social impact leaders. With a BA in International Development at UCLA and an EdM from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Robin's work is focused on understanding how meaningful impact is created and replicated. He is humbled and inspired every day by the learning and work of the students, educators, and alumni of the Thinking Beyond Borders community.

Julia Jones - Editor & Producer

Julia is an alumt of TBB's Global Gap Year class of 2012. She received her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Entrepreneurship & Emerging Enterprises from Syracuse University. Having studied and worked around the world, she has now joined the Thinking Beyond Borders staff, supporting our US operations and serving as a Program Leader for our Gap Year Programs. She is thrilled to continue her exploration of social justice, global issues, and deeper cultural understanding alongside students.

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Ep 4: Snapchat, Untold Stories, & the Future of Journalism

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"Why do I have the right to tell this story?" Marianna Brady entered journalism because storytelling is how empathy spreads. Now, she's stepping to the forefront of the field to leverage the power of new technology like Snapchat to the BBC. As a feminist and activist, she holds strong views.

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Here is an important article from the Guardian Newspaper which gives some impartial views on the 'news revolution'

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Here is an important article from the Guardian Newspaper which gives some impartial views on the 'news revolution'

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The morning of the Oxford Social Media Convention focused on the impact of social media. Especially interesting were the statements on the panel 'Breaking news: the changing relationships between blogs and mainstream media'.

Richard Sambrook, the director of the BBC Global News Division, said that the impact of social media was overestimated in the short term and underestimated in long term. Mainstream media are adopting social media especially with blogging and twitter, he admited, but nobody discusses the effects on the long term.

But what is the long term? One thing he is sure of is that new organisations don't own the news anymore. There is a transformation for the journalist from being the gatekeeper of information to sharing it in a public space. Therefore citizen journalism is something, Sambrook added, that has to be taken into account. However, he doesn't see the internet as a place where news come from - although Sky News has a Twitter correspondent researching the micro-blogging platform.

What he could see evolving though, was a new objectivity. Objectivity, he then pointed out, had always been an idea important for the news. For him it was once designed to deliver journalism that people can trust. But in the new media age transparency is what delivers trust. He stressed that news today still has to be accurate and fair, but it is as important for the readers, listeners and viewers to see how the news is produced, where the information comes from, and how it works. The emergence of news is as important, as the delivering of the news itself.

Information is not journalism, he explained further. You get a lot of things, when you open up Twitter in the morning, but not journalism. Journalism needs discipline, analysis, explanation and context, he pointed out, and therefore for him it is still a profession. The value that gets added with journalism is judgment, analysis and explanation - and that makes the difference. So journalism will stay - he was optimistic about that. However, journalists must understand one rule: if you believe you are in competition with the internet, find your way out. Collaboration, openness and link culture are rules, you can't deny at the moment, he said.

John Kelly, a columnist for the Washington Post, who has published a report on the rise, challenges and value of citizen journalism for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism explained further, saying that today the Huffington Post competes with the Washington Post not in terms of journalism, but in terms of its readers.

Social media for him are not only important for citizen journalism, but for reaching out to the readers as well. Mainstream media are exploring the use of social media to drive traffic; already 8% of the Daily Telegraph web traffic comes from social media. The Washington Post is rather slow with putting the work of citizen journalists in the paper, Kelly reported. There were only a few crowdsourcing projects and they were presented as special features. The section it is mostly used is sports, where they aggregate Twitter feeds of American Football players and display it.

The commentary editor of Reuters, Jonathan Ford, finally explained that it is quite hard for a news agency such as Reuters to take social media into account. And social media has developed in the financial sphere, too. Reuters, Kelly pointed out further, is interested in blogging to set up a community offering specific trade news and information - because in the financial community, social media has started to play a role. People such as the economy expert Paul Krugman or bankers who had already made it, he said, started to shared knowledge with the public and pulled them into a financial debate to regain trust. On Twitter this remark was live-commented by drgrahamwilson with the tweet: "Bankers using blogs to regain trust in themselves. In whose mind?"

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How social networking is changing journalism

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The morning of the Oxford Social Media Convention focused on the impact of social media. Especially interesting were the statements on the panel 'Breaking news: the changing relationships between blogs and mainstream media'. Richard Sambrook, the director of the BBC Global News Division, said that the impact of social media was overestimated in the short term and underestimated in long term.

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This article is an important reliable source which analyses the impact of social media on journalism.

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This article is an important reliable source which analyses the impact of social media on journalism.

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The Social Construction of Media: Social Media, Culture, and Everyday Life

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The year is 1605, a new form of literature has just been released which will revolutionize the spread of information forever. This work was titled " Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien" and is widely regarded as the first world's newspaper. The urge to spread information amongst one another has been a facet of human nature since the beginning; however, the ways humans spread information has changed drastically. Originally information was spread verbally, as humans were still very primitive, but as technology advanced the means of information sharing advanced as well. What was once a verbal exchange of thoughts eventually transformed into a billion dollar industry, called journalism.

Many of these advances had a major impact on the world. For example the printing press allowed writers to produce their literature in mass quantities in a short amount of time, as apposed to writing each document by hand. The most recent advancement being the introduction of internet, and even more recent the creation of social media. Much like the printing press, internet and social media have changed the face of journalism forever. Past forms of information sharing had always had some amount of delay between the time an event happened and the time the information was presented to the consumer. For instance, before televisions were popular, most Americans received their news through the newspaper. This form of journalism caused an approximate 24 hour delay, as it required someone to write the article, the factory had to print the newspaper, and then eventually be delivered to the consumer the next day. With the introduction of social media, consumers can receive news articles on their smartphones about as fast as the author can write it. The use of smartphones and social media has ushered in a new era of journalism as citizens play a bigger role in the process of news making. With the help of platforms like Twitter and Youtube, citizens can produce and circulate their own news stories which can often be picked up by traditional news sources like CNN. Large news corporations, especially American, used to have immense power over citizens as they controlled the spread of information which they could use to influence the population. But, with the introduction of internet and social media, citizens can share information amongst themselves more easily which has led to a decline in consumption of traditional news media. Social media has given power back to the people.

Social Media Requires Journalists to Get in Touch with The Audience

Michael Skoler, a journalist and author, wrote in the fall 2009 Nieman Reports* concerning the path and direction of journalism today. Skoler stated that journalists are assumed to be the tellers of truth however in reality Skoler believes that journalists are lying to themselves. Skoler points to the Web as the source for this deception by stating, "Our profession is crumbling and we blame the Web for killing our business model" (Skoler). Yet, Skoler feels the journalist's business model has not changed; it's culture that has changed the journalists (Skoler).

Skoler points to the traditional 20 th century reporting style where mainstream media journalists were doing a good job of finding the news information that was hard to find and harder to distribute. The expectations for the journalists were to report the important stories and deliver it to the public through newspapers, radio and TV. The public trusted journalists and journalists reported pertinent information of the day (Skoler).

Over the past 25 years, however, the public's trust in journalism declined as the Internet gained popularity. People now have choices in receiving the news and more importantly they are no longer passive in acquiring the information that is of interest to them (Skoler). By journalists just reporting information is not satisfying to the audience. Today, the audience expects to have a choice in what information they choose to read and most believe they should have an active role in contributing to the content and voicing their opinions (Harper). Gone is the past concept of "media professional" that determines what the audience's needs are in readership (Zelizer). Skoler states that journalists are "out of touch" and journalists need to establish a "partnership" with the audience rather than "preaching" (Skoler). The concept of "social journalism" is what the audience is offering as a benefit to journalism, which involves "listening to those who have something to say", according to Pamela J. Podger's article in American Journalism Review (Harper). It is a change from the one-way communication to a community of communication that will assist the journalist, states blogger, Vadim Lavrusik (Harper). Shared communication is evident from the 2013 Pew Research Center that found 72% of adults received most of their news from family and friends including 15% from via social media, while 25% of 18 to 35 year olds also receive their news in this way (Cision). From this report it shows that a large majority of people choose to seek out and discuss news stories.

According to Skoler mainstream media is using social media as a tool to market and distribute their information with a rush to gain followers on their Facebook and Twitter (Skoler) in an effort to gain readership missing the point of this platform. The culture of today is about listening and responding. Therefore the "savviest" journalists Skoler states are those using social media to create relationships and to listen to others. Skoler suggests that the new style of journalism is a journalism of "partnership" with an audience who feels they can add content and opinion to the news and issues. Through social media journalist will find their way back to connect with the audience and journalism will become again a trusted partnership between the journalist and the audience (Skoler).

*Nieman Reports were founded in 1947. Today it is a website and quarterly publication for writer to contribute articles concerning "thought leadership in journalism" (Nieman Reports).

Social Media Today

Today, journalism and morphed and formed into a type of writing that anyway can create. The simplest forms of it, for example twitters, can be sent out in less than a second and only include 140 characters. Journalism has moved from it's organized and old format of newspaper to a new format that anyone can easily create.

The way we use social media and journalism today impacts what people read and how they read or listen to news. Consider politics. Political parties and candidates bank on news tv stations, such as CNN or FOX to get their updates on how the election is going. Unbeknownst to many, both of these news platforms are on opposite sides of the political parties. If you tune into CNN, you will get a completely different view of a republican candidate than you would on FOX, and vise-versa. They are also impacting what the reader sees. This type of controlling what people read and hear has caused a lot of mis representation and information that has been broadcasted through journalism. People take that information and think that is the truth, because that is the only thing they actually see or hear about. This does, on the other hand, appeal to the people that are actually interested in the same things as the platforms show, making people more willing to go back to their platforms.

Journalism has moved from it generic form or journal articles and newspapers to things more closely connected to social media. Journalism has been around for a long time, but today they are getting more involved with platforms such as twitter, snapchat, and Facebook, all forms of social media. The impact of the use of social media with broadcast journalism, specifically, is the connection that the journalists are having with their readers. They are getting the readers involved to express their opinions, making it more engaging for the reader. This is especially prevalent with news media's use of Facebook and Twitter. Less people are actually watching the broadcast journalism first hand, instead they are hearing about it through social media. In the article "Twitter for Journalists", written by Scot Hacker and Aswhin Seshagiri, explains that "Twitter has emerged as a powerful news tool, alerting the world about natural disasters, hostage standoffs and even revolutionary uprisings". Snapchat this year has included a news type section to watch via snapchat, getting the users more involved and informed about things happening around the world.

Careers in journalism can vary. Each degree includes some type of communication, if that is writing, vocal, or imagery. All the intention of a journalist is to inform the readers on important topics. They are the voice that represents what is going on around the world in the news, sports, social media, fashion, etc.

A few types include:

* Broadcast Journalism

* News reporting

* Communications

* Fashion Journalism

* Foreign Correspondant

* Freelance Writing

* Investigative Journalism

* Photojournalism

* Social Media

* Sport Journalism

This, and more information can be found at journalismdegree.com for the different types of careers in journalism.

Many people agree that technology advances at an exponential rate. Journalism technology and information sharing are no exception to this trend. Each new development in the world of journalism seems to change the way the consumers receive their information. For example after the invention of the television, news corporations began broadcasting news stories through personal TVs which led to a decline in newspaper readership. Now with the invention of social media, news corporations have begun broadcasting their articles through internet based platforms which has led to a decline in television news viewership. Each new advancement in journalism has led to a decline in one form of media consumption and a spike in consumption of another form. The big question now is, what will the next big advancement in journalism be: which form of media will drop in popularity, and which type of media will increase?

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The Social Construction of Media: Social Media's Impact on Journalism

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The year is 1605, a new form of literature has just been released which will revolutionize the spread of information forever. This work was titled " Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien" and is widely regarded as the first world's newspaper.

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This article explores the change the affect of social media on news. Read this BBC Blog.

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This article explores the change the affect of social media on news. Read this BBC Blog.

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Earlier today I gave a talk at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam about how social media has changed the way newsrooms work. The full transcript of the speech is below.

BBC News, like all major news providers, has been transformed by technology and the opportunities it offers over the last 20 or so years. Social media is the latest tectonic plate to move and change the landscape.

It may seem like re-stating the obvious but looking in our rear-view mirror back along the road of technological change shows just how news has changed: typewriters out, computers in; newspaper cuttings libraries closed as the internet opened access to information; mobile phones rather than messages at hotel receptions; satellite technology to feed material rather than tapes put on planes and so on.

Powered by these changes, news has become 24 hours a day; immediate; available on new platforms; mobile. And now the latest powerful tool to change news - social media.

As we'll hear from my colleagues here later, all big news organisations are plunging into the world of social media, looking at its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news.

The BBC, as an early presence on the web, also spotted the possibilities of social media quickly and it has become a highly important and fast-moving part of our multimedia newsroom, as I will outline shortly.

The other area I will also touch on is the range of new challenges and questions that social media poses for the established news providers - like the BBC, CNN, Sky and al-Jazeera.

First, the practical role and influence of social media in the BBC's multimedia newsroom and for BBC News as a whole.

For BBC News, social media currently has three key, highly valuable roles in our journalism:

* newsgathering - it helps us gather more, and sometimes better, material; we can find a wider ranges of voices, ideas and eyewitnesses quickly

* audience engagement - how we listen to and talk to our audiences, and allowing us to speak to different audiences - and

* a platform for our content - it's a way of us getting our journalism out there, in short form or as a tool to take people to our journalism on the website, TV or radio. It allows us to engage different and younger audiences.

The BBC already has a fair track record of inviting the audience to get involved in our journalism - web forums; debates; blogs and comments, and most recently incorporating comment within our website story pages, particularly on the live pages.

We are proud of the standards we have set in processing, sifting and verifying material sent to us and sourced through social newsgathering, giving us a new dimension when telling some of the major stories of recent times - the Japan tsunami; the Arab Spring; the Burma uprisings; the Norway shootings; the riots in England.

The team we have allows us to fully engage in using this material, and reinforce the BBC values that our audience expects, in particular accuracy. So we managed to avoid, for example, use of the photo-shopped Bin Laden body photo after his killing.

Many of our leading journalists and presenters now incorporate social media platforms into their work: Tim Willcox; Lyse Doucet; Robert Peston and until recently Laura Kuenssberg (who has now been joined by her Twitter followers, with our blessing, at ITV News).

We've innovated, experimenting with branded hashtags to curate coverage; visualising Royal Wedding day tweets on our website; and work is under way to seamlessly integrate field despatches from our correspondents and reporters into our core news services and social media output.

And like many established news providers, we have created an open and modern set of guidance to help our staff engage, gather news and spread their journalism, working within the BBC's editorial values that are at the core of our journalism.

Here's a short video we've just made to illustrate briefly the role of social media right now in the BBC Newsroom.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.

However, now I'd like to add just a little context to the growth of social media for the audiences of BBC News.

Since its launch Twitter has obviously seen rapid growth.

Look at the @BBCBreaking account which has increased its number of followers very rapidly even in the last 12 months.

It looks impressive, and it is, but compare that with consumption via the website, which has also grown very rapidly, now attracting an average 9m users a day.

And still the home of our biggest audiences by a country mile is TV News with the BBC News Channel's average weekly audience up 50% in the last year, and the BBC1 TV bulletins reaching 17.5 million viewers in a week.

Social media has strong growth and huge potential - it's a great tool for our journalism, as we've seen, but for the BBC, still draws relatively small numbers. I would say a "small" but highly engaged, dedicated and vociferous part of our audience.

And that leads me on to the second main area I would like to address - and those are the wider challenges presented to so-called "traditional" media by social media.

For good or for ill - and sometimes it is for good, and sometimes not, social media has trashed many of the foundations on which "traditional" media stands. And in all honesty I can raise questions about this but I don't think we yet have all the answers:

* Privacy. In particular privacy of the individual, where are the boundaries? Are there any areas off limits? It seems we can all discuss pregnancies, affairs, ethics, finances, abilities, families. It's out there on Twitter and Facebook and there's no real protection for what, until now, has been largely personal or private.

It leaves traditional media in a very different universe. We mitigate this via very clear guidelines to our staff, which states that although content placed on social media or other websites "may be considered to have been placed in the public domain, re-use by the BBC will usually bring it to a much wider audience". They go on to say that: "We should consider the impact of our re-use, particularly when in connection with tragic or distressing events."

* Anonymity. Many people joining the debate or discussion or sometimes accusing, or attacking, have no name and no face and therefore no seeming personal responsibility for the impact or truth or validity of what they publicly say. Professional journalists, like ours, encouraged to engage in social media spaces but held to account for their views and values, often find themselves engaged in a wholly uneven discussion on coverage or stories with an invisible opponent.

* Ethics. Most of us work within an ethical framework. We won't report the death of a loved one until the family know; we won't just steal material from others; we try to establish facts before pushing a story out there. These are all fundamental and long cherished principles of the way BBC News operates. But not the ground rules of many using social media.

* The Rule of Law. We work within the laws of our land - we avoid libel; or contempt of court; or revealing the names of young victims or juveniles accused of crimes. We don't break court injunctions. Some social media users do many of these things.

Sometimes it has been argued they show up the failings of the laws of the land, and they may do, but often it is done in ignorance of the law, or simply on the assumption that it doesn't matter. And that can leave traditional media looking slow or stick-in-the mud or somehow part of an "establishment" that doesn't tell the whole truth. Look at the case of Ryan Giggs.

* The role of traditional media. Some of our role is probably gone. Will we be "First with the Breaking News"? Probably not in many cases. Someone on Twitter will be. Will we have the first still of a hero or victim? Facebook probably will have it. Will we get the first video out of Syria or Burma? YouTube will almost certainly have it posted first, although we'll often be one of the first to verify it's genuine (or not).

* Audience interaction. This can be a great way of hearing what your audience has to say, and answering questions or engaging. We have sophisticated ways of measuring what our audiences consume, and we keep an eye on what's being said to us and about our content, all of which we consider in our editorial discussions.

However there's a real danger lurking here - namely that we mistake the squalls on Twitter or the views of ten or 20 vociferous tweeters for the view of the audience as a whole. It may be that it is, but it often isn't, and we shouldn't necessarily be swayed in our editorial judgements by a noisy but small row on Twitter.

These are some of the challenges we face with social media and we grapple with them every day.

But you can take those challenges and say that the uncertainties they introduce can actually underline the strengths that established news organisations have, for a very large part of the audience.

In the sea of many voices and stories of claims and general noise, we know there remains an appetite for a journalism that is based on the values that news audiences of "traditional" organisations' like the BBC value most highly of all : truth; accuracy; integrity; verification; independence; and yes, speed. The new environment we are all living in can underline in the audience's mind the values of our journalism.

Lastly, social media shines a powerful light on all that we do. It can be uncomfortable at times but it is ultimately a great thing. It will help keep us all honest. Those traditional organisations who abandon those core values and aspirations will be found out - there is unrelenting examination of all we do - and those who don't live up to their values will quickly surrender their value to audiences in this new world.
Kevin Bakhurst is deputy head of the BBC Newsroom

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How has social media changed the way newsrooms work?

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Earlier today I gave a talk at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam about how social media has changed the way newsrooms work. The full transcript of the speech is below. BBC News, like all major news providers, has been transformed by technology and the opportunities it offers over the last 20 or so years.