OVERVIEW

By Doug Haddix

Social media tools give journalists unprecedented power to connect with sources, background people and organizations; fish for story ideas;  and monitor discussions on various topics. As with any source of information, social media posts must be verified for accuracy before being used in a story.

Reporters who cover national security and military issues face challenges of secrecy beyond traditional beats such as courts and City Hall. Social media tools cannot eliminate the challenge but often speed up the reporting and open alternative channels of information.

Military personnel now have access on their computers to the most popular social media sites, following a reversal of a Pentagon ban. Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News detailed the change in a National Security Zone how-to guide on military reporting.

In fact, the Pentagon has embraced social media. The Defense Department has a social media directory with links to hundreds of social media sites for all branches of the military, individual units, specific bases and key leaders.

DOD social media front page.

In addition to defense sites on Facebook and Twitter, the directory has links to other Pentagon sites on Flickr, UStream and YouTube. The one-stop-shopping page also has links to subscribe to Pentagon RSS feeds, podcasts and email alerts.

Here are a few particularly helpful links:

SOCIAL SEARCH

Several tools help with figuring out where a person or organization lives in the rapidly changing world of social media. Often, you can find what they’re posting in these ways:

Email searches– User names and profiles on social media sites often are a derivation of someone’s real name. In many cases, there’s nothing remotely similar. That’s where an email search can be useful in tracking someone’s online activity.

Pipl search box

You can use typical search engines such as Google and Bing, but a more sophisticated tool such as Pipl can return better results. Pipl specializes in searching the Deep Web: areas of the Internet not typically probed by other search engines. Search using emails, names or even phone numbers. By the way, it’s worth trying those searches on Google, too. Different search engines return varying results. Other Deep Web search engines worth exploring: Background Checks, PeekYou, Snitch, SamePoint and WhosTalkin.

KnowEm –This service searches user names across more than 575 popular and emerging social media sites. Search different variations of a person’s name. Use the name with a space, then search again without a space. Different accounts have different protocols for user names. If the service shows that the user name is not available, the person you’re backgrounding may have the account. KnowEm reminds you to search older services such as MySpace, along with social media sites that may be new to you.

Social Mention – This service lets you can search a name across dozens of social media sites for current information, postings and links. Like many search engines, Social Mention enables you to filter for specific social media sites by clicking on this link below the search window: “or select social media sources.” As with most search engines, results improve if you put quotation marks around the name.

Topsy – Go directly to the advanced search for more options: key words, a specific Twitter handle, date ranges and other refinements. After you run the search, you can filter the results by time (such as the past hour, especially helpful during breaking news) and type of information (everything, links, tweets, photos, videos or experts).

Track This Now – With this search tool, you can tap into social media postings in real time during breaking news. Filters give you options to look for “the best sources,” “live updates” and “tweets from other countries.”

Twazzup – Similar to Track This Now, Twazzup offers real-time results of key words or topics. In addition, it offers related Twitter hash tags, related search terms and the most active social media users on that topic. It’s ideal for breaking news, as a way to monitor many social media services and news updates simultaneously.

Ban.jo

Ban.jo – While this service works on a computer, it’s designed for smart phones. Type in any address or city name. In real time, you’ll see who is updating social media near that location on services including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+ and Instagram. This is a powerful tool for finding sources on the scene of a news event or someone who lives near a location that’s important for your story. You can search for results from everyone, or filter for your personal friends and connections on those services.

Geofeedia – In beta, this product has incredible potential to use specific geography searches to find sources and social media updates in real time. An address or city search pulls nearby updates, photos and videos posted on Flickr, Instagram, Picasa, Twitter and YouTube. You can filter your results using key words, or search any combination of the five social media services. Results can be displayed on a map (which you can redraw with a different boundary for searching) or on a collage page (which is nice for quick scanning of images and posts to find relevant material). In addition, you can save searches for easy monitoring of multiple locations. The waiting list may be two weeks for a trial account; sign up here to test the product.

Foursquare – Another location-based service, Foursquare can be useful for more than finding friends at restaurants and concerts. Reporters have used Foursquare, for instance, to find people shopping at a mall where a shooting occurred. In addition, if you need to find someone who knows a lot about a specific location, search for nearby businesses and connect with the “mayor” of each place. The “mayor” is the person who has checked in most often on Foursquare. Often, users link their Foursquare account to their Facebook or Twitter accounts, making it possible to contact potential sources.

FACEBOOK

Facebook remains the 800-pound gorilla of social media, with registered users expected to pass the 1 billion mark in late 2012. Most people are baffled by Facebook’s ever-changing privacy settings. Bad for them, good for reporters. With that in mind, here are ways that enterprising reporters can leverage the power of Facebook:

Vadim Lavrusik

Facebook + Journalists – “Like” this page, so you’ll receive regular updates in your news feed showing new Facebook tips and tricks, along with case studies of reporters finding creative ways to use the site. The page is managed by Vadim Lavrusik, journalist program manager at Facebook. He studied digital media at Columbia Journalism School, so he understands the needs of journalists and news organizations.

Photos – Lots of folks make their photos public (whether they realize it or not) on Facebook. That means that you often can look through someone’s photos on Facebook without being their “friend” or subscribing to their public updates. Pictures often can help confirm how well people know each other; a Facebook friend may be someone you haven’t seen in 10 years, but if there’s a photo of you with that person from two months ago, the relationship is stronger. Photos also can help confirm that someone was at a particular place on a specific date, as well as help you find out who may know the subject of your reporting by who is tagged in a photo with them. The Washington Post used Facebook photos and other social media reporting for a profile of suspected Wikileaks source Bradley Manning.

Interests – Much like lists on Twitter, “Interests” on Facebook allow you to create and name a topic collection of people, groups and organizations. Think of it as creating your own channel on Facebook. You can create lots of different Interest channels. For each Interest, simply add people, groups or pages. When you click on that Interest, you see the status updates for all of the members of that Interest list. Again, it’s like tuning into that channel on Facebook for specialized information. If you create an Interest list on Facebook, that group can be public (allowing others to subscribe to it) or private (just for your eyes and research). As an example, you may view or subscribe to this Interest list that I created called National security / military. This screenshot shows some of the Facebook pages included on the Interest list:

You can search other Interest lists that Facebook users have created for public view. Subscribe to those that might be useful, or just peruse them for ideas on who else might be worth connecting with on Facebook. Full information and step-by-step directions are available on the Facebook Help Center page for Interest lists.

Facebook search – Beyond finding people, the search function built into Facebook uses key words to find much more. When you search key words in the box at the top of Facebook, always click on “See more results.” That will open up a search results page with a helpful list of filters down the left side, including pages, groups, events and other categories. Notice that you can search public posts by everyone or just by your friends. So, if you want to find people making public posts on Facebook about a key person or topic, search “Public Posts.”

TWITTER

Realizing the importance of their service to journalists, Twitter developers have produced an extensive Twitter for Newsrooms page. The site has details on reporting tips, ways to engage with your audience, tools for publishing, and information about Internet security (i.e. what to do if someone hacks your Twitter account).

Twitter can be a terrific source of sources: people and organizations worth following. What they tweet can keep you up-to-date and might spark story ideas. In addition, you can use Twitter to ask your followers for information, advice, story ideas and questions they’d like answered when you interview a key news maker. In that way, some journalists use their Twitter followers as an informal sounding board. For more on the mechanics, Twitter has a detailed Help page with links by topic.

Here are other tips and sites to help tame Twitter:

Whom to follow? – Think of your main stream in Twitter as your own Twitter channel. Once you follow someone, their tweets enter your feed. Prune out noisy people who offer little in the way of useful information, links or advice. Be selective about whom you follow. Otherwise, important information may get buried in a tsunami of worthless tweets. One way to find helpful people to follow is by looking at some of your key sources: Whom do they follow? Feel free to poach from them.

Listorious – This site helps you find people by key topics and categories. A search for “national security” pulls up Twitter accounts you might consider following, along with curated lists (more on that next) and related tags. The screenshot on the right shows a few of the top results.

Twitter lists – A list is a channel you create on Twitter so that you can tune in to certain people without having them clog your main tweet stream. Assigning someone to a Twitter list is different from following them. You can assign someone to a list without following them; that way, their updates do not clog your main news feed. When you’re interested in reading tweets on that topic, simply click on the list to see what people you’ve assigned to the list have been posting. Full details and how-to instructions are on Twitter’s help page for Lists.

You can create your own lists, much as you can create groups on Facebook and circles on Google+. Lists show up on your Twitter profile page. So, you might create a list of key national security sources. That way, you can see what they’re tweeting when you click on the list, but their tweets will not enter your main feed (because you are not “following” them on Twitter).

When you set up a list, you have the option of making it public or private. A public list shows up on your profile page, and other people can subscribe to that list. When people are added to public lists, they are notified. Or, you can create a private list, if you want to monitor certain people or offices without letting them know you’re watching. A private list is visible only to you on your profile page; people are not notified when they’re added to a private Twitter list. Subscribing to someone else’s list can save time – no need to reinvent a list that already exists. For example, you might want to follow this Twitter list of National Security Experts curated by James Davis. You also can use Listorious to search for lists by key word(s). Click on “Lists” instead of “People” under the search screen (see above, left).

Advanced Twitter Search – With this tool, you can search for sources and tweets using key words. But the most helpful filter, by far, is location. This sets the Advanced Twitter Search apart from other tools. Type a city or ZIP code into the “Near this place” box. Then, you can specify the distance from that location that you’d like to search for tweets. If you want to find local sources tweeting about a key topic in your news coverage area, this tool can help find them.

Hash tags – Tap into what people are tweeting about a particular topic by searching key hash tags. Any word in a tweet that has a # in front of it becomes instantly searchable. Examples include #military, #milfam (military families), #DADT (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), #Guantanamo and #milhealth (military health issues). By searching a hash tag, you can tune into what hundreds or thousands of people are tweeting about that topic without having to follow all of them or add them to a list.

Older tweets – Many search engines can find tweets dating back only about 10 days. For older tweets, try a couple other options:

  • Snapbird can search back several years, depending on how active the person has been on Twitter, and allows filtering by key words. So, you could search a congressman’s Twitter account to see what he has tweeted on key topics.
  • If you need to download someone’s tweets over time, try All My Tweets. This service pulls up to 3,200 tweets from any public Twitter account, enabling a quick copy-and-paste into a Word document or Excel spreadsheet for review.

Results for @thejointstaff search

@ references – The @ symbol has special powers on Twitter. When you start a tweet with the @ symbol (followed by a user handle), that tweet does not go out to everyone who follows you on Twitter. It goes into the other person’s @ box – think of it as a public “in box” when you want to tweet “at” a specific person. The tweet also goes into the news feeds of anyone who follows you and the other person on Twitter. So, a tweet that begins with the @ symbol has a limited audience. Many people mistakenly think that @ messages on Twitter are private. If you reply to someone on Twitter or start a tweet with the @ symbol, the tweet lands in that person’s @ box. However, those tweets are fully searchable. Sometimes it’s interesting to do a search on someone’s Twitter handle (e.g. @thejointstaff for the Joint Staff) to see what people are saying directly to them or about them in tweets. In that way, you can eavesdrop on Twitter conversations. By the way, if you mention a Twitter user with the @ symbol someplace in the body of your tweet, it goes out to all of your followers. Those types of tweets also are fully searchable. Here are two examples of tweets to clarify:

  • “@thejointstaff When can I schedule my interview with Admiral Mullen?” – This tweet goes to @thejointstaff and anyone who follows you and @thejointstaff.
  • “Hard to believe how long it takes to get a response from @thejointstaff.” – This tweet goes out to all of your followers, plus ends up in the @ box for @thejointstaff (flagging it to their attention).

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn has the distinction of being one of the most powerful social media tools available to journalists but the one probably used least effectively in reporting. Many reporters think of LinkedIn only as a place to look for a new job. While helpful, that feature is the tip of the LinkedIn iceberg of reporting power.

LinkedIn gathers an amazing amount of information from its more than 150 million registered users worldwide. Think about all that’s typically provided: job title; employment dates; key duties and recommendations for current and previous positions; key skills; education; links to websites and other social media services; and sometimes email and phone numbers. Much of that is searchable.

Here are ways to explore LinkedIn for reporting:

Krista Canfield

LinkedIn for Journalists – Join this professional group (managed by LinkedIn), which shares information and strategies for using the service more effectively in reporting. Watch for updates from LinkedIn’s Krista Canfield, who manages free monthly webinars for journalists. Participating in the 35-minute webinar entitles journalists to a free subscription to LinkedIn’s premium service. That enhanced service contains far more firepower in searching for sources, including the ability to filter for job function, seniority level and years of experience.

LinkedIn Search

LinkedIn search – The powerful search tool allows users to find people, companies, groups, updates and more through key words. Check out the advanced search for more options (the gold LinkedIn logo signifies an area available only to premium service users):

For instance, you can search for “national security” and immigration, then limit the results to people who work for the Department of Homeland Security. That turns up 60 people who meet those criteria:

Similarly, you can search for groups, companies and nonprofits, as well as answers posted in response to user questions on LinkedIn. Some reporters find that posting a question to their LinkedIn network can provide fast information and potential sources (for non-competitive stories).

Follow companies and agencies – When you search for a company or agency, you see an overview of what it does, new employees, recently departed workers, new titles, job openings, and posts and links from employees. Now, users also can “follow” companies on LinkedIn to get regular updates via email. As an example, the National Security Agency (NSA) has more than 3,600 followers on LinkedIn. More than 260 NSA employees are listed on LinkedIn, many with photos and bio profiles. This screenshot shows how it’s displayed, with filters along the left for refining the search (note the number of NSA employees in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica):