According to Quartz’s Next Billion vertical, Internet use is projected to double — from 2.5 billion to 5 billion — between 2012 and 2016. That’s next year, and already, the global diversity of the netizenry and how they use the Internet is starting to change people’s relationship with the news. Much of this growth is expected to occur in Asia, while the fastest growth will be in Africa. These so-called “next billion” Internet users are often different from the first 2.5 billion in their background and lifestyles, representing a plethora of languages, cultures, incomes, and methods of technological access. And the implications, I think, will reach many different aspects of journalism.
After the explosions in Tianjin this year, GIFs, photos, and videos circulated on Twitter, Facebook and Sina Weibo. But the first person to break the news did so through a private messaging group on WeChat, posting video of fire outside the chemical plant just minutes before the explosion. For minutes afterward, the mobile-first, private platform was the primary place for sharing and discussing.
Increasingly, eyewitness media is discussed and disseminated on private networks like WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, Snapchat, Viber, and Facebook Messenger. This is already having significant effects on newsgathering. At the recent TechRaking conference at MIT, journalist Andy Carvin and others pointed out that, when media do surface on the open web, it’s incredibly difficult to find and source the originator, as the images are often stripped of metadata, compressed, and of indeterminate provenance.
Digital journalism, so accustomed to APIs and tools that aid discovery and aggregation, will likely have to adapt. Partnership and advocacy efforts are likely right — platforms can do more to facilitate journalists’ efforts, and newsrooms can build better tech for these platforms. As well, the technological approach to digital journalism will need be supplemented by the traditional relational skills of newsgathering: cultivating sources, building relationships, and fostering trust.
As news and reports of the Paris attacks rippled through social media, journalists captured and reported on eyewitness media shared in both French and English. Just a day before, a flurry of tweets and Facebook posts in Arabic, French and English discussed the worst bombing in Beirut since 1990.
Beyrouth, Paris: ce soir, nous sommes tous libanais, nous sommes tous français, كلنا لبنانيون
— Kathryn Peters (@katyetc) November 14, 2015
News reports of the Paris attacks in French were translated to English:
The (first woman) mayor of Paris (also the granddaughter of refugees and daughter of migrants) appeals for unity. 🇫🇷 https://t.co/Srt6GVKJTz
— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) November 14, 2015
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo on Facebook: "We are standing, we are united.” https://t.co/HjypbQHNGZ
— reported.ly (@reportedly) November 14, 2015
To Chinese:
嫌疑人 26岁的 Abdeslam Salah 在比利时出生。法国内政部长卡兹纳夫（Bernard Cazeneuve）说，调查将表明，攻击“是在国外、由一伙在比利时的人筹划的”。 https://t.co/v2UXfZutpH
— 立里 (@lihlii) November 15, 2015
To Arabic:
البوليس الفرنسي ينشر صورة لمشتبه به ربما يكون ضالع في هجمات يوم الجمعة الدامي
#ParisAttacks https://t.co/9CWd9O5kLr
— سارة عثمان (@Sarah_Othmann) November 15, 2015
From French to English and then to Italian:
#Parigi: giornalisti che parlate di Torre Eiffel spenta in lutto, viene spenta ogni notte. https://t.co/Xy5aM7phQN
— Paolo Attivissimo (@disinformatico) November 14, 2015
Meanwhile, false reports of a tsunami heading for Japan triggered the trending topic #PrayForJapan. An earthquake had indeed happened, but the Japanese-language reports clearly stated it wasn’t strong enough to trigger a tsunami:
No immediate reports of damage after M7.0 quake off SW Japan, which registered 4/7 on local shaking intensity scale https://t.co/bCpVWYNWD2
— Hiroko Tabuchi (@HirokoTabuchi) November 14, 2015
Tsunami warning has been lifted after M7.0 quake off Kagoshima, southwest Japan https://t.co/cn2NozU69M pic.twitter.com/gDv4aCknVK
— Hiroko Tabuchi (@HirokoTabuchi) November 13, 2015
In the hecticness of the day, Spanish newspapers picked up a selfie of a Canadian Sikh man Photoshopped to look like he was wearing a suicide bomber’s vest. In Baghdad, a real suicide bomber killed 18 people. It was a day for hashtag prayers for multiple corners of the world:
#PrayForParis #PrayForJapan #PrayForBeiruit #PrayForBaghdad …might as well Pray for the World tonight.
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) November 14, 2015
Every day, global trending topics on Twitter alone appear in multiple languages and scripts — when I glance at them at different times of the day, they frequently appear in Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, and French, often outnumbering the English-language trending topics. English speakers, once the dominant group on the Internet, will soon become just one of many language speakers online.
In recent years, we saw the transformation of #BlackLivesMatter from a hashtag and a nascent movement to a core question in the presidential primary debates. This year also saw #SomeoneTellCNN re-emerge as a satirical hashtag in Kenya in response to the network calling the country a “terror hotbed.” In the past, these tweets yielded minor changes in coverage; this year, a senior executive personally flew to Nairobi to apologize for the statements. And after Facebook turned on Safety Check for citizens of Paris, Beirutis asked why they didn’t get a Safety Check feature, even though their city had just been bombed a day before.
We can expect more of this. Geographically far from most media outlets, people in many regions of the world have historically had few avenues to attempt to improve global reportage of their issues. Thanks to denser networks that foster better pipelines for attention, the Internet gives communities a pathway directly to newsrooms. At its worst, call-out culture can be destructive and foster a herd mentality against the less privileged in society. But at its best, when people organize and amplify their voices to punch up rather than down, they can make real changes in media and media representation. What can we do to listen more effectively?
Let’s go back to Tianjin. Some of the most powerful images that circulated on WeChat were, in fact, GIFs. While livestreaming video tools like Periscope will push the boundaries of high-bandwidth, high-resolution video, the humble GIF is also on the rise, with built-in tools on sites like Tumblr and Instagram and autoplay features on Twitter now making it easier than ever for people to generate and share compelling moving images.
This matters for global Internet users because GIFs, in addition to being eminently shareable, consume less data — and less data charges. They also work well with smaller screens, whether that’s a low-cost smartphone or an Apple Watch. While cats and dogs will always have a special home on animated media, so will the mews, er, news.
An Xiao Mina is director of product at Meedan and cofounder of The Civic Beat.
