Social Media and its part in News International's Downfall

The story so far - no sooner had News of The World announced its role as an ablative coating for News International closure, than various parties were quick to proclaim Facebook, Twitter and Mumsnet as the causes of its collapse.

Mumsnet? I hear you ask - WTF is that? Well, no less a luminary than the Times (another News International paper) in fact accused Mumsnet of breaking the News Of The World - Editor Roger Alton (See video above) accused Mumsnet:

“the comfortable middle-class mothers of MumsNet sitting down to their fair-trade tea and organic shortbread biscuits I hope are very pleased with the Twitter campaign they organised, getting advertisers not to advertise in the News of The World. They’ve done as much as anybody to close this paper and put 200 reporters, photographers, editors and young people just starting their careers out of work.. These yummy mummies have done as much as anybody to put them out of work. I hope they’re feeling pleased with themselves.”

Of course, as many people on Twitter pointed out at the time, he omitted to mention Andy Coulson or any other News Corps employees, or even the phone hacking issue - no surprises there given his newspaper's propensity for censoring of comments that they didnt like, even behind its paywall from paying subscribers.

There were the standard paeans to Facebook and Twitter of course, and we have commented on those sort of things many times before, but MumsNet is a new one so we did a bit of digging (so you lazy lot don't have to) - and its quite interesting, so allow us a little diversion first.

For those who don't know it, the foundation narrative runs something like this:

Mumsnet's two founders met at an ante-natal class in 1999 when they were both pregnant with their first children. Frustrated at the lack of decent information about parenting, they set up a website for new mums to be. At the time one founder hadn't even sent an email, let alone considered setting up a website. But, having spotted a gap in the market and keen to strike a good work/life balance, they set about creating Mumsnet. It was their high profile court battle with Gina Ford in 2006 which gifted Mumsnet the sort of publicity money couldn't buy. (Ford, author of The Contented Little Baby Book, took issue at some of the forum members' heavy criticism of her childcare methods and went for libel against the site. The case was eventually settled out of court with an apology to Ford). But it generated a lot of press and they came out of it quite well. It has burgeoned as a service since then.

But be that as it may, when you have a look at Mumsnet the way it works is in fact merely another Social Media system that aggregates the voices of many people, who can then agitate for a campaign in a certain direction, much like Twitter or Facebook. But it does seem to campaign as an organisation too, something Twitter and Facebook don't do (if you discount privacy lobbying, of course...). Now the Times clearly has form on them already, arguing in 2010 that it's the Founders who are driving the agitation and that "there were bullies hiding behind it's skirts":

"what started life as a gentle, mutually supportive online community of mothers seems to be turning into something different as it grows up. A decade after its birth, Mumsnet sometimes seems more like a bitchy, opinionated teenager than a sweet 10-year-old.

......

Flattered by suggestions that their 850,000 members could swing the general election, Mumsnet’s savvy co-founders, who set up the website after meeting at an antenatal class, have gone into PR overdrive in the past year, recruiting a dazzling array of big-name politicians for heavily publicised live webchats....

...[The Founders] Roberts and Longton are using the huge collective influence of Mumsnetters to push for changes in areas that matter to mothers."

The clue to their influence is more in the size of their user base, over a million now and of the more educated middle class mums (i.e. the sort who are less backward about coming forward), which gives them their power. Its critical role in reaching women made all parties in the last election very keen to be seen on it, to the extent it was dubbed the "Mumsnet Election". Also, one of the founders being married to a Grauniad Editor clearly doesn't hinder said PR media overdrive

Now the Times clearly has "Ishoos" with Mumsnet, but the Founders' increasing frequency of appearance on TV etc also clearly shows that they are doing more than just letting their membersip kick off in various random directions, and that is where they differ from Twitter or Facebook, which tend to be pure platforms for people to raise issues. In that respect thay are more like the campaigning newspapers of old, using their readership's views (or curating them?) as a base to champion various issues (The Times was once famous for this ironically, being known as "The Thunderer"). This makes them different to Twitter and Facebook, in that those two argue they are truly neutral platforms that allow people to say what they will, whereas the MumsNet founders are clearly more a part of the process, which may cause some problems down the line if someone really takes them to task.

But enough about Mumsnet - what did Social Media actually do?. It's worth looking at the timeline (in 10 easy stages):

1. Up until the last week or so, there has been a slow drip feed of revelations coming out, but all small enough and slow enough that various traditional means of assertive PR (paying policemen, possibly even buying off police enquiries, getting politicians to look the other way etc) had sufficed. Dedicated journalists and bloggers have been stitching things together, but the news that celebrities had their phones hacked to get at their lurid (or not) sex lives didn't really exercise the public mind.

2. The "Tipping Point" was the story broken by Nick Davies, a Guardian Journalist*, that they had also been hacking the phones of murdered schoolgirls, even deleting messages. A wave of revulsion wept the nation, and this was followed by news that they had also hacked the phones of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and their famlies. This is where Social Media first came into play, rapidly disseminating these stories ahead of the traditional Media/PR/Political circus that News International controlled, so NI were left putting the screws on gates long after the horses had bolted.

3. Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, MumsNet et al) drove a number campaigns of revulsion, turning News Of The World into a "Toxic Brand". When the story started to surface in the USA, it was easy to count the furore in the Social Nets, Advertisers became concerned and shied away, and then started to pull their support.

4. News International then closed News of The World, the storyline being that it was a toxic brand and so no longer a viable business. This was picked up by all the media, but the blogosphere was probably the most cynical about it straight off compared to the (sue-able) mass media, which played a more straight bat.

5. A campaign started, to drive protest responses to the public listening exercise on the News International takeover of BSkyB, this was flashed across Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere (I can't see it on Mumsnet though) and c 156,000 responses were received (normally a few hundred are received) forcing the embattled Media Secretary to announce an indefinite delay and OfCom to muse on whether News International were "fit and proper" to own it. This impacts on whether they are fit and proper to own anything, and in the long term this is The Big Story..

6. As with the Egyptian Revolution however, it was Television that put the real boot in. On Thursday night the very influential (and hugely watched) BBC Question Time programme kicked off with the question that had been on Twittter all day "Is the closure of the News Of The World just a cynical attempt to insulate News International from the fallout over phone hacking" (as quite a few of tjhe people in charge at the time now hold bigger jobs in the News International empire, and the real agenda is getting the BSkyB deal done). Hacked actor Hugh Grant was on the panel, and played his best role ever - that of an eloquent, elegant and aggrieved hacked actor (see video here) - while the panel's usual cadre of politicos and journos wriggled on the various News International petards thay had hoisted themselves on over the years. Question Time has its own Twitterstream (#bbcqt - we covered it some time ago) and this was ticking over like a geiger counter.

7. Roll forward to Friday morning an Opposition leader Ed Milliband went live on TV, crossing the Rubicon and going against News International on prime time TV (it has been an open secret in UK political circles for at least a decade that Murdoch is a kingmaker). The Prime Minister managed another wriggly politico petard performance, but by now Twitter was in overdrive and he was sliced, diced and dismissed in minutes. Twitter was the main conduit throughout the day, pointing to analyses across the UK and US as they emerged, but by now the 24 hour TV channels and mass media were on the case and were bearing the main story load.

8. On Friday afternoon, NI UK supremo Rebekah Brooks (who had been News Of The World editor at the time of the hackings of Millie Dowler, one of the dead girls's phone) held an off -the-record meeting to the sacked News Of the World employees, which was of course recored on various "User Generated Media" sources such as Audioboo and instantaneously disseminated on Twitter and Facebook, and picked up by the 24 hour TV news channels as it happened, including her comment that worse was yet to come.

9. On the BBC flagship political programme Newsnight on Friday night, another hacked actor, comedian Steve Coogan, gave another virtuoso performance (see video here) to millions of watchers (and more tuned in as it flashed across Twitter). Again, mainstream media carrying the load, Social Media carrying the signal.

10. Roll forward to Saturday, now the story is across all the mass media, and the Twitter #notw hashtag is still spinning like a geiger counter, the latest campaigns are to boycott not just the News Of The World but the Sunday Times tomorrow. Facebook has campaigns a-plenty as well, it would seem. Carl Bernstein (yes, that one) has weighed in on the UK's Watergate. Also by Saturday, the Googlebots have indexed all the media so it is fairly easy to pick up on the story. Oddly enough, according to Twitter the #Icantgoadaywithout hashtag is the biggest trending, but as I watch its not turning over as fast as #notw, so quite how they define "trending" I don't know.

And Mumsnet? well, on the main demi-political sections, the "Chat" and "Am I Being Unreasonable" boards, the biggest stories (apart from the perennials) are ""Message deleted by Mumsnet"" and "To start a Friday night drunk"

(To be fair, there are a few discussions of News Of The World related topics on Mumsnet but they are quite small volumes comparatively - but given they were accused of breaking News Of The World, they are clearly very influential....).

In conclusion then, Social Media is a messenger. It was not able to unearth or set up the target (that took courageous analytical journalism), but was excellent at running faster than the opposing media blocking plays, was excellent at alerting, aggregating and activating simple mass responses (boycott NOTW! boycott the Advertisers! Sign the petition against BsKyB takeover!) and pointing to alternative analyses. However, to really have mass impact it has required prime time TV with well known personalities to drive the agenda. My take on the Arab Spring ongoing story is that Socisal Media is also not that good at setting up alternative structures, its better at protesting against existing ones.

And Tomorrow? Well, we shall just have to see.....but one thing is for sure, adding Social Media to the mix has allowed small, nimble media to run rings around even interests as vested as the Tory party and News International. The real proof will be how quickly the investigations start (the Government is procrastinating) and what happens to BSkyB.....

*Nick wrote "Flat Earth News" which in my opinion is The seminal book on modern media