eModeration white paper: Managing social media: a guide for news sites and media organisations

It's been a big year so far, for social media within current affairs ... Ryan Giggs and the super injunction Twitter farce, the Arab Spring, the London Riots, Hurricane Irene.  Which is why we hope that our latest white paper may prove especially useful to news organisations, who now need to engage readers and contributors, rather than simply serving up content in a one-way stream. 

Our white paper, ‘A Guide to Managing Social Media for News Sites and Media Organisations’, gives advice on creating guidelines for journalists and contributors, discusses the legal issues of accepting and moderating reader contributions, and provides guidance on creating an engaging reader community.

Should journalists respond personally to user comments?  What kind of escalation policy should a news organisation have?  Should user comments be pre-moderated? What effect would taking away anonymous commenting have? When should comments be blocked?  We've spend some time researching answers to these and many other questions.

Tamara Littleton, (eModeration's CEO) says: “Social media has taken news reporting back into the hands of the people. Journalists use social media to source stories and consumers expect to express their views on reporting. There’s also been a rise in contributory blogs such as the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, which encourages reader contribution and debate. With proper management, this increased engagement can be of tremendous benefit to reader and journalist alike.”

Please let us know any feedback to the paper below. It's free to download here.