Social and Participatory Media

1. Look at the Twitter feed for both The Guardian and The Daily Mail. Make a note of their follow numbers. Which is more popular and why do you think that might be ?

The Guardian has 6.91 million of followers on the social media site, Twitter. Where as the The Daily Mail online only has 2.14 million followers. This might be because with the huge amount of tweets it sends and a much larger audience. The Guardian's ability to drive shares and engagement will be difficult to top. In addition, the political agenda of both newspapers is so contrasting, that they share very few followers therefore individual tweets based on the same story are difficult to compare. Optimising tweets according to social channel and audience with tone of voice, a variation in content and plenty of images are proven ways to drive more engagement. Although its current strategy clearly works for The Guardian, with more natural, human approach would make it even more appealing.

2. Make a note of any brand used on the Twitter feed, including any slogans. 

3. List the news items that are included on their feed and categorise them into news stories: economic, political, crime, international, environmental, celebrity and feature stories.

Daily Mail Online

Environmental

Crime







Celebrity

Political







4. Pick example stories and look at how much interest the story has generated via the comments, retweets or favourites.

The Guardian has generated an interest in the story 'Don't Just Teach Kids to Code- Teach them to Question Facebook and Google'. This particular article had 95 retweets and 150 likes in one hour. However, The Daily Mail online doesn't generate as much interest as The Guardian does. The Daily Mail's latest news story, 'Earth's Slowing Rotation may Cause Huge Surge in Deadly Earthquakes Next Year', with 45 retweets and 33 likes in two hours.

5. Think about the academic ideas we have been looking at in lessons and think about how you could apply these to these products and the reader participation they inspire. 

The academic ideas such as the Uses and Gratification Theory. This is a popular approach to understanding mass communication. The theory places more focus on the consumer, or audience, instead of the actual message itself by asking "what people do with media" rather than "what media does to people". It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meeting their needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfil specific gratifications. This theory would therefore imply that the media competes against other information and sources for viewers' gratification.