Social Media, the Media, and T&T

March 15, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

When I was reading a discussion related to social media/blogs in Trinidad and Tobago, someone made a point that gave me pause. The point was that without newspapers, local blogs would be dead in the water. Try as I might to disagree, a poll of Trinidad and Tobago blogs reveals that this is fairly true.

When it comes to actual news, Trinidad and Tobago blogs simply aren't very pro-active. In fact, they are pretty reactive to the media. For the larger issues, such as things related to government or the ever present scandals that involve the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, there is little to do about it. After all, who has access to the Government has access to the stories - and the fact that the average citizen who can write a blog doesn't have the sort of access that the media has is nothing new. In time, perhaps, those of note in the government may open their seating to citizen journalists. This seems very unlikely in the present climate of Trinidad and Tobago, but it only takes one politician talking to a blogger to change that. It will be all downhill from there if the topic is the right one.

And then there's another distinction that must be made: citizen journalism is a subset of blogging. Blogging can cover 140 character transmissions on Twitter or it can cover posts such as itself. The content of the post defines whether it is citizen journalism or not - and frankly, journalism itself seems rather rare in Trinidad and Tobago. This is not to besmirch those that practice journalism in Trinidad and Tobago - it is simply to set them apart from those that claim to practice journalism in Trinidad and Tobago.

An example: Journalism within the Calder Hart scandal has been largely reactive to political groups. The latest go-round, where the alleged links to Calder Hart's wife and companies that received contracts, came from the Congress of the People. It did not come from investigative journalism. It fell in the laps of the media and the media ran with it without confirmation. The fact that independent confirmation is being done seems somewhat lazy when one considers journalism in the United States - but there is a distinction. Larger countries, larger readership, larger budget. In that way, Trinidad and Tobago media's budget for investigative journalism, on the surface, seems comparable to some blog owners.

And all of this seems to indicate a sense of competition between blogs/social media and traditional media. But why does there have to be? Why can't they work together? 

At the last bloggers meetup here in Trinidad and Tobago, Mark Lyndersay revealed something interesting that he left out of his column on the Guardian's website (Moving from social media to just media): there were three other people (journalists) in the room. That and the concrete brownie I was served at Pizza Hut, Curepe, were the things that stood out most in my mind.

So the media itself is resisting interaction with social media. That's no surprise; I often say that Trinidad and Tobago lags the developing world in socio-techno trends by about 10 years - sometimes for better, most often for worse it seems.

And where do blogs fit in? 

My response: Who cares? I, for one, am not out to compete with the Guardian, Express, Newsday, etc. But there's a rub: I typically write about what I think others have left out. I scratch my own itch (or, colloquially, 'itch my own scratch'). If the media's representation doesn't add up, I'll write that. If I think the media missed something, I'll write what I think they missed.

If I see something firsthand, I can write about that, too - but I'm not about to pull over and ask the police why they have some people pulled over.

Maybe we bloggers within Trinidad and Tobago need to be more original with our content instead of rehashing what the media reports. That is a valid criticism, to a degree. But we use the tools we have.

All we ask is that the media do the same. But they have yet to fully comprehend that social media and its practitioners, too, can be a tool of the media. In fact, they fail to realize that they already are a tool - linking articles in Trinidad and Tobago media, raising the profile of stories.

I'm sure blogging can survive without the traditional media. I'm uncertain that in this modern day and age that the traditional media can afford ignoring social media to the extent it has and seemingly continues to. But that requires moving from 'broadcast journalism' to 'interactive journalism'. Or, better, shifting more toward social media.

There's much more fodder for discussion on this. Maybe it will happen. Maybe not. But I think that the best 'discussion' would be everyone demonstrating the discussion rather than having it.

'Criticize by Creating' - Michelangelo

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