A story about greyhounds featuring a dog called Larry? Is that news? Well, perhaps not for a leading newspaper or magazine, but for the platform of Facebook Live it’s indeed appropriate.
It’s important, as a journalist, to understand the audience you are writing/broadcasting for, and although FaceBook is becoming increasingly dominant as “a platform on which people find news,”[1] it’s important to look at what sort of news videos consumers are actually watching on the platform.
According to the Reuters report, “on Facebook, almost 40 percent of the most successful videos from the 30 brands…related to lifestyle or entertainment content (for instance about animals, babies, or cooking) rather than harder news subjects such as current affairs, politics, science, or the environment.” [2] Softer news and human-interest stories seem to be attracting the most views on Facebook so it was from there that I decided on the angle of my story. Though “interest in video news does increase significantly when there is a big breaking news story,”[3] I felt the likelihood of me stumbling upon a breaking news scenario in the given timeframe was unlikely. And, as the Reuters report also discusses “even for brands associated with hard news like The Telegraph, The Guardian, or The Independent, their top or second videos in terms of Facebook engagement numbers turned out to be animal videos.”[4] Therefore, a news story revolving around one of these ‘softer’ news topics would clearly be the most appropriate for my Facebook Live broadcast.
Greyhound racing has been a hot topic throughout 2016, and has attracted a massive amount of social media coverage. Clearly, it was a timely topic to cover, and one that also held a certain proximity to my audience, given it was unfolding Victoria. As interest around this story was already prevalent on Facebook, I decided to capitalise on this, presenting a profile style piece, encompassing elements of this trending topic in a soft news format that would be attractive to my Facebook audience. The story also made use of the Facebook Live comment feature. Given the existing attention around greyhound racing, I deduced that there would be multiple audience members with questions and comments regarding this issue, and decided to utilise Facebook Live’s comment feature to promote audience involvement. Like Park discusses, mobile live streaming has added new dimensions to broadcast news, “demand[ing] that we completely rethink form and content to engage audiences against competition”[5] – and what could be more engaging than actually having the ability to direct the story by asking questions and pose comments?
This audience involvement, coupled with the hot topic of greyhound racing (and Larry’s cute face) presented a trending story in a new format, successfully attracting the attention of today’s Facebook audience.
[1] Davies, J, 2016, Guardian’s Katharine Viner: ‘Social media companies have become overwhelmingly powerful’, DigiDay, Jul 6 2016, available at: http://digiday.com/publishers/guardians-katherine-viner-social-media-companies-become-overwhelmingly-powerful/
[2] Owen, L, 2016, Sure, people like online video, but that doesn’t mean they want to watch your hard news videos, Nienman Lab, June 28, 2016, available at: http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/06/sure-people-like-online-video-but-that-doesnt-mean-they-want-to-watch-your-hard-news-videos/
[3] ibid
[4] ibid
[5] Park, J, 2016, Breaking news — to fix our industry’s future, The Walkley Foundation, 27 July 2016, available at: http://www.walkleys.com/breaking-news-to-fix-our-industrys-future/?utm_content=buffer5ccdf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
