New journalism tools: Data analytics and social media tracking

The Internet is changing everything in our culture and to ignore the new tools it offers to leverage the vast and wonderfully deep, previously unavailable information to your competitive advantage would be foolish. One of the more fascinating trends I’ve noticed from this year’s presidential election has been the use of data and social media in tracking/predicting news stories.

Savvy reporters that brush up on their analytical, social media and data metrics skills may be able to see which way the wind is blowing before the leaves start to rustle or an official press release is proofed. (Not to get all scifi geek on you but kinda like Neo reading the lines of neon green floating code in The Matrix.)

To do this, reporters could begin tracking and analyzing:

• Wikipedia edits — Watch the change frequency, history and by whom (and what other changes they’ve made).
• Social media marketing — Watch key names/accounts on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Digg and other popular social sites for accounts that social media marketing teams will snatch up and start filling out for public propaganda.
• Google AdWords purchase rates and bidding — Campaigns will buy out the inventory of future candidates to protect their names/repuations
• Related/Obvious URLs –  (I.e. ObamaBiden.com) Watch their owners (and what else they own), purchases, transfers and activity on them
• Google Trends — Follow traffic bursts and growth around key dates
• Track their website changes — See if they’ve changed the wording on their position and bust them Jon Stewart-style (I can’t believe Jon Stewart is the model for holding authorities accountable now). Or do it the cheaper ways. Check out Versionista, too! It’s free and used by many leading blogs! (Thanks, Tim D’Avis)
• Google Alerts — Ahh, the ‘old’ standby. Set up Google alerts for topics that interest you or are relevant to your beat. Keywording properly is critical here though. Michael, in the comments, suggests checking out FaveBot.com too!

None of these are an exact science, they’re just more tools to use but as analytics increasingly get more accurate they could be very useful, if not just plain interesting. They’re also more likely to be accurate or useful than a generic ‘man on the street’ filler quote or vague political party press releases.

If anything, this is more proof that we need more tech-friendly reporters who embrace data and social media and less curmudgeons who fear or ignore it.

Do you have any other ideas on the new reporting tools the Internets have given us? Shout them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.