On Nov. 9 at NAB Show New York our panel discussed how social media predicted the election better than the pollsters and our Innovation Challenge winners spoke at the NAB Education Foundation Innovation Celebration.

Innovation Challenge Panel

Our Innovation Challenge Winners Robinne Burrell and Trina DasGupta (In Your Shoes), Jordan Sales (History Go) and Chandra Clark (The News Call) took the stage with PILOT Executive Director John Clark to talk about their ideas and experience during the PILOT Innovation Challenge.

Innovation Challenge Winners at NAB Show New York

From left: John Clark, Trina DasGupta, Robinne Burrell, Jordan Sales and Chandra Clark

News and Social Media

John Clark also hosted a panel on News and Social Media. The panel featured Carrie Brown, CUNY; Gloria Stitt, Shareablee; and Claire Wardle, Columbia Journalism School.

News and Social Media Panel at NAB Show NY

The panel discussed the importance of social media in news as well as the benefits and pitfalls. They talked about their Electionland project, which tracked voting problems during the Nov. 8 presidential election using social media in real-time. The big takeaway from their analysis was that social media was a better prediction for the outcome of the election than the polls.

Claire Wardle, from the Columbia Journalism School, explained how in the past “researchers ignored social media, because it isn’t representative.” But now with evidence both in the U.S. and abroad pointing to the effectiveness of social media for analyzing trends, we have to begin to implement it. “We have to find the correct methodologies,” she said.

A twitter handle doesn’t come with journalistic integrity

The panel also talked about the danger of social media in the way that journalists are no longer “gatekeepers to the news” and that misinformation can be widely shared and believed long before any sources are checked.

The panel believed the best way to combat this is to work with the social platforms. Speaking after the panel, Gloria Stitt from Shareableee, explained that media “should partner with

[the social platforms]. This is not their wheelhouse,” she said. “Don’t try and do something that you don’t know what to do. Include everyone in that conversation, and let the news experts help you produce the news, and you do what you do best, which is amplify it.”