By: Christina Choi + Blessing Waung
SAMDesk is a social media search and collaborative curation tool for newsrooms which power these workflows for teams like Reuters, AP, Guardian, WSJ, FT through to local papers and broadcasters. On Friday, March 15, CEO and Co-founder James Neufeld came to speak to AAJA-Asia members in Hong Kong in the Bloomberg Hong Kong offices, regarding best practices on searching, curating, and utilizing social media for storytelling.
Through his talk, Neufeld touched upon the following points:
- How to search effectively on social networks
By going through Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, journalists can search through SAMDesk for common terms (listed in the order of how many times the word was used) and in chronological order. - Finding good content
SAMDesk utilizes geographical search that can be narrowed down to specific streets (only works if people share their location on their app). It also has the capacity to filter out unnecessary words (e.g. omg) and people with anonymous accounts. With the option of limiting results to verified accounts, journalists can instantly find more credible sources. - Ethical concerns
Journalists should be aware of invading people’s personal space, especially in the case of tragedy or emergencies. They absolutely must respect users’ privacy and ask directly for their permission to use content, abiding by the copyright rules of Twitter and Instagram.
“SAM is a search tool that facilitates journalists’ workflows. Journalists then add value to the stories.” –Angie Lau
