We all know that the internet has dramatically changed how we get news. But, it has also changed to a considerably degree what is news. For example, 86 million people so far have watched this video of a man teasing his talking dog about feeding food to the cat. 86 million! This dog tease has become part of our culture--it is a shared experience. Most cable channels would be really happy with 2, 3, 4 million viewers to an episode on which they have spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to create. And a guy who knows how to edit video of his dog gets 86 million?
But, what makes news today? What captures people's attention and gets them to tune in--whether to YouTube or cnn.com or any news outlet? This article in Wired Science gives some good ideas: The answer, according to a new study by Jonah Berger, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has to do with the visceral emotions it arouses in viewers.
Visceral emotions, yes. That explains alot. It explains for one thing how a fishing friend of my son went viral in the last few days. I've fished with Rory a couple of times myself out in the San Juan Islands and he is a fishing nut. He goes all over with his kayak and catches fish like no one else I know. Being a tech guy, he rigged his kayak up with a video camera so he can record his exciting moments. But I doubt he ever thought that one of his videos would go viral with 630,000 views (as of today), land him on CNN and many other major news outlets. So what did he catch that was so intriguing? If you want the full impact of the story, stop reading and watch his YouTube video now, then follow the link at the end to see the rest of the story.
Here's the rest of the story. While fishing in his kayak off Sarasota, Florida, the video camera captures a dog swimming up behind him. He notices the dog, looks around confusedly because he is a half mile off shore. The dog swims straight toward him, and Rory picks the dog up out of the water, apologizing to him for not doing it more gently. Then, still looking around for where this dog might have come from, he wipes it dry with a shamwow. He then paddles toward shore stopping to yell at people in a nearby boat if they have lost a dog. He comments on the video that the dog appears scared to death, is bleeding and hurt. He gently takes the dog ashore after paddling back and then heads to the vet, the mystery of the swimming dog unsolved.
But the postscript on his YouTube gives a hint to the rest of this very sad, and visceral emotion-laden story. The local news outlet had reported that a 53 year old woman was out walking her dog along a street in Sarasota when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver. The story said the dog ran off. Then, after the dots were connected, a postscript to the story told that the dog had been found and linked to the YouTube video of Rory rescuing the poor dog. The dog was reunited with the woman's grieving family.
In the meantime, the social media world had grabbed onto the story. The Twitter comments were telling. The video link was shared over and over, some making the connection to the DUI victim and some just showing a heart-warming story of a kind, gentle fisherman pulling a mysterious and hurt dog out of the water.
With the social media interest, the human interest, the animal interest, the visceral emotion of this story, mainstream media needed into the act as well. He was busy with interviews with NBC, CNN and others. The CNN story was done with a skype interview from the airport in Florida as he was headed back to Bellingham. Jeanne Moos did the story.
I've discussed with a few what the implications of this story are for crisis and emergency communications. One of them relates to the complaints we (and I in particular) often make about news reporting today. It emphasizes visceral emotion. When dealing with an oil spill, an industrial accident, a natural disaster, or a crisis of financial collapse good reporters and producers want to show the human side, the emotional side, the gut wrenching side. It is frustrating as heck some time to see the impact of this kind of coverage when you are doing your darndest to build public trust and not heighten fears or emotions. But they will do it because they have to. It is how they compete with the incredible competition from around the world where interesting stories with visceral emotion are shared 24/7. It is a tough environment. If it bleeds, it leads, yes, but in a heightened way that we could not have imagined a few years ago.
I link this with the frequently communicated message that you, as the source of the news, are not merely the provider of it to the news outlets, you ARE the news outlet. You ARE the broadcaster. That means that you cannot ignore this emotional dimension of communication either. Dr. Covello was so right in emphasizing the human element of those involved in a disaster. Conveying emotion from those responding as well as not shying away from the human impact and experience of the event you are involved in is now part of your job. I'm not suggesting that you work on creating videos for YouTube of teasing or rescuing dogs, but that you recognize the content of news has changed, that when you are in the middle of a news story you need to recognize and participate in the visceral emotion that is an essential part of the story.
