How to find news stories on social media
I’ve interviewed nurses in the Philippines and a man in his crumbling home in Yemen — all without leaving my bedroom in the UK. Here’s how you can too.
Our communities are moving more and more online. As journalists we need to follow them.
Anybody posting a social media update, personalising their profile or hash-tagging a tweet is creating a footprint for you to follow.
I’ve interviewed nurses in the Philippines and a man in Yemen without leaving my house even before the pandemic. Throughout lockdown, I’ve worked as a journalist for Euronews, an international news organisation based in Lyon, all without leaving my bedroom. Yes, we have our news wires, but a lot of our original stories come from searching social media.
Here are my tips and tricks on how to harness the power of social media for stories.
Facebook is useful for finding leads and interviewees
Demographic: Mums, your “regular jo’s”, anybody born before 1997 (because “Facebook’s for old people” apparently?!) and community groups.
What you can find: Support groups, events, campaigns & fundraisers, hyper-local/community news, local businesses, and specific* individuals.
From hyper-local to half way across the World, Facebook is great for finding anything and any-one.
Facebook is great for finding leads as well
Some of my original stories have come off the back of scrolling through local events and community networks.
*and if that’s not enough…
Facebook Graph Search
What is it? Facebook Graph Search (FGS) is a way of carrying out an advanced search on facebook using a number code from the URL. You can find people based on a combination of criteria such as their:
- place of birth
- place of work
- city of residence
- job title
- age
These details will all have a unique number in the URL, which you can use to carry out the FGS. For example, you can find:
‘Nurse, born in the Philippines, working in Birmingham’
or, ‘teacher, working in Worcester’
Of course, it’s down to the information people put on their profiles and how tight their privacy settings are. But Facebook graph search is generally a good way of finding somebody specific, especially if you’re trying to localise a story.
For more on how to do this, read Paul Bradshaw’s step-by-step guide on how to do a Facebook Graph Search:
Twitter is good for networking and calls to action
Demographic: Age ranges between 16–60+, it’s a much broader age range but users are more professional/worldly/political than Facebook.
People use Twitter to:
- Catch up with the latest news
- Tweet about something others are talking about
- Network and get the word out about something.
You can find: Trending topics, media-based professionals, universities, police/emergency services, local authorities, news, politics, charities & NGOs… and pretty much any place which has a press and media team.
- Trending — If something big is breaking, eg. #CoronaVirus, then clicking on this hashtag will take you to all of the tweets including it. You can also filter results to a location.
- Gate-watching – an easy way of doing this is using the ‘lists’ feature. See my example of West Midlands Emergency Services below.
Tip — Quite often with emergency services like the police, news will break on their Twitter accounts faster than a press release will arrive to you on the newsdesk, so it’s always worth keeping an eye on them.
- Call to action– You can put a tweet out asking what you’re looking for, for which publication and in what format.
And out of that call to action, this story got published:
- Include hashtags such as #JournoRequest to be retweeted and reach more people, or even the hashtag of a specific event in the place concerned e.g. #ShropshireFloods.
- Community hours — Lots of cities and counties will have their own community hour on Twitter. Community hours are mainly a way of networking for businesses or for locals to share news and raise issues, meaning they’re a great source for local contacts:
Instagram is good for calls to action and interactivity
Demographic: Millennials and “younger” users, influencers, local businesses and online shops/brands.
Instagram stories allow you to ask questions, run polls and encourage users to engage with each other. At the start of the pandemic, I used my Instagram story to find people in my area who had been affected by the cancellation of Jet 2 flights due to Spain’s COVID-19 lockdown.
*Tip — Lots of student unions have Instagram accounts so if you’re covering a story about university/students, then Instagram is a good place to start!
LinkedIn is good for making professional contacts
Demographic: Professionals — speaks for itself really… but sometimes it is a professional contact we need.
LinkedIn is useful for B2B stories and making connections in certain industries, for example, the travel industry, which is where this story came from:
Sometimes, people come to you with stories on LinkedIn if you have your job title up to date on there.
Tip — I really recommend getting commissioned for B2B (Business to Business) articles if you’re a journalist just starting out. Writing articles about other journalists or journalism practices helps you to build contacts.
I’ve recently been interviewed for JournoResources ‘A Day in the life of…’ series about my work as a local radio reporter. I was found on LinkedIn.
Dating apps
I mean, this is commitment. Also I hope she sent a photo of her nude lipstick! 💄
This isn’t something I’ve tried myself but as long as you’re safe and respectful and you don’t end up cat-fishing somebody who thinks they’ve got a date, there are no limits to what you can find out there.
Tash is a tabloid journalist who has used Tinder and Bumble for stories:
“One of them was a piece about trying to meet my neighbours — I posted in their letterboxes and nobody got back to me apart from a guy who said he was too busy.
Tash then used a dating app instead…
“There was that dating app you could set to really close, can’t remember the name of it but I used that and it worked!
“Although one neighbour kept insisting that he could ‘take me out for a steak’ then said it was weird I was inviting him to my house for a first date despite me constantly being like no I just have to interview you for 15 minutes…
“The others were for various stuff eg. on fetishes, polyamory and looking for health case studies (my other specialism) e.g. looking to speak to people with diabetes.”
@tash_wynarczyk on Twitter
Although it may seem unconventional, sometimes using a dating app can lead to stories like this:
How to convince people to talk to you
It’s all in the approach
- Be friendly and honest when you’re reaching out to people
- Always think about how you would like to be approached and what would make you feel reassured
- With radio, people assume I’m going to immediately put them in front of a mic, so I always like to say something like “If you’d like to give me a call on.. or email me… we can chat further/ I can give you more information.”
Show you’re credible
- Have a way to show you are a legitimate journalist as people are extra wary on social media. You could send links to your work and get them to email you on your professional email address.
Stick to the basics in your call to action, elaborate later
- A call to action works in the same way as a NIB (news in brief) does. Start with the most important bit of information and hook them so they don’t scroll past. Make it clear, concise and make it friendly.
- I like to put it as a question —
Be creative
- Think about your story and the voice you need to bring it to life, then think about the ways you could contact them. There might be a few ways, or it might be a case of contacting some-one who might know some-one.
Have I missed anything?
Do you have any tips to share with fellow journalists about sourcing interviewees on social media?
Do you have a weird story about how you found an interviewee?
Comment below or tweet me — @laurathejourno.
