Who was being quoted on the health risk of BSE in Canadian beef in Canada's national newspapers, May 21-Aug. 13, 2003. Coverage continued for months but scientists stopped getting quoted. The y-axis is the proportion (%) of sources in each category quoted in each time period. (Johnson, 2004)

My thesis was on risk communication, using mad cow disease as a case study. I looked at a the language and sources used in news articles to discuss the safety of Canadian beef after Canada’s first mad cow was found in May 2003.

I remember that day vividly. It was my first summer at CBC, and I was interning at Quirks & Quarks in Toronto.

Then-prime minister Jean Chretien, in an AP photo from May 21, 2003, the day after the news broke. The original caption read: "Jean Chretien shows that Canadian beef is safe by eating it for lunch on Wednesday." (AP)

As the summer progressed, BSE remained a major national story, mostly because the U.S. had banned Canadian beef, leaving cattle producers without a major source of income. There was a huge SARS benefit concert in Toronto that summer, but I remember dubbing it “Beef-stock” because of the amount of Canadian beef promotion, including a city block-long aisle of BBQ. I wrote about it at the time:

Veteran comedians Dan Ackroyd and Catherine O’Hara weren’t even trying to be funny when they sat down between acts to eat Ontario and Alberta beef in front of the crowd of half a million spectators. ‘Mmmm, this is great Canadian beef,’ Ackroyd said between bites. ‘I just can’t decide which type of great Canadian beef I like better!’

Trust us, we have science

What does this all have to do with risk communication or my Masters work?

Well, I’d noticed that, as the story progressed, people were still talking about science and health risk, but they were no longer talking to scientists about it. Politicians, cattle producers, and yes, celebrities had taken the media stage to promote Canadian beef.

So I decided to look at whether that gut feeling had any backing to it, with a content analysis of the mad cow coverage in the two national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and National Post. I tracked a few things, including what each story was about, who was quoted making claims about health risk, and whether those claims had any caveat of uncertainty. (They should have, because a lot was unknown about the disease or how prevalent it was on Canadian farms).

The story shifted over time, understandably, from the question of risk to the general public (very low) to one of political and economic impact. But those politicians and industry groups were still making claims about science and health risk, with little mention of uncertainty. Here’s a representative quote from the then-minister of health, Anne McLellan:

“I think we have the science now to make a scientific case for the Americans to lift the importation ban.”

So what? Well, at the time I was trying to make a point about risk communication, and, of course, finish my degree.

Here’s what I get out of it now. There’s nothing wrong with politicians and lobby groups talking about science — let’s hope they’re using some evidence to make decisions.

But, science is a process, not an outcome. And it’s a process that gains credibility (and power) by laying out uncertainties and the evidence to support its conclusions. In this kind of rhetoric, speakers end up using the word “science” to borrow that credibility without earning it by doing either of those things.

Lisa talks with her hands about why she uses social media on the job. (Photo credit: Miss604 on flickr)

This weekend at the Northern Voice conference, Kirk LaPointe from The Vancouver Sun and I spoke on a panel called “How (Should) Journalists Use Social Media.”

The visuals I used, created using a new-to-me online tool called Prezi, are posted online here.

I won’t recount the whole thing, but here’s a couple of key ideas I talked about.

Social media makes my city smaller

My city, but smaller and more interesting. (Photo credit: ecstaticist on flickr)

Smaller, more interesting, perhaps even more friendly.

In my talk, I told a story about my first job at CBC: a short-term stint as CBC Radio’s Nelson bureau reporter. There, it was a lot easier for the public to reach me, if they wanted to. No security desk, no switchboard in Toronto, just a one-room office and the phone number was in the book.

In a big city newsroom like CBC Vancouver, it’s very different. It would be easy (though not smart) to avoid “the audience” almost completely. In my opinion, good journalists don’t — with or without social media. I use tools like Twitter to reach out beyond the people I would otherwise know, to get to know my city better. My networks are bigger, and that makes my city smaller.

Social media as “social scanner”

So, if you see something on Twitter, do you go report it on air? No, of course not.

It’s like a police scanner to me. People who work in news sometimes listen to chatter on the police scanner to find out what’s happening. A fire in Coquitlam. A fatal MVA in Abbotsford. Just because you hear it, doesn’t mean you immediately go on air with it. You need to find out more. But now you know what to find out about.

That’s how I use Twitter, and other social media tools. If I see a tweet about something that could be breaking news (like the injuries at the Alexisonfire concert in Vancouver during the Olympics) then I start asking questions, and searching for more.

Stream vs. reservoir

Other reporters, or people starting to use Twitter on the job sometimes ask me how I keep up with my followers. And the answer is, I don’t.

For me, email : reservoir :: twitter : stream.

The water in the reservoir of a dam is contained and accounted for — stored until it’s eventually released through the turbines, or out some overflow. That’s email to me: I have an obligation to deal with what’s sent to me.

For me, Twitter and blogs and Facebook are streams I dip in and out of. I enjoy them while I’m there, but I don’t feel beholden to track every drop of water that flowed before and after my visit. Nor do I expect that of others.

How do you think journalists should use social media?

Thanks to notes from DameEmma, Stephen Hui, ivantohelpyou, shamelesshussy, Miss604, Gillian Shaw, Rob McMahon, di_marshall and Hummingbird604 for helping me decide what to repeat here.

Help available here! (Photo by cogdogblog on flickr)

Well, mostly just improved.

I had been getting pretty frustrated with some pieces of this site that weren’t working. There had never been an RSS feed, the comment form was broken, and so on.

So, I hit up the very friendly people at the WordPress help desk at Northern Voice this weekend. Not only was the help free, but it was nice. No judging when I introduced the problem to each subsequent person as:

Sorry, I built the site myself, so it’s probably not done right, and I probably can’t tell you how I did it….

Miss604 gave the first crack at it, with some tips on plugins that might work better for me. Then Digital Entomologist Lloyd Budd took it on for hours, looking for where I hid a wee bit of code that he figured was messing things up. He eventually did, with a little help from Scott Leslie, and now the feed works.

Thanks all! I also learned a lesson: plopping code somewhere to make the site look prettier just might be breaking it.