The health sector spends many hundreds of thousands of dollars (and most often taxpayers’ dollars) each year on worthy reports that are rarely even read – or are least not much beyond the executive summary.
Could the online revolution that is transforming the nature of journalism and public debate also hold some ideas for how to extend the reach and impact of health reports?
Surely it’s time we started moving beyond the dull-but-worthy tomes that gather dust on so many shelves towards creating more interactive and engaging communication tools.
This thought occurred to me last week while doing this “wired scribe” workshop put on for journalists by our union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Our trainer was Renee Barnes, a Melbourne-based journalist who is also a part-time journalism lecturer and doing a PhD on the characteristics of online media communities.
I am by no means an early adopter of new technology but have loved what little I know of Twitter et al, and what they’ve brought to my journalism.
Two recent examples – I found out about the study featured in this recent post about tobacco and alcohol industry strategies thanks to a tweet from Ian Wardle, who is prolific at Twitter on alcohol and drug-related matters. He is from the Lifeline project in the UK, which aims “to relieve poverty, sickness and distress among those persons affected by addiction to drugs of any kind, and to educate the public on matters relating to drug misuse”.
So it was thanks to an English tweeter that this Australian journalist found out about an Australian study.
Another example: recently my editor at Australian Rural Doctor magazine, Marge Overs, and I used Google Groups to conduct a private, online forum for female doctors in rural and remote areas. It gave them a safe space to share their personal and professional experiences at a time that suited their busy schedules. And it allowed me to tap into an interactive discussion rather than doing a series of one-on-one interviews that I suspect would not have yielded such rich pickings.
I thought that Croakey readers who appreciate the potential of online communications might be interested in a few of the tips I picked up during the workshop.
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Powerful stories
Audio slideshows – or a series of photos with narrative voiceover – can be far more powerful than conventional audio, visual or written stories.
These are two riveting examples from the New York Times – one about the ambush of a platoon in Afghanistan, and this one about Bhutto’s assassination.
Surely, there is great potential for using this medium for telling health stories. What about an annual slideshow on Australia’s Health, for example? Or a slideshow telling the story of someone with a serious mental illness, and how their needs are (or are not) being met by various services and agencies?
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My.Delicious
This is like keeping an online archive of all your favourite and useful articles and links to share with others. It works well in tandem with Twitter. If you add a Delicious button to your internet browser, it’s so simple to archive articles sourced through Twitter (or anywhere for that matter).
You can see the articles I’ve started archiving here.
Here are the articles with tips for using Twitter that Renee Barnes has archived at Delicious.
http://delicious.com/Renbar/twittertools
http://delicious.com/Renbar/twitter
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More on Twitter
Some Twitter tools that may come in handy:
Twitpic For sharing photos on Twitter
Listorious For finding experts on Twitter
Twellow Register with this directory of public Twitter accounts
Seesmic or Tweetdeck For managing your Twitter-verse
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Google Reader
Google Reader lets you subscribe to your favorite websites so new content comes to you when it’s posted. Reader keeps track of which things you’ve read. If there’s a dark blue border around an item, Reader is marking that item as read.
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What’s making health news
Blogpulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. It analyses and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere.
Twazzup For tracking health stories in real time on twitter. Who is saying what, who are the major “influencers”? It was interesting to follow the progress of the recent news about Avandia at Twazzup, for example.
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Search engine optimisation
This handy table gives you details of what works and what doesn’t
Google Trends
Wordtracker
• For various reasons, I had to miss some of the workshop. If I’ve left out anything important, perhaps some of the other participants could let Croakey readers know….
One of the key changes to the media sphere, as a result of the introduction of easy-to-use online technologies, is that the media is no longer the information gatekeeper. Now anyone with an internet connection can not only publish, but distribute information. This means that an industry, such as that concerned with public health, can work to ensure a meaningful and relevant debate is had about issues that matter. With the Essential Report poll, reported on today by Bernard Keane, showing voters rating health second only to economic management as an important election issue – there is no better time to be harnessing online and social media for information dissemination.
Crikey is an excellent example of how online technology has enabled different reporting and avenues for quality debate than are available in ‘traditional’ media. It not only provides a different take on news of the day but also facilitates forums, like Croakey, which enable a broader discussion of relevant topics. Thanks for the plug for the course, I look forward to seeing more innovation in this space.
This aligns to work I’ve been doing with Victoria University, looking at how digital tools can be used to support health and well being, especially in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The tools of the online media revolution are content gathering machines like digital cameras, pocket video recorders, mobile phones – all increasingly ubiquitous technologies, even in some marginalised and disadvantaged communities. Using audio and video to capture people’s lifestyles is an excellent way to support management of chronic disease and share stories and information that helps inform better practice by frontline community health workers. The challenge is to get management’s head around the many issues they put up to inhibit investment in this area like privacy, cost or lack of demonstrated success. This requires investment in both action research and educating people to see the technology differently.