Lessons we can learn from the BBC's election coverage

Covering a major news event like an election can be tricky – how do you keep audiences engaged with a story that stretches over several weeks?

In what Alfred Hermida describes as a “brief but fascinating insight” into his research, Einar Thorsen of Bournemouth University, UK, was made a presentation at the IAMCR 2010 in Braga of his examination of the relationship between BBC online journalism and citizenship during the 2005 and 2010 UK General Elections.

In a quick presentation, reports Hermida, Thorsen explained how civic engagement as a key of the BBC mandate reflected in its election coverage online, with them taking a less fragmented approach in 2010 than their 2005 output.

According to Thornsen, with research showing that audiences were oblivious to original features online, the BBC made it a key aim to distinguish between web and broadcast output.

Another issue was a strategic discussion of how the BBC covered politics online in an attempt to attract more people to politics.

Thorsen showed a BBC live updates page, incorporating reports from BBC journalists, user emails and tweets. But it was based on a manual process, with an individual cutting and pasting bits of HTML content into a static page.

Everything was verified and checked by a second pair of eyes, said Thorsen, usually a person looking over a journalist’s shoulder.

The BBC also outsourced the moderation of comments, allowing them to monitor the debate online to select and highlight some comments.

Thorsen’s research also revealed that some journalists still have doubts over the value of user-generated content (UGC).

He found in some BBC journalists that some described UGC and comments as an example of civic engagement online, while other described it as “utter s**t” and “a complete waste of time”.