Additions: p166 – Incitement and “grossly offensive” communications

In addition to the hate speech laws covered on page 166 of the Online Journalism Handbook, publishing journalists should also be aware of three other laws that are increasingly coming into play with relation to comments posted by website users.

The law on incitement – now “encouraging or assisting a crime” under the Serious Crime Act 2007 covers acts where individuals incite others to commit illegal acts. It was used in a number of cases surrounding the UK riots where defendants were accused of encouraging disorder using social networks such as Facebook, with two men in particular receiving a sentence of 4 years in prison as a result.

Student Liam Stacey was charged under a second act – the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 – which covers incitement to ethnic or racial hatred, after making racist remarks on Twitter in the aftermath of the collapse of Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba. He was sentenced to 56 days in prison.

The Communications Act 2003, specifically Section 127 – covers “grossly offensive” messages, a term broad enough to include a worrying range of behaviour for publishers.

A number of Twitter users have been prosecuted under the act for offensive messages sent to footballers.

It was also used to prosecute Azhar Ahmed for the following statement, also on Facebook:

“People gassin about the deaths of soldiers! What about the innocent familys who have been brutally killed.. The women who have been raped.. The children who have been sliced up..! Your enemy’s were the Taliban not innocent harmless familys. All soldiers should DIE & go to HELL! THE LOWLIFE F*****N SCUM! gotta problem go cry at your soliders grave & wish him hell because that where he is going..”

The contentious issue here is who decides what is offensive. As Fahad Ansari explains:

“The test for “grossly offensive” is whether or not the message would cause gross offence to those to whom it relates, who need not be the recipients.”

Normally these laws are used to charge individuals, but publishers and journalists should also be aware of the potential for them to be used to request users’ details – including sources. If they have been warned about such content and have not removed it, there may also be legal consequences. These are as yet largely unexplored, although the case of News Ltd in Australia – found to have breached racial discrimination laws in publishing moderated comments – is illustrative.

The lawyer Charles Russell deconstructs a series of cases relating to that act here, including the ‘Twitter Joke Trial’ where a user was successfully prosecuted after he joked that he would blow up Robin Hood airport.

Update: p183 – Database copyright

The Online Journalism Handbook‘s chapter on law covers some of the rights issues relating to databases. A recent judgement in the Court of Justice (Case C-604/10, Football Dataco & others v. Yahoo UK ! & others) is worth noting as it explores some further distinctions regarding database copyright.

Dr. Estelle Derclaye, Associate Professor and Reader in Intellectual Property law, University of Nottingham, sums it up here:

“The Court rightly holds that the Database Directive’s concepts of “selection” and arrangement” refer to the “selection and arrangement of the data through which the author of the database gives the database its structure”. Selection and arrangement do not extend to the creation of the data contained in the database. Therefore, the intellectual effort and skill expanded in creating data are not relevant in order to assess the eligibility of the database that contains them for copyright protection.

Here’s more:

“In short, the directive aims at stimulating the creation of databases. Its aim is not to protect the creation of data capable of being collected in a database.

“The court then refers to its Infopaq, Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace, Football Premier League and Painer rulings to reiterate once more its interpretation of the originality requirement, namely the author’s own creation. Accordingly and applied to databases, the “criterion of originality is satisfied when, through the selection or arrangement of the data which it contains, its author expresses his creative ability in an original manner by making free and creative choices […] and thus stamps his ‘personal touch’”. Therefore, the Court continues, the criterion is “not satisfied when the setting up of the database is dictated by technical considerations, rules or constraints which leave no room for creative freedom”.

… “The crux of the judgment comes at paragraph 42 when the court clearly states that skill and labour in the selection or arrangement of the data, even if significant, is not sufficient as such to trigger copyright protection. The labour and skill must express the originality in the sense defined by the court (i.e. creativity) for it to give copyright protection to the database.”

Addition: p61 – Visualising data: maps

Matthew Ericson writes about when to map – and when not to map:

“[S]ometimes the reflexive impulse to map the data can make you forget that showing the data in another form might answer other — and sometimes more important — questions.

“So, when should you use a form other than than a map?

“1. When the interesting patterns aren’t geographic patterns

“2. When the geographic data is more effective for analysis”

Addition: 2 types of visualisation

Tom Steinberg of MySociety writes simply about visualisation:

“There are only two kinds of data visualization in the modern world. They are Story Visualizations and Answer Visualizations.

“Story Visualizations are those produced by one set of people with the goal of telling a story to an audience. Think of a newspaper graph showing deaths during a war, or a map showing where within the country unemployment is highest.

“The second kind of visualisations are Answer Visualisations. Answer Visualizations are produced to supply an answer to a single question posed by a particular person.”

Worth bearing in mind when you begin to visualise your data: are you doing it to tell a story, or to answer a question of your own?

Case Study: Shoemocracy (A new online community about shoes) – The Online Community Guide

From feverbee on planning communities:

“They should apply Ramit’s two-qualifier rule . A community for shoelovers {qualifier 1} who who … {qualifier 2}

“This ‘qualifier 2′ should be either a demographic qualifier (young shoelovers, old shoelovers, shoelovers in San Francisco, budget-shoeshoppers etc…), a habit qualifier (who who love to go clubbing, who are shopaholics) or a psychographic qualifier (who believe in recyled materials, who hate shopping malls, are
introverts etc…).”

Addition: p135 – Games and interactivity

A recent talk by Newsgames author Bobby Schweizer has stimulated some more discussion on both the role of games in journalism, and best practice.

The need to avoid ‘tabloidisation’ is discussed in this post on OJB.

A roundup of Schweizer’s points can be found here, including “eight different uses of newsgames. They can be used to:

1. Editorialize;
2. Raise awareness about specific events and what happened;
3. Simulate dynamics;
4. Model issues;
5. Recreate events;
6. Teach;
7. Portray experiences;
8. Turn stories into systems.

And 10 examples of games used to tell news stories can be found here.

Addition: p146 UGC: Different audience, different issues

Pages 145-146 of the Online Journalism Handbook talk about the differences between online and offline audiences, and the need to remain aware that contributors to social media platforms, while providing valuable extra voices, do not represent all possible voices.

Dr David Brake’s presentation on “UGC and Digital Divides” provides further illustration of this point, particularly when it comes to accessing information posted in countries with low internet penetration (note: those statistics will continue to change as internet penetration and social media use develops in all countries). See also my comments at the bottom of the presentation.

Resource: p22 – How to Get the Most Out of Google Analytics

If you’re interested in more detail on using web analytics, check out this guide on How to Get the Most Out of Google Analytics on Mashable. In particular, this provides more information on setting and measuring goals.

Addition: Law – Police Production Orders demanding footage of events

Here’s a legal issue which is not covered in the Online Journalism Handbook but which looks likely to become an increasing issue for online journalists filming video of events such as riots, protests and evictions: the Production Order.

Jason Parkinson writes on the NUJ’s London Photographers’ Branch blog about his fight to oppose a production order application to seize all his video footage of the Dale Farm eviction:

“The production order, calling for all footage shot on 19 and 20 October, is also being served upon other news outlets.

“I am resisting the order with the full support on the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and legal support from Bindmans Solicitors. The handing over of material, either published or unpublished goes against the NUJ Code of Conduct.

“I strongly believe a journalist should protect her/his confidential sources and material gathered in the course of her/his work. If I am forced to comply with the production order I am being forced into breaching my own union’s ethical code, but also to be forced into being an unwilling agent of the state, handing over material that will surely be used as intelligence.”

Foot Anstey provide a useful guide to production orders as they apply to the media, exploring rules set out in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). These include a distinction between “excluded material” and “special procedure material”. Emphases are mine:

“Police seeking access … must make an application to a circuit judge, giving prior notice to the relevant journalist or media organisation.

“”Excluded material” is defined to include journalistic material which consists of “documents” or other “records” acquired or created for the purposes of journalism and which a person holds in confidence – for example, subject to the obligation under clause 14 of the PCC’s Code to protect confidential sources of information.

“… “Special procedure material” means material which has been acquired or created for the purposes of journalism and which does not fall within the definition of “excluded material”.”

In other words, the difference seems to lie in the confidentiality of the material.

These definitions then shape the case that the police must make. For ”excluded material” they need to effectively make the same case as they would for a search warrant, and that such a warrant “could lawfully have been authorised under another statute (e.g. under the Theft Act)”. More on search warrants here.

This sort of case can also be made for “special procedure material”, but that category also allows the police to make other arguments, which I’ve split into bullet points with emphasis added:

• “That there are reasonable grounds for believing an indictable offence has been committed;
• “That there is special procedure material on specified premises;
• “That the material is likely to be of substantial value to the relevant police investigation;
• “That it is likely to be relevant evidence;
• “That other methods of obtaining it have been tried without success, or have not been tried because it appeared they were bound to fail;
• “and that it is in the public interest, having regard to the benefit likely to accrue to the investigation and to the circumstances in which the person holds the material, that the material should be produced or that access be given to it.”

Failure to comply with a production order “may be dealt with as a contempt of the Crown Court.” Contempt is an offence punishable by imprisonment.

It’s notable that the legal language specifies material “acquired or created for the purposes of journalism” – so the focus is not on the person’s occupational role (i.e. journalist) but rather the purposes of the material, which would suggest that bloggers, for example, would still come under the same process.

Despite that language, what’s not clear is if a person filming an event for their own personal blog or an independent niche or hyperlocal blog would be issued with a production order, or if police would resort to other procedures.

If you are, or know of, a blogger who has been the subject of a police request for material, it would be very useful to know how that request was made – and how you dealt with it.

Addition: p64 – How do I publish my data online?

A post on the Help Me Investigate blog expanding on the option described on page 64