Pitch Andy Carvin

Newtown. The Boston bombings. The Navy Yard shootings. Time after time, news networks have screwed up and reported incorrect information, yet social media often gets blamed for their mistakes. What if we thought of social media as a way for news networks to guard against these mistakes, rather than proliferating them?

Could we use some of the world’s fastest communications media - Twitter, Facebook, etc, to actually *slow down the conversation* and help everyone get it right when it really counts? I’m seeing this as a 60-90 minute roundtable, with me kicking off the conversation and facilitating the discussion.

Andy Carvin is senior strategist and NPR’s social media desk, where he led some of journalism’s first forays into social media. His work using Twitter to cover the Arab Spring led to him receiving a Knight-Batten Award for news innovation, and a Shorty Award for best journalist Twitter account. He recently published the book Distant Witness: Social Media, The Arab Spring and a Journalism Revolution. He tweets as @acarvin.