BBC World Have Your Say comes to Falmouth: a Social Media review

During February 2010, I had the opportunity to take part in the production of an edition of BBC World Have Your Say (BBC WHYS), the daily live conversation and comment radio programme from the BBC World Service.

The programme (whose podcast series can be listened to here) that we broadcast was a special edition of the show as it featured prominent Harvard University academic, Professor Michael Sandel. Prof. Sandel specialises in political philosophy and has run the popular Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? lecture series for many years.

Impact of social media

Right from the start of the day, it was evident how much the show relied upon social media. Following a production meeting with a live telephone link with the BBC in London, Falmouth’s MA International Journalists were split into groups of two and each assigned a region of the globe, i.e. Pakistan & India, Africa, China, South America and the Middle East. We were all set a task to find bloggers in our assigned region to join the show and debate live with Prof. Sandel. (The BBC team knew they had a large audience in America and that they would automatically call-in).

I and my friend Alex were set the task of contacting bloggers in China that were able to comment on the subject. We searched the Internet, including Twitter, blogspot and Facebook in order to contact possible guest/contributors. We were though racing against the clock (not least that the programme went on air in 7 hours!) as China is GMT+8 hours. Helen (a producer on BBC WHYS) was also able to provide Alex and I with a list of guests who had previously contributed to BBC WHYS. Armed with a list of potential leads, we hit the phone-lines.

It was unfortunate that we were unable to secure a guest from China. As Helen said, we were ‘really up against it’. We did try our hardest though, making contact with people both in China and in the UK and Europe, both bloggers and academics.

Broadcast

I volunteered for the task of ‘tweeting the show’, a regular feature of the programme to keep BBC WHYS in touch with its audience. As the clocked ticked towards 18:00 GMT, I was already twittering away, informing our audience of over 1,700 followers of the location of tonight’s broadcast (incidentally at Gyllyngvase beach café). During the show, I kept the followers up-to-date of the show’s discussion and debate; it was essentially a running commentary of the programme (with a few additional tweets thrown in!). The BBC’s Heba also had responsibility for social media. She monitored the programme’s blog and consistently feed Ros (the BBC WHYS presenter) with blog posts and comments from listeners. The whole show was geared toward to audience participation and interaction and was truly reliant on engaging with its listeners.

 Conclusion

In conclusion, it was clear from my time with the WHYS team how important social media was. I remember Sheetal (Output Editor) commenting that without the evolution of social media, the show could simply not function. For this programme, the BBC is fully reliant on social media; for cultivating and nurturing its online community as an audience and as participants. Through the blog, the Twitter feed, the YouTube channel, the Facebook group and the telephone lines, social media technology plays a prime role in everything the programme does.

Note: During the BBC’s time in Falmouth, the WHYS team also posted a series of videos on their YouTube channel which can be viewed here.

Jason