CLARENCE MITCHELL - From bird flu to blogs - 2005 article

I appreciate this is not up-to-date news, but I thought I'd post this article from late 04/early 05 about Clarence Mitchell's plans for the Media Monitoring Unit as a useful reminder...it reveals how interested they were even then (8 yrs ago) in monitoring internet forums and blogs (see highlighted paragraph). I wonder if they bother monitoring this one??  



CLARENCE MITCHELL. Director of the Media Monitoring Unit, talking to Victoria Collins, Marketing Manager for the Media Monitoring Unit – Regions

An article that appeared in late 2004 or early 2005, around the time of the major bird flu scare

CM = Clarence Mitchell
VC = Marketing Manager


CM: Last year, the Media Monitoring Unit (MMU) became part of the Central Office of Information (COI) and this year we’ve been working hard to make sure the integration went smoothly. At the same time there were pressure points in the daily news agenda to deal with too - constant coverage of Iraq, Afghanistan and the potential outbreak of bird flu – so we had to make sure we were on top of that.

VC: This year, on the regional side, we will be focusing on widening and improving our current Whitehall client base. At the same time, our regional monitors will be continuing their work with regional clients.

CM: We’re also planning to digitize the capture of incoming media, so we’ll be able to keep more data for longer, it will take up less space ,and it will be easier to search and faster to distribute. Eventually we’ll be able to send out clips of material and upload images and sound onto the MMU website.

VC: I’m keen that we concentrate on the potential for more regional media monitoring. Now that we’ve inherited nine regional monitors from the Government News Network (GNN), we’re in an excellent position to provide our clients with both regional and national monitoring. The regional monitors are still based in the GNN offices so that they have constant access to local newspapers, TV and radio stations.

CM: We’ve got plans for lots of new services too. We know there’s a desire among directors of communication and head of news for information about what’s happening on blogs and on internet forums. It’s going to be a challenge to monitor them but it’s a really interesting new area for us to get into. Clients have told us that campaigning and debating are taking place online such a degree that there’s a whole new medium out there. They don’t want to be blind-sided by material appearing from the web out of the blue in the external media, so the online monitoring product we’ve been working on over the last year is really going to help. I’m looking forward to launching that to departments over the next few months.

VC: I think another challenge for us is going to be integrating the entire MMU team with other areas of COI. For example, we could work more closely with the PR team to monitor the success of government campaigns - particularly when it comes to monitoring how successful campaigns are regionally. I’d also really like us to work more closely with COI’s regional marketing managers, who sit in the GNN offices.

CM: We’re also looking at delivering cuttings online. Although we don’t offer a cuttings service as such, I do think we can help deliver them in a faster, more efficient way. Combining our regional monitoring services with an electronics cuttings service would give our clients a more rounded offer and, although it’s still early days for this project, in time we may be able to offer a regional cuttings service to complement our regional news monitoring.

VC: There’s a lot to look forward to!

CM: It’s certainly going to be another busy year.

sharonl wrote: [...]
CM: We’ve got plans for lots of new services too. We know there’s a desire among directors of communication and head of news for information about what’s happening on blogs and on internet forums. It’s going to be a challenge to monitor them but it’s a really interesting new area for us to get into. Clients have told us that campaigning and debating are taking place online such a degree that there’s a whole new medium out there. They don’t want to be blind-sided by material appearing from the web out of the blue in the external media, so the online monitoring product we’ve been working on over the last year is really going to help. I’m looking forward to launching that to departments over the next few months.
[...]

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And that is exactly why I was thinking years ago, when one inconsistency after the other appeared and with Mitchell himself involved, that this was maybe a test-case to see what would happen in the blogosphere when you give them something to chew on ...