Interview with Kerry Alexandra, BBC UGC producer

Kerry Alexandra is a User Generated Content (UGC) Producer at the BBC.

She told Interhacktives about how UGC is the new frontline of news, and how quickly her work can change – from looking at users’ snow photos for a picture gallery one moment to verifying severed heads the next.

Is there such a thing as a typical day in the life of a UCG producer?
It’s very much driven by the news agenda. UCG is split into two strands, things that come into us, and things that we go out and seek.  For example, I worked the night of the Boston bombing and with that because it was a big breaking news story it was very much a case of me going out onto social media and tracking down photos and people to contact because it took a little while before people thought to email the BBC, whereas with other stories, say when we ask about the state of the NHS, people get in touch first.  Normally, we also receive about 100 photos a day to work through, but when it snows that jumps to 3000, the British love snow!

We often source the real voices you hear on the news from UGC content, and when you see wobbly camera footage on the ground in Syria that’s us too. We also are responsible for the weekly user photo galleries –  a look at how ordinary people are seeing the world through their eyes, and I really like doing live pages where we drop tweets, emails, and photos into a developing story as live pages are very much the forefront of breaking news. Sometimes we even see something big has happened before the wires have it – that’s just the nature of social media.

How do you filter out the noise on social media, particularly with Twitter?
Practise. But also I’m quite a big fan of Tweetdeck, and when a big story happens one producer will be charged with going away and making a Twitter list so we can see everything useful as it’s developing.  We also use an incredible piece of software called Geofeedia, a mapping tool that geolocates social media so I can literally draw a big circle round an area and search a keyword e.g. Boston bomb, and all the tweets, instagrams, Facebook posts will pop up.

What stories attract a lot of UGC content?
Protests, revolutions definitely, the Arab Spring is the big example because people wanted to get their voices out there – also, anything where a lot of people are on the ground.  But you also get a lot of public reaction to famous people dying like Nelson Mandela and issues that affect real people – the NHS and the budget.

What’s the most challenging thing you’ve ever had to verify?
Anything that comes out of Syria, because it’s all in a foreign language, but it is also very hard even to the reasonably trained eye to tell which arabic city that is, which arabic country that is, which arabic region that is, what year it is even – because a lot of it, especially with the bomb damage, looks the same, so we’re really lucky to have monitoring in the Arabic services, because they can go ‘no they’re in the wrong uniform’, or ‘no that accent isn’t quite right’.

What are the key clues you look for when you’re verifying an image or tweets?
We look at meta data attached to the file so we can see where it was uploaded from, when it was uploaded, if they’ve sent us stuff previously and what they’ve sent us previously along with their existing presence across social media. It’s also about contacting them and asking basic questions ‘what is it, where is it, when is it?’ Usually, by talking to the sender you can get a good idea whether they’re genuine or a bit crazy.  A lot of the stuff that is harder to verify is stuff that’s being sent to you with a slant by activists.

Do you ever have malicious users who try to fool you with an image?
I think we have a lot more people who genuinely believe something is what it is and are mistaken. During Hurricane Sandy a lot of random things were going around – sharks swimming on tubes and stuff like that, and you’re like ‘really guys?’

How often does UGC content lead to a new news story?
That does happen quite regularly, especially with local stuff – somebody will email us about or text in a photo of a big fire, and we’ll call them to see if they’re ok with more of their information being passed on and if they’ll come on air.

Looking at the chatter round a topic – how’s that been helpful?
It gives us an idea of the public reaction to what the story is. One of the things we do is do a buzz in the morning where one of the producers will go through and look at what’s trending on Reddit, Buzzfeed, Twitter, and other news sites.  Sometimes it’s the public reaction that develops more than the story – and MH370 is a bit like that.  People want to hear up-to-the-date information about the plane, even if there’s no information, they want to hear that – if it’s not covered in the news bulletin, people email in and say ‘why wasn’t the plane covered?’

Do you have any superusers?
Definitely activists, the last few weeks a lot has come in in Ukrainian and Russian,  but there are also people with the weekly pictures who send their nature pictures in every week – even when we’re not doing a nature album.  If we use their photos, we’ll always email them a link and thank them.

Where do you see UGC content going in the future?
I see it going forwards, because it just is breaking news – stuff happens on social media or might be happening before it’s been reported, and it’s just so instant.  At the BBC, we just launched a new Twitter account in Asia, but we can still do more – we need to plug the live pages more widely.

How do you protect vulnerable sources?
We are very, very careful – we have anonymous email accounts, anonymous Skype accounts, we contact them saying things like ‘Hello from London’ rather than ‘it’s the BBC’, and with people who are a bit fragile or in danger we’re very careful about how many different outlets we give them to.

What is the hardest part of your job?
The hardest part of my job is probably changing gears. So, we have a picture console that anybody can email into, text into, so absolutely anything can come in there. Thus, when you open it up you don’t know what’s going to be in there – so one minute it’s fluffy bunnies, the next minute it’s severed heads and videos as well, and I remember when the chemical weapons went off in Syria and I spent a week working on that and it was just children choking and all sorts, and it was just a whole new level of horror. And then to leave work and go straight to the pub with my friends saying ‘hey, how’s your day?’ It’s hard.

Are you given any training to deal with the graphic and violent nature of some of the content you work with?
Yes, we’ve had trauma workshops – they teach you useful tips like  if you’re watching a horrendous video, turn the sound off and listen to something else like a comedy programme in the background or if you have to listen to the sound, turn the video off – don’t do both together. But I think they’re realising that what we do is very much the new frontline and no, we may not be out in the field, seeing the dead bodies first-hand, but we’re seeing stuff on our screens that sticks to the inside of our eyelids.