A group of journalists are locking themselves away in a farmhouse with the ability to access only Facebook and Twitter in order to discover the effectiveness of news spread through social media.
The experiment comes after the two major social networks have gained prominence in the media after being used for spreading current events quicker than popular news outlets, including websites.
“We will give them five computers with blank hard drives,” Francoise Dost of the RFP broadcasters association said. “They have agreed to be linked to the outside world only through Twitter and Facebook. No web surfing is allowed.”
The journalists will be stripped of smartphones, with only mobile phones that cannot connect to the internet allowed in the house.
The experiment will be updated by the participants over radio broadcasts.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
