Thai bloggers to report from London Olympics
Samsung has invited 75 bloggers from around the world - including four Thais - to join the London 2012 Olympics as citizen journalists.
In a first for the firm, Samsung has encouraged bloggers from 20 countries to do the work of the press, reporting from London from July 27 to August 12.
Thai Samsung Electronics’ corporate marketing director Chandvipa Pipatanakul said that as an Official Olympic Partner, the company wants to keep people from around the world in touch with the stories that occur during the Olympics through the Samsung Global Bloggers.
The company started the campaign in Thailand in April, with 50 bloggers whittled down to 20 finalists. Today and tomorrow, the 20 bloggers in the final round will be trained in how to report by Nation Broadcasting Corporation (NBC)’s new media department.
The participating bloggers are frequent users of social media – Facebook, Twitter and so on – aged 18 years and above.
Only four of these 20 finalists will represent Thailand in reporting and blogging from the London Olympics. They will join the 71 other bloggers from another 19 countries. These 75 bloggers will be divided into two groups to cover the whole event over two different time periods: July 27 to August 3, and August 3 to August 12.
“They will be assigned to develop one story related to the Olympics in video format 30 seconds to 1 minute long, and to work as a team to develop reports in multimedia formats,” Chandvipa said.
She added that all the bloggers’ stories would be published on Samsungglobalblogger.com, which has received 400,000 unique visitors since the launch of the project in April.
“All bloggers will be provided one tablet and one smart phone from Samsung as tools for developing stories and reporting on the Olympics,” Chandvipa said.
Karakot Suriya-arporn, or “Gab”, a blogger at www.tourdefoodblog.com and freelancer at Lifestyle and Travel who made the final round, said he wanted to be part of the London 2012 Olympics and wanted to learn more about English culture – especially the food, which he loves.
“I believe I can deliver stories from the London 2012 Olympics with different angles. I have journalistic skills including fact-finding, researching and story-telling,” Karakot said.
Thanatcha Chalayonnavin, a second-year journalism student at Nation University who is also in the final round, said she had been using social media to report news for a year since she started studying at Nation University. So, she is quite familiar with the process of reporting via social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogging.
“I think I have a chance to join the Samsung Global Blogger workshop. It will challenge me to combine my journalism and blogging skills,” said Thanatcha.
