The Lost Diggers – a social media phenomenon
Here’s a confession up front. I have long been a Facebook sceptic. Like many parents of my generation, I often watch my kids sitting for hours in front of a home computer and find myself getting alarmed at how much of their lives and their friends’ lives are up online…and how long they spend on there. But then I learned just how useful a journalistic tool Facebook can be…and I am now a convert – well at least for the purposes of storytelling…
A few weeks ago, we decided to use Facebook on SUNDAY NIGHT as a way of spreading the word about the Lost Diggers story. It was the first time we had used this social media site to complement a story broadcast. We knew the Thuillier collection of pictures of World War One diggers and other allied soldiers would be of enormous interest. But nothing prepared us for the huge response it was to generate.
Using the skills of website designer John BouAntoun, we built up a huge file of 400-500 images from the precious glass plates - cleaning them up with Photoshop software and cropping out damage to highlight the best shots. The great thing about these glass negatives is that, as they are so much larger than a standard film negative, they hold much more information in them and we could zoom in and enlarge the images without losing quality.
It really is incredible that these fragile glass plates have survived two World Wars, 93 winters and baking French Summers, in these ancient metal and wooden chests. The breathtaking thing about them is how the young lads in them look like they were just photographed yesterday. We think that’s a large part of why they appeal so.
Once our Facebook Lost Diggers page was built - prior to our broadcast of our first Lost Diggers story - we had sent messages out to genealogical, historical and military sites alerting them to what we had coming and what we planned to put online. Within days of the broadcast, both our website and Facebook pages had gone ballistic – literally millions of page views from all over the world.
The Facebook phenomenon was pushing our audience well beyond Australia, across the planet. We were getting excited emails from Europe, England, America, Canada and across Australia and New Zealand. And each of those Facebook friends (nearly 8,000 at time of writing – from zero a few weeks ago) was referring us to their friends. Across at our Sunday Night website at Yahoo, their traffic was also going through the roof – in this unprecedented response to a current affairs story.
What humbled us was the realisation that these images were as important to everyone responding on the Facebook site as they had been to us in our previous few months of research. The emotion and passion we drew from those who had scrolled through the gallery of images was intense. One woman called Nicki told us she had “goose bumps upon goose bumps”. Lena told us that she had “tears of pure joy and total sadness after looking through these pics.” Zena said “This is so wonderful, I can barely believe it’s true.”
Heart-warming too that so many people felt such a bond with the faces in the Thuillier images that they were also passionate about ensuring that the photographic glass plate negatives were brought back to Australia to be protected and restored for public viewing.
“It’s great to see the Aussie spirit alive and to see fellow Aussies helping each other in the true Aussie way,” one Facebook friend, Janelle, told us.
“I can’t believe that such a big part of Australian history was nearly lost, good on you Sunday Night for finding it and giving it back to the Aussie people.”
More than a few people drew a sad import from the iconic Thuillier image of the two Diggers posing in front of a sign saying “We will soon be home”
“A few tears shed knowing some of these fellows never made it home. What a wonderful discovery for many families around the world . Thank you for sharing them on Facebook. Lest We Forget.”
For the unspoken question, still not resolved in all of the Lost Diggers pix, is how many of the men featured in the Thuillier collection did make it home. For, sadly, not all of them did return. Nearly two-thirds of the Australians who served in World War One were killed or wounded. Statistically, if you were an ANZAC soldier who joined up at the beginning of the War and then went through Gallipoli and the Western Front, you had a very low chance of survival.
As a young journalist, the thing I enjoyed most about working a ‘round’ – be it covering the courts, police or politics – was the sense of networking (perhaps even you could call it a community) you built up working sources and informants. There are people with whom I made stories 25 years ago who are solid friends today – people who helped expose corruption, political impropriety, or who cracked a tough criminal investigation. Many of the complainants and victims who I first spoke to in a quiet pub corner or café as a nervous 25 year old junior journalist are still in touch today. Sadly, because of the pace of modern media deadlines and story turn-arounds, it’s harder these days to keep up those contacts. And because a large number of them are now in senior positions in their chosen field, I don’t think I will be putting their relationship with me up on a Facebook page anytime soon.
But what I have realised about Facebook as a result of the Lost Diggers story is that it can be a powerful tool for journalism.
At its heart, what a social media networking site like Facebook does is create a sense of community between people with a common interest or passion. The tyranny of distance is dispelled. A passion can be shared and enjoyed – and anyone in that community network can add their two-bob’s worth.
It has been exhilarating to watch these last few weeks as the Facebook friends who have joined our Lost Diggers site have developed a sense of ownership and pride in what has been going on there – even when they got annoyed with us at Sunday Night. When we kept on having to delay our follow-up story on Lost Diggers because of a series of appalling tragic natural disasters, we took a masochistic delight in the fact that people were so passionate to see more of the Lost Diggers stories that they gave us a bolluxing online for delaying.
Gratifying too to see how families who had loved ones who served together in the same regiments or battles have found each other – and shared mementos and memories.
When, in our original broadcast for example we published a photograph featuring Australia’s second-most decorated First World War hero Joe Maxwell, we got an email from another Facebook friend telling us she’d recognised her grandfather Ted Greenwood standing behind Joe. They were such close mates that Ted had named his son Max after his mate.
Max’s daughter-in-law June had spotted Ted Greenwood in the nearly century-old photograph we used on-air, and as a result of her keen eyes the entire Greenwood clan came together in Ted’s old family home to celebrate. His grandson Geoff Greenwood told us:
“I couldn’t believe it had actually been found …I just couldn’t really believe it and very proud, yes, and a bit more, very proud. So happy it’d been discovered and that we were able to see it. My children and their children will hopefully have this to keep for ever and ever and ever.”
For us as journalists the contact we have received from our viewers in the last few weeks on this story has not just been fun. It has also helped us with leads and angles that we would not otherwise have explored.
For example, some of the most historically significant series of images in the Thuillier collection are glass negatives showing the celebrations in the streets of Vignacourt in the hours after Armistice was declared on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. And because of Facebook, we have now learned that Ted Greenwood (the officer standing behind Joe Maxwell in one of the pics) was actually the officer-in-charge of the honour guard in town that day. He marched his men through the streets (another Thuillier image) to the local cemetery to pay tribute to the fallen comrades who had not made here.
So expect to see us again on Facebook sometime soon!
Ross Coulthart
