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Social Media–Sources for News?

July 7, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Dr. Jane Marcellus, Associate Professor
Middle Tennessee State University

Are posts on social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace public or private? Should journalists quote them? What about linking to someone’s social media site in a news story? Does it matter if the person is very young?

These questions have come up in a listserv discussion I’m part of. The original post concerned a local paper’s coverage of a 17-year-old charged in a vehicular homicide case. The paper linked to the 18-year-old victim’s MySpace page, which included photos of him and the motorcycle he was riding when he was killed (http://www.themonitor.com/articles/reflect-28475-bravo-ricardo.html).

A subsequent post concerned a different case, in which a paper had quoted Facebook posts praising a student who had died. The student’s friends were angry; they considered the posts private.

Good reporting or invasion of privacy? The answer isn’t obvious. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Facebook, Jane Marcellus, Media Ethics, Myspace, New Media, Privacy, Social Media

Successful Use of Various Social Media In A Class

July 3, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Ronald A. Yaros, University of Maryland

Summary Of A “Hybrid” Course Devoted to Technology and Social Media

This course, with 36 undergraduates, was one of twenty-five new interdisciplinary courses approved by my institution to address “new problems” facing society and to experiment with new teaching and learning strategies. The goals of the class are to use and evaluate various social media in the contexts of information production, sharing, consumption, teaching, and learning. Since the course is open to all majors, one of my goals as a journalism professor is to tap a diverse group of students to gain a better understanding of how digital information and social media are utilized in different disciplines. This “hybrid” course combines class meetings with the use of more than ten different social media tools during the 12-week semester. Some tools take the place of more traditional teaching methods such as papers and written exams. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Audioboo, Blackboard, Blogging, Facebook, Google, Picasa, Ronald A. Yaros, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, University of Maryland, Wimba, YouTube

Enriching Public Relations Education through the Implementation of Social Media in the Classroom

June 29, 2010 By AEJMC 1 Comment

By Karen Freberg, The University of Tennessee

The public relations profession continues to play an essential and changing role in society, requiring the regular reassessment of the education of future public relations practitioners. Academics and practitioners often differ in how they view the public relations field, how they define the discipline, and how they view the major pedagogical approaches. The demands of the current economy and the ever-changing digital environment is challenging public relations practitioners and scholars to constantly evolve their research and practices in the discipline to meet the expectations of their stakeholders.

Having social media incorporated throughout the public relations courses will allow professors to feel more connected and up-to-date with their students. In the process, implementing social media in public relations classes will create a more dynamic, interactive, and forward-thinking learning environment for all parties. Also, understanding new technologies that focuses on how to communicate to various publics like social media does also creates a link to the theoretical foundations of thought (researchers or managers) to the those that are view public relations as a more applied field (practitioners or technicians). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Facebook, Karen Freberg, Public Relations, Skype, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Twitter, University of Tennessee

Widgets and Wikis for the Web 2.0 Journo

June 29, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Allissa Richardson, Morgan State University

On the first day of class, my students set up their “e-newsrooms.” The technology-shy students usually groan—then ask me what Facebook, Scribd, Twitter and WordPress have to do with being a journalist. I understand AEJMC begs this question too. Please allow me to share how my affinity for social media in the classroom began and evolved.

FACEBOOK’S SLIPPERY SLOPE

At some point in the Spring 2009 semester, I realized my students were not accessing Blackboard to fetch assignments or to view the assigned readings I had suggested in class. Students were coming to class unprepared and—even worse!—trying to pretend that they had done their homework. I began to think there must be a better way to reach them. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Allissa Richardson, Drop.io, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Morgan State University, SlideShare, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Sribd, Twitter, Wordpress, YouTube, Zoho Quizzes

Study: Technology firms ‘more trusted than traditional media’

June 24, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Telegraph | American researchers also found that people now trusted the technology heavyweights more than social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

According to the new study, the majority of people rated online privacy as one of their major concerns when using the internet after both Google and Facebook were hit by rows over people’s private details being disclosed on the web.

The study, of more than 2100 people, found nearly half they trusted the big three technology firms Apple, Google and Microsoft” completely” or “a lot”… READ IT

Filed Under: News, Research Tagged With: Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Privacy, Research, Social Media, Traditional Media, Twitter

Discussing JMC with… Charles Davis

June 22, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Charles N. Davis is an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and the executive director for the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC), headquartered at the School.

Davis’ scholarly research focuses on access to governmental information and media law. He has published in law reviews and scholarly journals on issues ranging from federal and state freedom of information laws to libel law, privacy and broadcast regulation. He has earned a Sunshine Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his work in furthering freedom of information and the University of Missouri-Columbia Provost’s Award for Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching, as well as the Faculty-Alumni Award. In 2009, Davis was named the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Teacher of the Year.

Davis has been a primary investigator for a research grant from the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation for NFOIC and another from the Rockefeller Family Fund for the study of homeland security and freedom of information issues. He was a co-investigator for an award from the U.S. Department of State for a curriculum reform project for Moscow State University in Russia.

Davis worked for newspapers and as a national correspondent for Lafferty Publications, a Dublin-based news wire service for financial publications, Davis reported on banking, e-commerce and regulatory issues for seven years before leaving full-time journalism in 1993.

How do you define mass communication?

Hmmm…..I wonder whether the question is whether the very nature of mass communication is changing in real time, with emphasis on the “mass.” Blogs, listservs, Twitter feeds – all can achieve what a decade ago required mass distribution. What that does to the relationship between the audience and the content mean these days, and how it works with and without interpersonal media – those are real questions worth pursuing. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Blogging, Communication Technology, E-books, Facebook, First Amendment, Interpersonal Media, Media Law, Podcasting, Twitter

Teaching Research Methods with Social Media Tools

June 15, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Kelli Burns, University of South Florida

Today’s tech-savvy student generation is actively participating in social networking and other online communities, so most students not only understand how to use Web 2.0 teaching tools, they thrive in the environment when Web communication solutions are integrated in the classroom.—K. Driscoll, 2007, p. 10

Social media tools can enrich a research methods class by providing students with a way to collect data, share research, and monitor online conversations. At the beginning of the course, students create their own blogs using WordPress and then throughout the course, use the blogs to post reports, photos, videos, and podcasts. The five social media assignments that have been assigned in this course are described below. These assignments include (1) a social media monitoring project which asks students to monitor social media sites for conversations about a client; (2) an ethnography project where students collect data through photographs that are posted to a photo-sharing site; (3) an interview project where student create MP3s of their interviews and upload them to their blogs as podcasts; (4) a focus group blog project where students collect data on a blog over several days; and (5) a survey project requiring students to create a video and an online survey. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Blogging, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Kelli Burns, Myspace, Research, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Twitter, University of South Florida, YouTube

Using Social Media to Develop Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

May 29, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Wanda Reyes, Sam Houston State University

I use YouTube and Facebook in Principles of Public Relations to help my students develop critical thinking skills. This course introduces students to theories and their applications in public relations. The main goal is to have students learn to analyze and critically evaluate ideas, arguments, and point of views related to the public relations practice.

Since public relations practitioners operate under a wide range of environmental influences, there are no cookie cutters in the public relations practice (Guth & March, 2005). Communication strategies or programs that may work in one situation, may not work in another. Hence, public relations practitioners must think critically before making decisions. To encourage my students to develop critical thinking skills so they can apply course content to public relations situations, I designed different assignments and exercises that use both traditional and social media. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Critical Thinking, Facebook, Public Relations, Sam Houston State University, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Wanda Reyes, YouTube

How To Integrate Social Networks And Blogs Into Traditional Curriculums

May 29, 2010 By AEJMC 1 Comment

By Keith Quesenberry, Temple University

Introduction

Social Media is growing and changing the way we live, the way we do business and the way we connect. The latest numbers indicate that in December 2009 the social network Facebook surpassed 100 million active users in the U.S. and over 350 million worldwide (Smith, 2010). Blogs are, well, everywhere. The latest number I could find was in 2008 when the Blog Herald reported that there were roughly 200 million blogs (Helmond, 2008). Since then it seems people have given up counting. Even CEOs are blogging. Sun Microsystems CEO Blog gets 400,000 hits a month (Balwani, 2009). Bloggers are now legitimate media gaining access to and asking questions of the President at Whitehouse press conferences (Baker, 2009). And Facebook has become large enough and influential enough to draw fire from U.S Senators over its privacy settings (Patel, 2010).

Social media is here to stay and will only further infiltrate how we socialize, conduct business and learn. But how do we integrate emerging Web 2.0 technologies into an established, traditional university curriculum? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Blackboard, Blogging, Buddypress, Facebook, Keith Quesenberry, Ning, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Social Networking, Temple University, Wordpress

Extreme Social Media

March 6, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Brad King, Assistant Professor, Ball State University

On Thursday Oct 15, Hallmark Homes Inc., a home builder in the Muncie, Jnd. area, approached the Ball State University Department of Journalism with an interesting request: assemble three teams of students for a project with ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a popular television program through which a family receives a new house in seven days. The show would be coming to Bunker Hill, about 70 miles north of the university.

Derek Wilder, Hallmark’s chief executive officer, wanted to make sure that the thousands of volunteers, builders and sponsors — many of whom don’t receive recognition on the television program — had the opportunity to have their stories told. The catch for the team, though, was that the show won’t air until sometime in January, which meant we had to build not only the network, but the media outreach as well. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Blogging, Brad King, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Social Media, Tech Meme, TV, Twitter, YouTube