How to participate in a hashtagged event

For those of you learning the ways of the twittersphere, here is another tip. In a previous post, I broke down the basic terms used by tweeters. Today, I am going to show how to join a conversation marked by a #hashtag. A hashtag is a term that is tagged to all conversations related to one topic. The tag enables the  retrieval of those posts. An easy way to join a conversation is by going to TweetChat. You can participate in the conversation after you type in the hashtag.

I wanted to share this information with you because tonight educators, professionals, students and other online communicators can participate in a chat about the state of journalism education on the page or via Twitter. The hashtag is #collegejourn. The conversation focuses on how to best prepare students and addresses the quality of faculty and other educators. The chat begins at 8 p.m. EST.

New: collegejourn will be not a hashtag event, it is a live chat. Just go directly to the site.

Online video storytelling and trends

I will share with you my lecture on online video trends. The focus of this lecture concentrates on educating my students on how online video is different than broadcast video including current trends.

Broadcast news organizations perform an important function by providing the top news stories of the day. People expect this information when they tune into the news. However, many of those stories may not be visual. In the past, I used to tell my students to use a detached, wide-shots when narrating important information because audience members could not cognitively handle important factual information under interesting video. Imagine talking about the number of renters abandoning pets in this economic crisis while watching a kitten playing with a string. People will most likely only see the kitten, and not hear the narration.

In the online environment, online communicators can communicate critical facts in other ways such as text or graphics.

The beauty of the online environment is that only video pieces that are visually worthy should be placed online. This is why you should see more raw video online. However, a common mistake I see is that people will write the text first without considering the visuals or audio. Writers should weave narration in between audio and video. To accomplish this, video writers should listen to their audio and watch their video before writing.

Post your lectures on Slideshare

I just joined Slideshare. I would suggest that people wanting to learn about the teaching of newer media or people wanting to share their presentations with others including students should join Slideshare. Here is my presentation on Social Media and Personal Branding.

Some newspaper bloggers don’t get blogging

Recent research conducted by Larry Daily, Lori Demo, and Mary Spillman in the Newspaper Research Journal shows that professional journalism newspaper political bloggers rarely post and do little to interact with their readers. The study showed that a quarter of bloggers did not post within the sampled week and the median number of posts were four for that time period.

The results also show that the political bloggers did little to engage their readers. The purpose of the comment is to build community, however 80% of the blog authors in the study did not post one comment, and the average number of comments received readers was one a day. In the blogging world, bloggers typically respond to their readers via comments or email.

The authors offered some advice on areas of reflection for newsrooms:

• Placing comments on a separate page increases page views, but hinders conversation
• Ask your blogger whether they are truly committed to increasing civic conversation
• Few comments means that the blogger may not understand the culture of blogosphere

Twitter demystified

Last week my students learned about Twitter. Dawn Gilpin, Arizona State University professor, taught my students the basics of Twitter. And she did a great job. I would suggest that anyone wanting to learn about Twitter should seek out someone who is a part of that culture before embarking on Twitter because each social media tool has its own culture.

Twitter is a tool you can use to monitor people, organizations or events in real time. Think of it as a human search engine. If you need information, you can ask people who follow you if they have any suggestions. I use it keep to abreast of issues and networking with people in the field of technology, journalism and public relations. Unlike Facebook, it is much more open. You can follow anyone who you respect as information source, and it is not creepy. If you follow people who talk about their day rather than share information, you are following the wrong people!

Journalists can also use it to follow news organizations for breaking news stories or to find sources. However, as Dr. Gilpin says, Twitter is more about individuals sharing with one another, rather than following organizations. You will find often that people share links with their followers. “Followers” are people who follow your tweets or posts. I downloaded TweetDeck to my computer to follow my tweets. I would suggest you tweet or write a few posts before you follow people. The reason is because you will look like an unattractive information source if you have no information on your home page, and people will not want to follow you back.

Dr. Gilpin shared the four elements of a tweet:

• Tweet – 140 character post.
• @reply (@drcarp) – place before message(tweet) to respond to someone who posted.
• Retweet (RT@drcarp) – the sharing of someone’s post with your followers because you like the information that they shared. It is called retweeting and it builds community.
• #hashtag (#journchat) – hashtags are attached to the end of a post. The hashtag symbolizes that the post is about a topic, such as event or conference, that people are tweeting. The hashtag turns into a link so you can see all of the tweets about that event.

I recently joined the Twittersphere. You can follow me @drcarp. It is a wonderful place to network. Think of the people you respect, and follow them. You can also see who I follow to get started.

Also, here are some technology gurus in the field of journalism to follow, some suggestions for journalism students, and some suggestions for journalists.

And here are few for public relations professionals provided by Dawn Gilpin:
@kamichat – A PR professional in Texas
@heatherhuhman – An internship/entry-level job placement specialist
for PR
@prprof_mv – A PR professor at Clemson University
@KarenRussell – A PR professor at UGA
@PRjobs – Lindsay Olson, a recruiter specialized in PR
@iabc – International Association of Business Communicators
@prsa – Public Relations Society of America

Twitter intertwined with social media

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that acts like a human search engine. Twitter can be used to monitor people or topics in real time, which is a useful reporting tool. I have recently joined the twitosphere and love it. You can follow me tweets, which are 140 character posts by clicking “follow” on my page. I will break down the twitter terminology in a future post for you.

Here are some highlights of the recent Pew/Internet Report on Twitter.

• 11% of online adults use Twitter
• Users skew younger, median age 31
• Twitter is intertwined with use of blogs and social network sites
• Twitter users consume blog content; 21% read someone else’s blog “yesterday” and 29% have created a blog

MediaPost broke down the report as well.

Encourage students to comment

My students started their own blogs. This is a typical assignment I have them do every semester in my Online Media class, however this is the first semester I required them to comment on other blogger’s blogs related to their topic. So far, I have found it a valuable addition to their blogging assignment because through their comments they are driving traffic to their site and exchanging comments with other fellow bloggers, which builds community. This comment assignments helps them more quickly understand the blogosphere and the norms of the blogging community.

Comments assignment
You must comment on other blogs related to your blog topic. Comments must add value to the post and invite reflection/conversation. Comments should not just say  “good job” or “nice post.” Comments must be on recent posts within a one month period. On the date of when each blog post is due, you must email me: 1) the blog post URL and 2) your actual comment.

Live blogging in the classroom

The director of new media for the Detroit News, Mark Hinojosa, spoke to my Online Media class yesterday about journalism business models and how to craft content with readers in mind. To make the speaker’s lecture more interactive, my students live blogged the speaker using Cover It Live, a simple free tool for people can use to share live commentary of an event.

The students can share their name, comment, and an URL. From my end as the administrator, I can select comments and share photos, video, and polls. I embedded the live blog on the Online Media class blog. The conversation that evolved consisted of students sharing information and commentary related to the topic of the moment while Mark Hinojosa was speaking. I thought that it was a great experiment to get students engaged, share their knowledge on the topic, and to encourage them to think critically about what the speaker was saying.

I have a handout on how to create a live blog using Cover It Live on my teaching page.

New semester, and I am back

I took this Christmas break to unplug and focus on writing research. To let you know, I spend 50%ish of my work time teaching, 40% teaching, 5% keeping up with newer media trends, and 5% service. But I am back. I have been only blogging for a few months, and I miss it. This semester I plan to share with you deciphered research on newer media, teaching materials and classroom experiments.

To kick it off, I wanted to share with you my revamped syllabus on my teaching page. I added more class time to social media, which I believe is an important skill in understanding how to promote your content and yourself. I will address this subject more in a later blog post.

Twitter Updates

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