2023 – Summer

Toolkit: Reporting with Social Media (2-credit) (5/31 – 6/28)

Course Number: SS0: JOUR-UA 25.001

Day & Time: Mon/Wed 6:20-9:20 pm

Location: 20 Cooper Sq.

Albert Class Number: 2544

Social media serves as an essential tool not only for how today’s reporters research and report the news, but also how they present and promote the news. It represents a constantly evolving shift from even just a decade ago. In this course, students will learn how to track down diverse, high-quality primary sources through social channels and engage with them; conduct geographically focused research to facilitate reporting far away from the scene; and craft news reports that meet the interests of a social-media obsessed audience. We’ll do it all while serving the public-interest objectives of serious news outlets. Students will write traditional stories using information and sources from social media, and we’ll utilize non-traditional storytelling platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram Stories to deliver our journalism.

In addition, we’ll study social media habits across age groups, including how authors build personal readerships, how stories go viral, and today’s overwhelmingly mobile audience for news. We’ll follow the data, exploring insights from social media analytics and scheduling platforms, while remaining true to the ethics and tenets of high-quality journalism.