Clare Cook

Social media as a networking tool

USING social media is key to employability and brand building, according to two recent graduates of Uclan.

Simon Harrow and Nigel Barlow set out some key reflections on how students and companies can embrace social media to get ahead, during an event on Equipping the Entrepeneurial Journalist.

You can follow Simon on Twitter http://twitter.com/simonharrow and Nigel Barlow on @nigelbarlow http://twitter.com/NigelBarlow

Social media should be seen as the new interpretation of Network Theory: where connecting with people is not about everyone - but finding the key people you need to know to get ahead.  Working on the mathematical model of six degrees of separation, companies and brands should consider connecting with and finding a hub: the one person with a 1,000 contacts who is the centre of any one community and topic rather than connecting with 1,000 contacts who all know one person each.

It's important stuff when you think about harnessing social media in the most effective way possible.

If in social media we can connect with the key people you are more likely to increase the brand exposure you need.

Reflections included the need to use social media as a strategy: not one tool such as Facebook, but a myriad of platforms all linking together. Social media are channels and a way of staying ahead of the game. In Simon's words: social media it's not bullshit it's branding.

He advocates the use of LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Slideshare together to cross over the impact of social media. He also set out the power of using an hour a day to check out all relevant RSS feeds and Twitter updates with skim reading, just to get a vibe of what is out there. Remember that if something is worth knowing it will hang around for a few days as the conversation moves from the early innovators to the laggards!

And there is no denying that what is out there is changing all the time: the pace of change is phenomenal.

Here are some tips on harnessing social media to extend brands for the Net Gen:

• social media is a way of staying ahead so build up a strategy for distributing and targetting content
• social media is organic - don't forget it. It works by filtering the good stuff to the top so it can't be bought.
• develop your brand step by step. You can easily open a blog and block comments or lock Twitter accounts while you settle into a tone and niche you are comfortable with
• social media is one channel - it is a tactic. Use it with other tactics to form your overall strategy
• social media is not free - it is time consuming but rewarding. You have to be out there giving as well as receiving
• social media is a conversation prism and can't be independent of other marketing strategies
• find the 'hub' of your niche market and use them to get information out to lots more people - that is what being connected really means
• create an online persona and this can be different from your 'social' social media
• create a space and links
• create quality content

If you follow these tips there is no reason why social media can't do the following for you:

• build a brand
• create a network
• enhance SEO
• drive traffic
• drive sales
• improve data capture
• crisis manage

Assessing engagement in social media: how to?

In my ongoing reflections about how to teach and assess social media in higher education for the training of journalists, I focus here on some of the issues surounding assessment in particular. This is a particular tricky area for universities as many lecturers do not know whether gated communities - which protect from libel, defamation and copyright issues - are the best way forward, even knowing the compromise of closing off students from the wider debate and perhaps the main thrust of the internet and the philosophy of joined up thinking.

As a lecturer at Uclan, this has formed the crux of my case study.

How to assess engagement in social media?

This paper has so far set out the context surrounding what social media tools need to be taught to maintain a vibrant and relevant curriculum within a rapidly changing journalism profession. It has also set out considerations on how these tools can be taught. The next logical question for any reflective practitioner then turns to how best to assess engagement in social media. This is, as yet, an area which would benefit from extensive further research.

There is compelling evidence in the assessment structures within JoMec that there is a need to address a fundamental shift towards a student empowered environment. Journalism students are currently asked to keep all social media tools such as blogs, which are to be used for course content creation or assessment, as closed access. Students are prevented from using microblogging tools within guest lectures and advised against posting work on public publishing tools such as Issuu. However, ask any lecturer within the school and they do not really understand why this is – a reflection which prompted this paper. Even advice from Aquasu is patchy: the guidelines currently in place are only vaguely relevant (the regulations deemed relevant to this paper concerned Conduct of Students, the use of IT facilities, Personal Internet Presence and Unfair Means to Enhance Performance). Frustratingly, decisions about how best to proceed with assessment hinge on unravelling the universities responsibilities in light of confidentiality in assessment, as well as how best to deal with plagiarism, copyright and privacy. According to Aquasu, the University does not have any rules relating to confidentiality in the assessment process.

Many institutions and lecturers, those at Uclan included, have reacted to the web 2.0 phenomenon by keeping student learning experiences behind firewalls or within gated communities, including blogs and wikis that are closed access. The justification for this can also centre on concerns relating to copyright infringement and plagiarism, as well as naming of sources, and the potential risks of defamation or libel. Some lecturers have also highlighted the need to preserve confidentiality in assessment. Many researchers have also advocated the need for closed, safe learning environments where learners have the chance to make ‘private’ mistakes. It is also essential to note that no lecturer can – or should – control the sources open to a student. Jomec therefore needs to unpick guidelines, in partnership with Aquasu and the Society for Research into Higher Education, SEDA and the HEA, as to what restrictions are needed and should apply to assessment. This is particularly relevant for issues of copyright – a law which is currently experiencing dominant shifts. At present, there is little evidence to suggest that, unless the student was making money from copyrighted material, prosecutions would actually take place.

With a clearer grasp of JoMec’s legal responsibilities towards assessing engagement in social media, practitioners would be in a much clearer position to work out how that assessment should take place. Opening access to social media would magnify student experience as it would harness the true ‘epochal change’ Shirky (2008) sets out for the internet age. Former Uclan undergraduate Nigel Barlow argues that ‘university regulations are restricting content creation’. As Mason and Rennie (2008 p62) argue, blogs which are restricted access can be ‘counter productive in seeking to engage with the global learning community’. And universities are handling the issue at different paces: Manchester Metropolitan University advertising and marketing students actively promote material on social video sites. Ultimately, if student work is ‘out there’ it can be seen by future employers nor can trainee journalists experience ‘real’ first hand social media – or be expected to reflect on it ahead of their professional development – if their experience has been cloistered.

However, assessing engagement in social media also has to take account of quality assurance and provide an appropriate audit trail. Assessing time sensitive live social media would be unsatisfactory for the professional journalism governing bodies as well as the internal audit processes at Uclan. If journalism practitioners involved in teaching and assessing social media are to use assessment effectively, attitudes to quality assurance and the process of judging engagement need to be rethought


Assessing process or product...

One key reflection from this paper highlights the need to differentiate whether product or process are being assessed – as different strategies will be appropriate for each. Any reflective practitioner would need to be clear on what the learning objectives are and what you are assessing, and this will need to be shaped to marry with the nature of the skill being taught. This will undoubtedly change depending on the cognitive level expected from students in varying under- or post-graduate groups. One would need to set out requirements in terms of conduct, contracts and relationships, and be clear what kind of social interaction you are expecting to take place. Just as there are different levels of cognitive exchange on platforms, there are differing methodologies for assessments. From this, values can potentially be placed on what it means to be engaged.

Rather than trying to close-off student learning and assess content production, where social media is concerned, the emphasis can shift onto assessing the process. Mason and Rennie (2008) begin an exploration of this when they discuss the changing role of quality assurance in higher education. They state that higher education needs to adapt away from the old, control-based model to the new characteristics of web 2.0 where the users are empowered with overwhelming resources and there is no central control. Conrad 1993 would argue ‘it is through discourse that individuals develop their own views of morality; and through discourse that incongruities within individual organisational value sets are managed and negotiated’.

As can be seen from the following grid, shifting emphasis away from product onto process would allow assessment to be formative or summative, and confidential. In this way - and considering the earlier differential between a private student and a trainee journalist - the actual engagement that takes place with social media becomes the student experience but the reporting of it falls into the realm of trainee journalist. For example, if a student were to Tweet from a lecture, this is part of their private brand-building (and would be governed by the Aquasu regulations). When the student uses an example of Tweets as evidence of engagement in social media, it becomes their work as a trainee journalist (and should be assessed under module learning outcomes or Jomec criteria).

As has been stated earlier, the fickle nature of social media poses a pivotal challenge for assessment strategies as it would be impractical for lecturers to have to change the resource platform for assessment every time technology changes. Elliott (2007) sets out considerations for assessment to be reshaped to embrace web 2.0. His paper Assessment 2.0 maps a combination of Live Search, RSS feeds, Furl or Clipmark, Google docs, Netvibes and Box.net being used to track a user’s experience online.

However there is still a place for using product within the teaching of social media. Assessment can valuably centre on producing social media products such as Yahoo pipes, Mashups, online newspapers on websites, or social media sites such as Ning. Here the assessment would set out to encourage content production rather than the process behind it. The department needs an urgent reappraisal of why these platforms need to stay ‘closed access’. When choosing what assessment to use to gauge engagement in social media, the examples set out in Appendix 2 may be of interest.

Assessing engagement in social media

Examples of learning objectives, assessment criteria and possible methods for assessment

LEARNING OBJECTIVE Journalism student creating a brand around their social media   

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Have they followed appropriate online guidelines on policy?
How have comments and social interaction been conducted?
What evidence of professionalism is there?
What kind of information is being circulated or exchanged by the student?    Could Google their profile or ask250people.com and see what sort of profile they have ( privacy issues)

POSSIBLE ASSESSMENT STRATEGY Weekly check sheet for them to complete assessing what they have done. What are you going to try this week (get students to set the task themselves) coupled with focussed reflection each week. This could be done on a shared social space online.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE Use of social media tools   
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA How have they been used, frequency
Connectivity – how do they publish, engage with others, generate and participate   
Multimedia presentations such as Breeze where students present a ‘tour’ of online communities engaged with.

POSSIBLE ASSESSMENT STRATEGY Audio visual pods which can share screens and content. Could embed recordings and online conversations.

Problem-based learning - students asked to produce a presentation made up of ‘live’ links to updates on social sites and evidence of where they have engaged with it

I have more examples of marrying objectives with assessment criteria and possible assessment strategies if you need them. Any suggestions and ideas are most welcome!

How to teach social media to journalists

As part of an ongoing series on teaching and assessing engagement in social media to journalists, her I look at some of the issues affecting how higher education lecturers actually go about teaching social media. It's not easy!

The original research questions were set out here and I would welcome feedback...

How to teach?

Mason and Rennie (2008 p44) note the need to identify to learners the difference between ‘need to know’ and ‘nice to know’. This is especially relevant for the practitioner who finds themselves with a diverse student body with a wide range of core skills in terms of social media. As with so much design, the practitioner needs to build on what students already know. It is important for the lecturer to resist any temptation to wander into the extremes: an early adopter appearing infatuated with every new site and new development can be as overwhelming as a Neo Luddite, who resists the use of any digital tools, is underwhelming. Extensive discussions with colleagues in the department reveal a full spectrum of engagement.

As Godwin-Jones notes, one of the most lucrative real time developments of the web is ‘how new social networking phenomena on the web like community tagging, shared bookmarking and blogs have created convergence between consumers and creators, between reading and writing, between public and private spaces’. It is this convergence that is at the heart of our dilemma in terms of teaching and assessing social media: how to ally the public world of journalistic practice with private learning spaces for students within the university. In my experience within the department, no one really ‘knows’ the answer and it is this looming sense of grey area that is hindering our moves forward.

Buttry 2009 recommends that social media be incorporated throughout the curriculum from writing, visual journalism content dissemination, ethics and social media strategy in management. Mason and Rennie (2008 p46) turn to the basics of pedagogy and encourage practitioners to remember the principles of course design: work out ‘what it is you want the learner to be able to do’ and then ask ‘what tools do they need to prove they can use it’. So far this is failing to be delivered within the department. Instead, colleagues seem to feel social media has to be taught by a ‘digital journalism’ specialist which results in a raft of workload issues. Some of the reasons for this have already been touched on but it could also be rooted in confusion on how to teach social media.

It is essential for there to be a clear, department-wide policy on how to teach social media which also sets out a framework of expected behaviour. Richardson (2006) states that safety is about responsibility, appropriateness, common sense and our obligation to teach what is acceptable. Concerns range from exposing the department to plagiarism, copyright, libel and defamation cases to wanting to create private learning spaces.  For example, if students were asked to consider Facebook as a professional platform them you could be accused of invading their personal space. JoMec needs to take further steps to set out a teaching strategy in a web 2.0 environment. If lecturers were confident they had taken whatever steps necessary to protect students in an online environment, as well as educating them on plagiarism, copyright and intellectual property, then more transparent and open exchanges could take place.

How to teach social media is also affected in the department by the sheer number of students. Some universities can offer blogs, for example, and monitor exchange and comments. However JoMec has 450 undergraduates and it would be impossible to monitor the social media presence of all the students in our care.

Key aspects of how to teach social media will depend on what needs to be taught and the year of study. Issues of how to teach can be loosely categorized, in accordance with earlier topics, as follows:

•    Helping students to conceptualize the range of tools out there
Classroom example: Several social media tools can be presented with relevant examples of its journalistic use backed up with evidence of use in a professional setting. Students are then asked to find new tools, discuss how they could be useful, and share them on a class wiki. Problem-based learning on news days has been used with limited success to date.

•    How to log on or step by step ‘how to’ guides
Classroom example . Task setting on closed online learning spaces such as webct have been used to good effect with worksheets that students can follow step by step. A portfolio of technical skills can be effectively built up in this way in a student’s own time. Most technical skills can be taught in this way. Feedback from lecturing staff clashes with students on this matter: lecturers do not want to ‘waste’ time showing undergraduates how to push buttons while this level of hand holding is often desired by students

•    Role and purpose of tools in a journalistic setting
Classroom example: smaller study groups can be used to discuss, analyse and evaluate the purpose of tools. The findings could be presented by way of multimedia packages or social platforms. Reflection, commentary and critique could be learning objectives. Blogs combine solitary reflection and social interaction. Online virtual classrooms such as Twiddla have worked well for debate and discussions.



•    The business and ethics of modern-day journalism
Classroom example: Lectures and seminar activities around ethics, revenues, audiences, copyright, plagiarism and newsroom structures will assist students to unpick the key issues at play and then critically engage.

•    How to filter news or be a sense maker, managing UGC
Classroom example: problem- or task-based learning can focus students’ attention to detail while reflection will help make sense of ‘why’. Real-life simulations or role plays could also generate opportunities to teach crowd sourcing and interaction.

Teaching social media to journalists: what to teach?

In the second part of my research working out what lecturers should teach journalists I set out some of the key skills journalists need to learn.

The original research questions are set out here

What to teach? Technically

As the Online Journalism Blog advocates, ‘technology is not a strategy: it’s a tool’. In an attempt to decide what technical tools to focus on within curriculum design, a qualitative assessment of social media being used by professionals can help. The University of Central Lancashire Meld Pathfinder project (Egglestone 2008) is an innovative collaboration between Uclan’s Department of Journalism, Sandbox and journalists from the BBC, Sky News, the Times, the Independent, Haymarket Media, Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror. Editors, designers, reporters and filmmakers are turning their attention to what the media landscape might look like in a decade - and to the skills journalists will need to work in this new world. I have also used blogs and feedback from professional journalists as an invaluable source of commentary about what is being used in newsrooms, and can be used as a fundamental acknowledgement of relevance in a pedagogic setting.

The skills set for a modern day journalist is certainly extensive – and this leaves many journalism lecturers who consider themselves to be ‘print’ or ‘broadcast’ feeling overwhelmed. The Bivings Report (2008) has carried out numerous quantitative assessments of the tools being used in newsrooms. Paul Bradshaw, lecturer at Birmingham City University, and creator of the Online Journalism Blog, advocates the need for students to be competent with file sharing and networking. Mashable: the social media guide presents several posts on what journalism curricula needs to include along with a relevant check list from Vadim Lavrusik (2009). Social media strategist Woody Lewis goes as far as stating: ‘Social journalism is more than a buzzword, it’s the way social media will save the industry.’

Due to space and resource limitations this paper attempts to set out a qualitative summary of the key technical social media tools journalism students need to master. Ultimately the emphasis when teaching social media needs to be concepts rather than brands – and their power as a journalistic tool:

•    Publishing for the web – writing Understanding self publishing – ‘the essence of blogs is dialogue – that blogs invite people to engage in a conversation about a myriad of topics’ (Smuddle 2005). Writing for the web as a new writing skill, linking and collaboration
Classroom example: Blogger, wordpress, typepad

•    Publishing for the web – Videoing and multimedia content creation
Classroom example: Qik.com, Bambuser,Mogulus.com, uStream.tv, Spinvox, YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, Viddler.com, Jumpcut.com

•    Publishing for the web - Live interaction and compilation software
Classroom example: CoveritLive, Yahoo Pipes, Google Maps

•    Publishing with social tools such as bookmarking and file sharing sites to meet the audience where they are. Here the emphasis is on the creation of folksonomies (Godwin-Jones 2006) and the consensual classification of data as a democratic application of the semantic web.
Classroom example, Flickr, Delicious, Digg it, Stumbleupon

•    Promoting content and driving traffic to news websites by engaging with relevant social networks (more online events or making the most of user generated content) 
Classroom examples: Tweetburner, Feedburner, Ping.fm, Second life
Hi5, Frendster, Beebo, Facebook, MySpace, Blackplanet, Xanga

•    Interviewing in relevant formats to embed directly onto online posts and sites
Classroom examples: Skype or Adobe Breeze, Vuvox.com
Spinvox, SproutBuilder.com, Utterz.com

•    Crowdsourcing using social media
Classroom example: British start-up Yoosk is an effective way of gathering questions while Twitter can build community. Ask500people.com can poll


•    Relevant online searches and trend tracking
Classroom examples: search.twitter.com, Hashtags.org, Technorati, Twellow.com, Twellow and TweetScan Technorati  Icerocket, Blogpulse)

•    Computer assisted reporting and finding stories
Classroom examples: http://www.alertnet.org/mediabridge/ http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk/weekahead.shtml
https://profnet.prnewswire.com/

Teaching social media to journalists: what to teach?

Journalism lecturers across the world are doing their best to work out what to teach journalists of the future - and it's not an easy one to answer as the skill set seems to be getting ever larger.

In the original research questions I have attempted to take some steps to summarise a few major points.

What to teach? Being a modern journalist

Armed with an understanding of the broad categories of social media, journalism lecturing practitioners can begin to unravel what social tools students need to learn. These can be divided into the wider concepts of being a modern journalist and new, technical tools of the trade. For Uclan, where professional accreditation is required, with bodies such as the Periodical Training Council, the National Council for the Training of Journalists and the Broadcast Journalism Training Council, such issues become ever more pivotal.

Social media platforms are susceptible to fickle popularity trends and journalists of the future need to be able to distinguish brand and functionality.
Relevance and timeliness are key – and, on reflection, this is not simply a ‘get out clause’ for not knowing every social tool out there. Facebook, Bebo, Plurking, Twitter: the volatility of popularity among youthful users within social media mean it is important for lecturers to distinguish from the outset that the pedagogy behind social media must focus on the functionality of tools rather than the brand. Now change happens at an ‘inaccessible pace’ (Gillani 2003), teaching social media can focus on the cognitive analysis of use and purpose rather than mere product recognition, helping the lecturer feel less exposed if they are ‘out of the loop’ on the latest craze – one of the most off putting aspects of delivering social media teaching. Without time to trawl RSS and Twitter feeds, I soon feel out of touch. Dailly and Price (2007) state: “The rapid pace of change presents a challenge to staff in simply being aware of the possibilities presented by new technologies.”

Many journalism lecturers are then faced with the dilemma of where the boundary lies between being a private student and a trainee journalist. Without clear department guidelines, I often feel like I am left to fumble through. Mason and Rennie (2008 p78) point out the responsibility lecturers have to educate on the: “skills in how to cope with the virtual relationships and to understand what friendship means in the new social culture created by the web 2.0 community.” It is imperative to teach what it means to present oneself online. Uclan’s Personal Internet Presence A guide for students is a first step and the School of Journalism, Media and Communication currently provides guidelines within Module Information Packs on online conduct, with notes on copyright, plagiarism, minimising harm, accountability, fairness, taste and decency (Appendix 1), authored by senior lecturer Andrew Dickinson. However there is still inherent confusion as to what and how to teach social media within the department.

Resource and space limitations restrict this paper to present a summary of what needs to be taught within curriculum design to be a modern journalist:
•    Newsroom structures and the nature of collaboration in a digital economy
•    Personal brand. Social networks and writing platforms can be used to build journalists as a brand.
•    Ethics – how to behave online
•    Experimenting. Many news organisations, regardless of size, are looking for journalists to enter the industry with new ideas and innovative concepts to move the digital world of journalism on. The current trend of newspapers opening up their APIs could potentially mean the need for developers and end-users to tap into freedoms for innovation.
•    How to be a sense maker and filter news for audiences. Understanding collective filtering on sites such as eBay or Lonely planet.
•    Managing user-generated content
•    Building brands, networks and managing relationships. Zyman (2002) states ‘fish where the fish are and you’ll be a lot more successful’.
•    Exploratory issues in terms of copyright, plagiarism and intellectual property rights.
•    Audiences and revenues – changing media business models

Teaching and assessing social media: reflections on a social world

In the first part of my latest research paper I set out three key research questions I think journalism departments are grappling with at the moment as they look at how best to teach and assess social media.

In the second part, I make some reflections - as best I can - on what it means to be social.

A social world

Despite the spread of social tools in mass media and academia, little scholarly work has explored the pedagogic positioning of social media tools within journalism curriculum. So far the majority of works focus solely on social media as a way of creating distance or flexible learning without approaching the pedagogy of using social media in teaching and learning as a preparatory industry skill. However, social media has become an integral job component of several journalists, bloggers and communication professionals in a bid to harness audience engagement and build community (Wall 2005). As such, it is essential to steadily expand the body of work dedicated to understanding how social media can be harnessed by trainee journalists. How to assess engagement in web 2.0 as a content provider is particularly under researched with only some leading edge practitioners beginning to talk about how web 2.0 tools can be used in assessment. This paper therefore offers a timely opportunity to look at how journalism lecturing needs to approach teaching and assessment in social media.

Gillani 2003 proposes four key themes which will impact on the teaching of a web-savvy university population: information overload, student diversity, learning theories and the web as a medium of instructional delivery. Gillani proposes a web that is an ‘inquiry and project-based problem solving tool’ that allows educators to incorporate experiences and facilitate meaningful learning.
He argues that traditional education was built never imagining that humankind had the ability to create more information than individuals could absorb: a revelation which is acutely relevant when applied to the joined-up empowerment of social media. ‘One of the key features of the evolving online world is that it offers an ever shifting blend of individualisation and community involvement’ (Godwin-Jones 2006).

As Richardson points out (2006 p89) university students have the ability to reach audiences and resources well beyond the physical classroom bounds. The lecturer’s toolbox must at the very least incorporate aggregators, weblogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking, audio and video casts, online galleries and microblogs. “Whether it’s blogs or wikis or RSS all roads now point to a web where little is done in isolation and all things are collaborative and social in nature”. Rennie and Mason (2004) go as far as to say the web 2.0 concept is based on the underlying principle of harnessing collective intelligence.

Anderson (2007) sets out a compelling case for the forces of change within social media that will have a profound impact on education in the future. These include the wisdom of crowds and how the power of groups will compete with the previous notion of ‘expert’, how user generated content and ‘do it yourself’ will erode academy as a source of elete information, and how profound debates over intellectual property and copyright along with new tools for aggregating and disseminating information will come to the fore.

Such joined-up communities pose a challenge for lecturers in higher education as how best to teach social media. Much academic literature has been dedicated to the use of web 2.0 technologies in classrooms as a way of delivering curriculum. Franklin and Harmelen (2007) offer a summary of uses of social technology in universities while Anderson and Whitlock (2004), Fernheimer (2005), Leu and El-Hindi reflect on the pedagogic applications of social media within and between students to promote engagement. American lecturer Mindy McAdams has long advocated a range of strategies for teaching online journalism on his blog while Carlson (2005), Kapp (2006) and Cross (2007) highlight the limitations of web 2.0 within education.

It is also essential to differentiate that there is not space within this paper to look at the characteristics of learners when dealing with web 2.0 tools. This topic has been explored by Brown and Duguid (2000) and Allen and Seaman (2006), Kvavik and Caruso (2005) and Johnson and Johnson (2004), who analyse the power of collaborative learning. Many researchers consider course design within constructivist alignment to be highly compatible with using web 2.0 tools.

However this paper proposes to focus specifically on the convergence between what students consider to be of relevance to their journalistic training and what professionals prioritise. My reflections on the themes of this paper were a timely opportunity to accept that journalism is not an ‘academic subject it’s a trade’ (Townend 2010). The first step in identifying this need is to attempt a clarification of social media in light of the fragmented and speedy changes which have taken place in the last two years.

Social media commentator Jeff Jarvis goes as far as presenting social media as a definition for the internet per se: ‘the internet is all about relationships and connections’ (Jarvis 2008). Clay Shirky would defend social media as the empowering force capable of mobilizing citizens, but believes that organizing power for real world action on the Internet is still lacking. Claire Cain Miller notes how social media such as micro blogging exploded to unprecedented popularity by outsourcing “its idea generation to its users” (Muthukumaraswamy 2009). These definitions are of particular relevance as, in my experience, few journalism lecturers feel they know what social media are important, which creates disparate reactions to what and how it should be taught.

For the purposes of this paper, social media is deemed to refer to all methods of communication which are related to sharing and facilitating the dissemination of news, information and views within the profession of journalism. These include:
•    Blogs and wikis as software to facilitate group thinking and corpus’ of knowledge compiling a set of interlinked and edited pages, a fresh approach to sharing information and extending discussions, making connections with audiences and opinions
•    Microblogging (Twitter, Plurk) where 140 character updates reflect discourse in real time. These tools are used extensively to crowd source
•    Social bookmarking to record and tag commonality (Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon) can be a building block to understanding linking strategies on the net and an activity in classifying information
•    Media storage and sharing sites (Youtube, Flickr, iTunes, Slideshare, Deviantart) as ways of building community around media brands.
•    Social networking advocating the creation of sub communities and communities of interest, friends and ranking (Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Linkedin, Second Life, Elgg). Offer simulation and emersion in a very powerful way.
•    Collaborative editing tools (Google docs, Twiddlar, wiki) where images, sound and text combine to facilitate the construction of knowledge
•    User generated content (producing and consuming content become synonymous)
•    Communication tools (SMS, Skype, Breeze, Google talk, Seesmic, Podcasts)
•    Syndication notification services (Feedreader and RSS)
•    Mash-ups and user-custom data (Google maps, Yahoo pipes)

Teaching and assessing student engagement in social media

In my most recent paper Tag me, tweet me, ting me: Teaching and assessing student engagement in social media, I have been looking at ways the journalism pedagogy can be expanded to embrace social media.

The paper looks at the exciting new area of how journalism practitioners and lecturers need to make sure journalists of the future know how to make the most of social media.

The profession of journalism has experienced an unprecedented tsunami of change in the last two years and journalism teaching must respond. The Net Generation (Tapscott 2008) are more savvy, switched on and social than any preceding learners. They think nothing of creating, editing and publishing social content in a wired web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2005) world that they control.

Tag me, Tweet me, Ting me: teaching and assessing student engagement in social media sets out to look at three key research questions at a time of revolutionary change in media habits, which are affecting the delivery of journalism teaching at Uclan.

How as lecturing practitioners do we decide what social tools students need to learn? Social media platforms are susceptible to fickle popularity trends and journalists of the future need to be able to distinguish brand and functionality.

How can lecturers encourage engagement with social media in a professional way? Using tools socially and professionally are entirely different learning objectives and lecturers need to identify how meaningful engagement is quantified. How can university teaching of social media in journalism converge what students, on one hand, and professionals, on the other, deem relevant?

How can engagement in social media be assessed and what are the best tools to measure engagement? How do we balance our responsibilities to create gated, safe learning environments which offer some protection from libel and copyright with the need for students to build-up real life profiles and practices?

My reflections while researching this paper and discussing the content with several colleagues, have revealed an inherent confusion across the department as to what and how we should teach and assess engagement with social media.

The creators of the web’s most iconic social tools, from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Jack Dorsey’s Twitter, or Google’s Tim Berners-Lee, all had one philosophy in common: making the web a collaborative medium. With news organizations such as the BBC and CNN pushing social media to the top of the journalist’s toolkit (Bunz 2010), journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. The question for journalism lecturers is how do we educationalise Gillmor’s concept that ‘my readers know more than I do’, Tapscott’s identification of the Net Gen Prosumer and engage with Clay Shirky’s epochal change to create journalists of the future capable of advancing the profession to the heights it deserves?
 
Initial reactions welcome!