A journalism professor seeks advice on learning and teaching social media

Joe Sheller, who teaches journalism at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, asked recently on Twitter what he should be learning and teaching about social media:

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   JSheller OK Twits. Retweet by @stevebuttry sold me–I need social media in j courses. What should I: A) Learn? B) Require students to do? 12 May 2010 from web

I answered in an email with a link to my November post about journalism curriculum (and I didn’t think of it at the time, but I also recommend reading Vadim Lavrusik’s post on the same topic). Then I added this (edited, expanded and updated a bit for the blog):

The best answer I can give you is that social media are changing so swiftly that any advice I give you right now would need to be updated by fall. But I’ll give you some tips anyway. My first piece of advice is to incorporate social media routinely into your teaching, as a journalist should incorporate it into his or her work. So you shouldn’t necessarily have a class focused on social media or a unit of a class focused on social media. You make social media a tool journalists use every day on every story, as they would use a notebook or a cell phone. So how you would use it varies depending on the course: An investigative reporting course would talk about crowdsourcing, a basic reporting course would talk about connecting with witnesses to news events through Twitter, an advertising course would discuss the location-based opportunities that Foursquare presents, a graphic arts course would talk about using Ushahidi to map a story unfolding in your community, etc.

You asked what you should learn and what you should require students to do. I’ll take them in order.

What you should learn: I would encourage you to become more active and fluent in Twitter. While other social tools are valuable and helpful for journalists, Twitter is by far the most valuable. Its value is not limited to breaking news, but it’s easiest to see in breaking news. I have blogged quite a bit about this and reading these posts might be helpful. Most helpful might be my case study of @statesman’s coverage of the terrorist attack in Austin earlier this year. I would suggest that a great learning experience for you would be to take a big, breaking story in Iowa this summer (or somewhere else, if you’re summering elsewhere) and do a similar case study. A stormy night with some tornadoes, thunderstorms and hail would do. As it’s happening, use Twitter search and hashtags to see what people are tweeting about the event and how local media are using Twitter. See what they are doing well and consider what they could do better. Then, during your class, you could make that an assignment for students: Sometime during the semester, they need to study how the public and media use Twitter around a breaking story.

I don’t suggest that you make a high priority of learning a lot about Facebook. While it is valuable for journalists, students know Facebook, so you won’t need to teach them much, if anything about it. Just make the point that they should use it to connect with sources, gather information and distribute content, and they will largely figure out how to do that. Learning Twitter is important for journalism faculty because it’s not as widely used among college students, so they’re not learning it on their own.

I would encourage working with some other social tools as well and considering (and asking students to consider) how they work together. For the same breaking story, search Flickr and YouTube to see what people have posted there. Use Foursquare, not for its immediate value, but to help you see the possibilities of location-based social tools (it’s really easy to become a mayor in Cedar Rapids; I’m still mayor of El Perico, Hawthorn Suites and Parlor City; see if you can unseat me). Follow how some media (including TBD) are using Foursquare and read Shane Snow and Vadim Lavrusik’s post, 7 ways journalists can use Foursquare.

If you develop more of a following on Twitter (by being more active yourself and by following more people and listing them), you can demonstrate the value of Twitter early in class. I have done this exercise several times (starting with a class at Loras College last year): Ask on Twitter at the beginning of a class how people have found Twitter useful that day (or some other specific questions). Then later you show the answers.

I also blogged yesterday about the results I got doing this exercise in a webinar on breaking news just last week.

Follow some journalism professors who tweet frequently about social media use and issues. I would start with Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, Carrie Brown-Smith, Matt Mansfield, Sue Burzynski Bullard, Geneva Overholser, Jeremy Littau, Mindy McAdams, Serbino Sandifer-Walker, Jim MacMillan, Kakie Urch and Tim McGuire.

What you require students to do:
Nothing teaches social media like using social media, so I would have students use Twitter regularly through the semester: connecting with the community to build a following, tweeting links to content they post, connecting with sources on breaking and routine stories, etc. Might be a good idea to ask for a brief account of social media used on each story (and include suggestions for better social media use in grading comments).

What suggestions do you have for Joe and other journalism professors trying to figure out how to learn and teach social media? Some resources that have helped you learn about social media? Other journalism professors to follow? Some exercises you have tried (or would try) with students?

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