Social Media Journal

Everyone who has ever been hacked, probably

Hacking happens all the time. In its simplest form, hacking happens when you leave Facebook open on your friend’s phone or computer and they post a status letting everyone know that you think they’re “the bestest friend in the whole wide world!!”

In a more serious example, Syrian hackers sent phishing emails to Associated Press staffers and gained access to the organization’s Twitter account, resulting in a tweet that negatively impacted the stock market. 

More recently, Russian hackers were said to be targeting New York Times journalists.

Personally, I don’t put nearly as much thought into hacking as I should. I joke about how I have nothing that hackers could possibly want, but what if I do? I always hear about two-factor authentication and creating unique passwords for all of my accounts, but how many people actually use these techniques to protect themselves?

According to this list of the “worst passwords of 2016,” some people aren’t putting much thought into their security at all, using ridiculously predictable passwords like “123456” or “password.”

Storyful is a social marketing and news company that is known for discovering and verifying social news content. In this article, Storyful details the process of verifying the authenticity of a video of lightning striking a tree and creating a fireball. They used tools like Spokeo, WolframAlpha, White Pages, and Google Maps to find the person who posted the video and verify details like the weather on that particular day.

The title of the article, “When journalist turns stalker,” really resonated with me. My friends always come to me for help if they need to track someone down using the random bits of information they have. I have always found it fascinating that I can start with a tiny tidbit of information like someone’s first name and end up finding their mother’s maiden name and where they attended elementary school. Does that make me a stalker? Maybe, but isn’t that essentially what a journalist is?

On Election Day this past November, I was fortunate to be able to participate in Electionland, a project designed to track voting issues throughout the country in real time. Journalism schools at several universities, including mine at the University of Florida, joined ProPublica, the Google News Lab, WNYC News, Univision, the First Draft Coalition, and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, among other partners, to find and authenticate voting issues throughout the United States. Students and professors at the journalism schools were tasked with searching social media to find and verify potential problems at polling places, using tools tools like TweetDeck, Dataminr, Facebook Signal and TinEye Reverse Image Search. We passed the information we found to New York to be verified by the team there, and then it was sent out to reporters. 

This week’s reading were centered around creating effective graphics for social media. This SocialMouths article contained some helpful hints for creating “highly shareable” graphics, like minimizing text and using high quality stock photography. 

In class, we were give an extensive list of apps for creating graphics, memes and GIFs and for editing photos, which we spent some time experimenting with.

I focused on two: Adobe Spark and Canva. I’m always on the lookout for resources that will help me with my personal brand, so I experimented with making graphics for my website, Michaela Meets World.

I loved how easy it was to use Adobe Spark. I typed my text, chose a background, and experimented with the layout and fonts. You can also add shapes and change the opacity and alignment of each element. These are two graphics I created:

The first is sized to be used as a Facebook header, and the second would be an Instagram post. I tend to favor very simple design over elaborate graphics, and Adobe Spark made it easy to create this look easily and efficiently. 

I took the advice of the SocialMouths article and avoided making the text too overwhelming. Instead of using high quality stock photos, I used my own high quality travel photos, because my brand is focused on both photography and travel.

One criticism I had of Adobe Spark is that you can’t change the opacity of both a shape and the text that it is attached to. Another was that you can’t simply create a shape with linking it to text. 

Canva was also a very user-friendly tool for creating graphics and I'm obsessed with the fonts and design elements that are available. Unfortunatly, a lot of these were too intricate compared to what I use on my website and social media, but I would definitely consider these if I was working for a company and making infographics or logos. 

This is the graphic I made with Canva:

Joel Achenbach, Washington Post

In his blog post for the Washington Post, reporter Joel Achenbach had a revelation. It’s something that hadn’t crossed my mind until he pointed it out. Journalism is aggregation. 

Personally, I don’t have a problem with aggregation. There’s nothing wrong with pulling from other sources in order to create an educated, well thought out article, as long as everything is properly cited and extra analysis and thought are given. I can see where journalists might take issue with some forms of aggregation, like when BuzzFeed and other listicle machines pull from Tumblr and Reddit to create articles that get tons of traffic and, as a result, revenue, with minimal effort and no original thought. However, I wouldn’t exactly call that journalism. 

But Achenbach makes an excellent point. When journalists write articles, they become aggregators. We find experts on the topics we’re writing about, maybe do some extra research, then put in all together in an article that will be published in our names and potentially get recognition and generate revenue. That’s journalism. Of course, we cite our sources and give all of the proper attribution, but that’s still aggregation.

BuzzFeed even has an article debating whether aggregation is theft. Throughout this very article, the author aggregates from other sources, linking other articles and websites. 

I don’t think we can do journalism without aggregation. In fact, aggregation makes journalism better. Why include only your own thoughts and analysis when there’s a whole world of journalism out there that can be added to help give the reader full understanding?

Crowdsourcing: obtaining data, information, or ideas from a group of people (source)

In this Ted Talk by Guardian journalist Paul Lewis, he discusses how crowdsourcing led to the discovery of details about the murders of two men in two different situations. Video, Twitter and other sources were used to connect bystanders with journalists, who investigated the deaths and discovered that there was more to each story than the police had said. 

The topic of crowdsourcing led to an interesting discussion in class this week. What qualifies as journalism? If a non-journalist unearths information and gives it to a publication, can their initial findings be considered journalism? If someone without any photojournalism training takes a news photo and a publication runs it, is that photojournalism?

As a photojournalism student, I would definitely say that if someone takes a photo of a news situation, that’s photojournalism. It doesn’t matter if it’s taken on a phone or a professional DSLR camera. For example, in 1953, amateur photographer Virginia Schau captured a picture of the rescue of two truck drivers on a bridge, and ended up winning a Pulitzer the following year. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time. If that happened today, I would be inclined to say that someone with an iPhone could take a similar photo and should be eligible for a Pulitzer. 

This also goes for videos. When people take videos of protests and other news events, the footage they capture is photojournalism. 

As for a situation in which a citizen unearths valuable information that a publication can use, I wouldn’t call the individual a journalist, but I would call their findings journalism. Yes, journalists have a degree and training, but that doesn’t mean that the average citizen isn’t capable of discovering newsworthy information that a publication has missed. On the other hand, this article makes some excellent points about what happens to our privacy as citizen journalism continues to become more common.

This week’s topic was Facebook Live, and in preparation for class, we read this BuzzFeed article about the “filter bubble” that exists in regards to the live videos. It essentially addresses the fact that people watch live videos to avoid seeing media bias, when, in fact, that bias is still created by the reactions and comments that appear in real time on these videos. 

After reading the BuzzFeed article, I found the New York Magazine article above that also discusses the concept of the filter bubble. As the presidential election progressed, as it came to an end and every day since, we have constantly heard about the “biased media” and how everyone was confident that Trump was going to lose. This is where the filter bubble comes in. Facebook determines the content each user sees based on an algorithm that caters to each person’s preferences. Beyond that, when Facebook users see content they don’t like, they can simply unfriend or unfollow the person who posted or shared it. As the article states, rather than a “news feed,” they see a  “’my friend’s opinions’ feed.”

It happens every day. A post, meme, story or video sweeps across the internet and suddenly everyone is talking about it. In most cases, it’s forgotten by the next week or even the next day, but for that short period of time, it’s viral.

This week’s class and readings were focused on what exactly it takes to make something go viral. Before I did any reading, the first thing I thought of was Buzzfeed. I can’t go on Facebook without seeing at least one Buzzfeed post that has been shared by several of my friends. Appropriately, one of the assigned articles was written by Jonah Peretti, the CEO and founder of Buzzfeed. In true Buzzfeed form, he suggested 13 Ways to Make Something Go Viral.

Some of the tips are obvious: 

“Make content that takes human emotion seriously.”

“Make content YOU would share yourself.”

“Capture the moment”

“Human rights are inherently social”

“Don't post things people are embarrassed to share”

Peretti also suggests using humor, nostalgia and most importantly (in my opinion), cute animals. 

Beyond these tips, I have noticed some trends from using the Buzzfeed app several times a week. Quizzes and personality tests are huge on Buzzfeed. I scrolled through the trending posts tab on the app, and the items with the most views fit these categories.

“We Know When You’ll Get Engaged Based On Your Chipotle Order” had 785,000+ views, Can You Answer 10 Hard-But-Not-That-Hard SAT Questions From 1926? had 847,000+ views and Your Pizza Preferences Will Reveal A Thing You Do But Don’t Tell Anyone About had 744,000+.

The quizzes take five minutes to do and even though I would assume that most people don’t really believe that Chipotle has any bearing on their love lives, they still click it.

This week’s topic was comment moderation by news organizations. I don’t think I have ever posted a comment on a news article, and I think that in many situations, comment sections are a breeding ground for negativity and hate. I can see the use of having a place to exchange ideas and try to get people to understand each other’s points of view, but overall, reading comment sections exhausts me mentally.

Therefore, I enjoyed NPR’s article from last August about shutting down its comment section and finding better ways to connect with its readers. The news organization easily could have shut down the comments and moved on, but it instead gave readers several ways to continue to connect, discuss and engage with NPR journalists and fellow readers. 

A few examples of these alternatives include social media like Facebook pages and Twitter, ways to connect with journalists in order to continue discussion about their stories and give them ideas, and an Audience Relations team dedicated to responding to reader emails. When there’s so many other channels for interaction, I hardly see the point of allowing comments.

As someone who uses Instagram professionally (and as a travel photographer, no less!), this blog post by travel photographer Gary Arndt about growing an Instagram following was right up my alley. 

I have read all there is to read about how to “make it” on Instagram, and yet, Arndt makes some excellent points that I have not heard before. 

Arndt’s points were very reasonable and provided me with a formula to follow, which is more helpful than the tips many other people give, often specific to their own content. Arndt discussed both discovery (getting people to find your account in the first place) and conversion (getting them to follow you and keeping their attention). You can’t make it easy for people to find your account and then have nothing to offer that would make them want to stick around.

One of Arndt’s best tips was that you must “check all the boxes”: 

“Make sure that you have a caption, tag another account, put in a location, share the photo on at least 1 other social platform, and do at least some basic editing in the Instagram app.” 

This past week, I kept these thoughts in mind while posting photos on my Instagram, and I was delighted to find that I had a surge in both my follower count the amount of engagement on my photos.

Here’s an example of Arndt’s magic at work, as demonstrated by one of my own posts:

I posted this photo, checking all of the boxes. I had a caption, tagged three other accounts, put in a location, shared the photo on Facebook and did some editing (although that was outside of the Instagram app).

The Boston Globe is using Facebook in a way that creates meaningful conversation and discussion among its subscribers and content creators. 

Rather than simply having a Facebook page where the Globe can share articles and news updates, the news outlet created a Facebook group for its subscribers to join. In the group, members can discuss anything related to the Globe’s content. Journalists can join in as well.

I love the concept of an open forum where content creators and content viewers can interact. Knowing what your audience thinks and wants is essential a news outlet’s success, in my opinion. 

Have you ever read an article and felt so strongly about it in one way or another that you want to talk to other readers and find out if they feel the same way you do? Have you ever had questions about something you read in a newspaper or online and wanted to ask the author to clarify? That’s exactly what this Facebook group is for. 

One of the topics we discussed this week in class was creating a brand. Branding is essentially the way you present yourself on social media and as a journalist. Everything that you post and present to your audience becomes your online persona. 

With that being said, branding is something that I have always been very conscious of. As a journalist, I have not quite found my niche, but one thing that I am passionate about is travel. In a previous post, I mentioned my Instagram account and my website, which I use to write about my travels and share my photography. On Twitter, I occasionally retweet travel news and share links to interesting articles about traveling. On Facebook, I have a page where I share updates to my website and Instagram. I don’t necessarily think everything has to be all travel all the time, but my content has to be consistent enough that I can keep my followers interested and not shock them with a sudden change in material.

Yesterday in class, we had a guest speaker named Fati Abubakar, whose Instagram account is linked above. She is from Maiduguri, Nigeria, where there has been violence for years, much of which is in relation to Islamist group Boko Haram.

Fati talked about how she became very depressed because of the state of her country, and photography became a sort of therapy for her. She photographs people of all kinds in an effort to show that her country is not simply defined by war and violence. 

The way that Fati uses Instagram is so inspiring. There are probably thousands of Instagram accounts dedicated to photographing people and telling their stories, but her account is unique because of her goal: to show the rest of the world that Nigeria has so much to offer. 

Social media plays a huge role in our society. This is a widely known fact and it is virtually impossible to escape it at this point. 

However, social media means something different to everyone. For a mom, it’s a place to share pictures of a growing child. For a musician, it’s a platform to share music and engage with fans. For companies, it’s a way to draw in new customers. For thousands upon thousands of people, it’s simply a place to complain, argue and be a bully. 

Everyone has their own reasons for using or avoiding social media.

As for me, I embrace wholeheartedly. As a journalism student and a student reporter, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook keep me up to date on the latest news and current events so I am able to stay informed about both my local area and the world. Through these platforms, I am able to read the latest news stories in real time, share these stories and my own with my followers or even interact with other journalists. 

As a photographer, social media is my most important ally. I use Instagram to share photographs from my travels and other projects. I can also follow photographers who inspire me, and interact with them directly in the comments on their posts. As I grow my own following, which is relatively small as of right now, I will be able to do the same, and hopefully inspire some followers of my own.