U.S. Study Institute on Journalism and Media

University of Florida | 6 - 10 July 2009

Social Media and Journalism

Today's journalists need to understand online searching, RSS readers, Delicious bookmarks, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media tools.

USing an RSS Reader

Google Reader is a free, online RSS feed reader.

Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency: Read blogs and use RSS (how to)

Social Bookmarking -- Online Bookmarks

Delicious is a popular site for keeping and organizing your Web bookmarks.

"Microblogging" on Twitter

Twitter has become wildly popular among journalists in North America and some other countries.

The 2009 elections in Iran demonstrated how savvy Internet users use/d Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other social media sites to follow the news -- on a day when CNN was apparently "out to lunch"!

Social Aspects of YouTube

For a writing assignment about the social uses of YouTube (and social media in general), I require graduate students to watch these three videos:

Getting started with social media is easy -- all of the tools are 100 percent free. Just sign up for an account and start experimenting.