I’m meeting with a Cal Poly journalism professor Monday to talk about ways he can use social media as a supplement to his global communications class.
I don’t know much about the class or the professor, but I’ve embedded the syllabus from 2007 below. I don’t imagine it’s changed much, if at all. (Disclosure: I’m enrolled in this course for fall quarter, which starts in two weeks. )
A few ideas I have for how he can use social media in his class:
Social bookmarking
From the syllabus:
Students will choose a particular country whose media/news they will monitor at least twice a week. Students are expected to bring to each class session an article they have downloaded from the media of the country they have chosen.
That system is antiquated.
Instead, students should be bookmarking those articles along with their personal commentary using Publish2 or Delicious. Not only does it save us paper in bad financial times, but it makes more sense as a way of organizing and keeping track of content (tags, anyone?).
Instead of going around and reading off our printed-out articles, the professor could open our Publish2 group on the projector at the start of each class and pull up each student’s article as it comes up in discussion.
Twitter/blogs to gauge hot topics
From the syllabus:
The article should be recent and not older than 2-4 days. It is up to the students to choose the articles they feel are the most the important for the people of that country.
Just because we’re in the United States doesn’t mean we should have to make guesses about hot topics in foreign countries. Twitter, blogs, Digg — and now, even searchable Facebook updates — can give us a very realistic idea of topics people care about in certain places at given times.
By using search.twitter.com, you can filter results by city using filters like near:Kabul to see tweets from Afghanistan’s capitol. Sites like GeoFollow have a similar feature with a translation option.
RSS and Google Alerts
If we’re expected to follow world news for ten weeks from specific countries, we need to become deeply consumed in their affairs. On the first day, every student should be required to sign up for Google Alerts and subscribe to RSS feeds in Google Reader for media from their assigned countries.
According to student critiques of Professor Havandjian on PolyRatings (and stories I’ve heard from classmates), he spends the first 15 minutes of class writing notes up on the board. Students should use that time to catch up on their RSS feeds (assuming the class is held in one of the journalism labs) instead of sitting around waiting for class to start.
Reaching out to individuals over social media
From the syllabus:
There will be a number of written assignments based on those handouts where students will deploy critical analysis to dissect material they have researched to supplement the handouts.
In any other journalism class, an analysis would mean talking to people who are directly impacted by widespread news issues. In a global communications class, the same thing is possible thanks to Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages. I’m sure people are willing to Skype or IM about issues in their country. Although this doesn’t have to be a requirement for the class (because of privacy/security/safety issues), for anyone who really wants to leverage their resources to have a true, accurate analysis of global issues, why not? (I know I will!)
Do you have better ideas for how social media can be used in a class like this? If so, share ‘em in the comments.
One Response to “How to use social media in a global communications class”
Since students are essential keeping a beat on a country (“students will choose a particular country whose media/news they will monitor…”), they should also be monitoring how that country is responding to social media. During the Tiananmen Man Anniversary, social media in China was literally shut down so that college-age people couldn’t discuss what was going on.
Check out this video to see how well the Chinese government’s plan worked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuuddurPLV8&eurl=http://www.protectthehuman.com/videos/chinese-students-unaware-of-the-tank-man&feature=player_embedded
And these articles for more info: http://blog.taragana.com/n/twitterers-defy-chinese-censorship-break-silence-on-tiananmen-squares-tank-man-71606/
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/02/china-shuts-down-twitter-and-bing-in-lead-up-to-tiananmen-anniversary/
Months later, a previously unknown Iranian woman named Neda became the symbol for the Iranian resistance when an amateur video of her death was uploaded to YouTube. The video went viral instantly and was discussed on almost every major news network. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/21/iran.woman.twitter/
The class should recognize that social media is no longer an expendable frivolity for teenagers. It, especially in the case of the Tank Man anniversary, represents the ultimate democratic forum for people to share with and educate each other on a global scale. It may sound a bit extreme to say that turning off Twitter can be labeled as censorship and oppression, but it is.
The class should also address the affects of modern international advertising, and how the same product is represented in completely different ways across different regions of the world. According to the following article from Variety magazine, the one-size-fits-all campaign has been abandoned in favor of custom-tailored campaigns to foreign markets. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005858.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
Regarding Paramount’s recent “Star Trek” campaign, the article reads:
In the U.S., a one-sheet featuring the U.S.S. Enterprise was enough. But Paramount also had to interest overseas auds that haven’t warmed to the franchise in the past. So the studio circumnavigated the globe with splashy premieres, some before the movie’s U.S. debut, including the worldwide preem in Australia.
And while the film is a reboot of a popular sci-fi franchise, that isn’t the way it was sold in other territories.
In Mexico and Russia, for example, the pic’s poster features a huge column of fire coming down from the sky near the Golden Gate Bridge. In other territories where human drama is the appeal, the character of Captain Kirk was featured front and center, flanked by the characters of Spock and Uhura.
In Japan, the romance in a film is always played up, even when it’s a big tentpole like “Star Trek, since the demo known as “office ladies” is considered crucial to a film’s performance.
With that understanding, students can expand their “beat” on their aforementioned country to include an analysis of how they market a foreign (or domestic) product. This aspect of the students’ research would take into consideration the country’s culture, values, beliefs, tastes, etc. and identify the most effective kind of marketing for that region (i.e. engagement ads vs. hypertargeting). Would like country respond well to an interactive web-based campaign, following a Twitter feed or entering a Facebook raffle for free merchandise?