JOURN 108 - Mobile and Social Media Journalism

Credits: 5
Critically examines how journalists and news organizations are using emerging forms of social media and mobile platforms. Students gain hands-on experience by experimenting with social media and mobile devices for news gathering, distribution, and audience engagement. Students will also learn how to use analytic tools to monitor and analyze the effectiveness of their mobile and social media activity.

Course Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

Effectively use social media for news gathering, distribution, and audience engagement.
Research and locate reliable information from social media to enhance your reporting, and identify misleading and unbalanced content.
Gain the technical skills of mobile news gathering through the use of mobile devices and apps to gather, produce, and distribute news content.
Create and enhance your own professional brand on social media platforms.
Use analytics to monitor and analyze social media engagement and success.
Understand the public’s active role in the news production process, and the resulting impact on journalism.

Program Outcomes
Apply relevant criteria and standards when evaluating information in terms of how it will interest and inform their audience.

College-wide Outcomes

Critical Thinking - Critical thinking finds expression in all disciplines and everyday life. It is characterized by an ability to reflect upon thinking patterns, including the role of emotions on thoughts, and to rigorously assess the quality of thought through its work products. Critical thinkers routinely evaluate thinking processes and alter them, as necessary, to facilitate an improvement in their thinking and potentially foster certain dispositions or intellectual traits over time.
Responsibility - Responsibility encompasses those behaviors and dispositions necessary for students to be effective members of a community. This outcome is designed to help students recognize the value of a commitment to those responsibilities which will enable them to work successfully individually and with others.
Written Communication - Written Communication encompasses all the abilities necessary for effective expression of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in written form.