Covering Social Media News on Campus

Donald Trump has tweeted about business negotiations, diplomatic relations, illegal votes, and diminishing free speech all since the election. The president-elect’s seemingly uncensored use of Twitter to communicate critical messages has left journalists questioning if and how important sources’ social media accounts should be covered.

This question isn’t one for “professional” journalists alone. Campus administrators, officials and leaders likely will begin mirroring Trump’s attention-getting communication methods, if they haven’t already. This leaves the question of how student media staffs should cover social media news on campus. The three steps below should help.

Step 1: Follow/friend the players

The first step in covering social media news on campus is to make sure you’ve followed/friended the correct accounts, all from your student media social accounts.

On campus, connect with social accounts including those for:

  • the university, in general,
  • trustees,
  • the president/chancellor,
  • administrators,
  • campus organizations, including the student government association and Greek organizations,
  • campus colleges and departments,
  • student government association,
  • the athletic department,
  • athletic teams,
  • star athletes,
  • campus police,
  • campus health/mental health services,
  • student leaders, and
  • other student media.

Off campus, connect with social accounts including those for:

  • peer/benchmark/rival universities,
  • the city/county where your university is located,
  • entertainment districts/popular places nearby that students frequent,
  • state regents,
  • organizations that students are part of,
  • organizations representing students,
  • city police,
  • county sheriff’s office,
  • other student media, especially at nearby universities,
  • local media outlets,
  • other media outlets that specifically focus on student news, like USA Today College.

This is not a comprehensive list. You should customize it to your university, but it is a place to start.

Be sure to follow/friend these contacts on your student media’s social accounts, otherwise each new set of editors will have to start again, instead of building on what you already started.

Step 2: Mine the accounts for news

Once you’ve followed/friended the proper organizations and people on multiple channels, the next step is to mine those accounts for story ideas. This is the more difficult step because, as you know, you can accidentally lose a lot of time on social media. Also, because of the mass of information that may be shared, it could be difficult for just one person to do this job. It probably is best to have various section editors assigned to view social media accounts several times a day to look for story ideas. If an editor sees something they think is questionable or has news value, he/she should take a screenshot immediately. It’s important to do this because people tend to delete things they wish they hadn’t posted.

It may seem challenging to keep up with all of the news flowing from these channels at first, but it soon will be habit to keep up with it, just like you do the information shared on your personal social media accounts.

Step 3: Share or pitch

The next step encompasses what to do when you see something on social media that has news value. There basically are two options—share or pitch.

If your audience would find the information interesting or helpful, but it’s not worth a full story, share it through your student media’s social accounts. Create a policy for how this is done. Should each section editor have the authority to freely share what he/she thinks the audience will find value in or should he/she confer with a social manager before doing so? Either way is fine, just know in advance how the process should work. What you don’t want is to have so many people sharing from your student media accounts that people begin to unfollow them because the content flow is too heavy. Determine a workflow for your staff that keeps this from happening.

If the social post has greater news value or you have questions about whether it’s of greater importance, pitch it as a story. If something already was posted on social media, it’s probably worth pitching for online coverage quickly instead of waiting for the next print edition. Again, choose a workflow that makes most sense for your staff.

Chances are you’re already doing the above three steps on some level, but if the president-elect is tweeting policy decisions, it may be time to reconsider whether journalists are paying enough attention to what’s being posted online. After all, it’s better to know what’s being put out there than to miss a big story.

profKRGDr. Kenna Griffin is an assistant professor of mass communications and director of student publications at Oklahoma City University. She is the author of the Prof KRG blog, which serves as a practical resource for student journalists. She is a journalist, reader, shoe lover, wife, mother of two, and the spoiler of a couple of adorable dogs.