As a journalism professor, I work hard to train my students to become capable reporters — eyewitnesses to the world, exposing truths wherever they may go.
Little did I realize that they and all their friends at universities across the country are already doing those things right under our noses, and we professors are often the scrutinized sources.
I had this epiphany recently during one of my evening classes. As an exercise in live reporting with social media, I showed students a short TED talk and required them to use Twitter throughout the presentation to report it in “real time.” I had students use a hashtag that incorporated the name of the class so we could sort out our class tweets from the millions of others.
To demonstrate how we would use the class hashtag after the exercise, I posted a message using the tag, then searched for it on Twitter, projecting everything on the big screen at the front of the classroom. Another tweet using our class hashtag appeared below mine, which read: “My professor totally just humiliated this girl in my #classname class.”
I was stunned, and my students giggled awkwardly. The tweet was clearly referring to the other section of the class taught by another instructor, whom all my students knew. What’s worse, the tweet was from a fellow student whom most of them knew, too.
Regrouping, I turned the tweet into a teachable moment, announcing, “This just in — reporting live from (class name)!”
We moved on, but I could not shake the feeling that I had stumbled onto something bigger than a glitch in my class assignment. All our students have become journalists, unintentionally or not.
Networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube have become primary news-disseminating tools about which all reporters must be savvy.
Many instructors try to ignore the role social media plays in our students’ lives, but because I teach journalism, I cannot. Networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube have become primary news-disseminating tools about which all reporters must be savvy.
Even more important, we have to accept that our students are on social media pretty much around the clock. Incorporating technology that is comfortable and fun for them into lessons whenever I can is a no-brainer.
Still, I was not prepared for this unintended consequence.
I started looking for other examples of professors under the social-media microscope and realized we are subject to student paparazzi at every turn. Most tweets are harmless: a student bad-mouthing a professor or calling him/her boring, students complaining about their workload, or even the rare tweet extolling the virtues of a class or instructor.
But there are some we need to be more concerned about: “Lol. My teacher just showed us a movie using an illegal version of the film posted online.”
Suddenly, we have an unintentional journalist breaking a story that could seriously damage a professor’s career.
I applaud any type of reporting that keeps the powerful accountable. If educators are doing things in their classrooms that are inappropriate, unethical, or unfair, we should be held responsible.
We would expect the same of our government leaders. Our constituents are the students. Their education is our responsibility, and if we are not doing our jobs properly, we should listen to them and work to improve.
Unfortunately, social media is not the most reliable source of reporting, and our “journalists” are not trained. When anyone can post anything any time without restraint, the perpetuation of false and subjective information is inevitable.
Social-media postings are not meant to stand as exemplars of professional communication. There are no standards for productive discourse, and that’s fine. We use social media to broadcast life events, share information, and often just to blow off steam. There’s nothing wrong with that.
The problems come when we broadcast information to wide audiences without considering the potential consequences. At Eastern Michigan University, three female professors discovered that students were using the anonymous social-media app Yik Yak during lectures to make crude, sexually explicit comments about them to the rest of the class, damaging their authority and negatively affecting their ability to teach effectively.
Amateur “detectives” on Reddit and Twitter falsely identified a Brown University student as the culprit behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Thousands took to social media to deliver threats and accusations of terrorism against Sunil Tripathi, who had committed suicide nearly a week before the attack. His grieving family was left with the burden of attempting to clear his name.
Social media can be a powerful tool for good or evil. We need to teach our students to be enlightened journalists who use their eyewitness accounts constructively and how to distinguish the crucial differences between truth and perception.
To illustrate the ease with which information can be skewed online, I often break my class into two teams — reporters and editors. The reporters go into the field and cover a live event happening on campus. They relay all their observations, photos, and direct quotes back to the editors in the classroom using only Twitter.
Back in the classroom, editors who are putting together news stories based on those tweets get frustrated when reporters post conflicting details and leave big gaps in the information, making it difficult for the editors to compile an accurate and useful story.
Having experienced unintentional inaccuracies firsthand, we are able to pull back and become more social-media literate. Yes, there is a lot of information out there, and much of it is wrong. But we can use social media to verify information, too. The more people who act as eyewitnesses to an event, the more chances you have to tease out the truth.
We examine cases where journalists have used these tools to unravel injustices. For example, The Guardian’s Paul Lewis used social media to report a police cover-up of the death of the journalist Ian Tomlinson during G-20 protests in 2009. Lewis used social media to track down cellphone footage of Tomlinson being attacked by police, which led to criminal charges against the officers.
Social media is not a problem to be solved. It is an opportunity, one that all faculty members can use to their advantage. Education about professionalism should not be limited to those who are studying to be journalists; everyone could benefit from such training.
It is our obligation to look beyond the obvious and prepare students for the world that awaits them. Yes, students training to be doctors need to know the mechanics of performing medical procedures, but they also need to know how bad online reviews could tank their practice. Artists need to learn certain skills to succeed in their craft, but they also need to know how to properly cultivate a public persona online.
And as teachers, we cannot hide from the influence of social media on our own careers. Our students are watching and reporting. Instead of discouraging their observations, we need to give them something constructive to post — and to think — about.
