Masterclass 2: Web 3.0 and social media

 

The way the web is developing offers great opportunities for us as journalists, as well as great threats. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter offer us access to vast new audiences. Increasingly, material created by journalists is being passed among users of those sites.

But what do we get out of it?

We’ve seen the search engines get rich at our expense, using our content and paying us peanuts. We don’t want social networks to rob us a second time. This is the first in a series of masterclasses that tackle this issue.

The video here is really just an introduction to Web 3.0 and social media. It explains what is happening and how we need to adapt if we are to take full advantage of it.

It will take several more masterclasses to cover how we exploit the opportunities of Web 3.0 and social media, and avoid the pitfalls. We also need to be clear about how social media fits in with our own branded websites, print products, TV or radio stations.

As all this is so central to the new skills journalists need to acquire, and the working practices we must adopt, I’m going to be posting a series of further masterclasses on this area in the coming weeks.

These are the other subjects in the series. As they go live we'll link to them from below

All of the above is about reaching out to new audiences.

The final masterclass in the series will cover what we can do to convert those new users into loyal, engaged and participatory members of our online community, once we get them back to our own websites. It covers the latest thinking on the power of topic areas and beat blogs.

 

 

 

 

 

Investigative Journalism