About

Anthony Adornato conducts a mobile journalism lesson, via Zoom, during the pandemic. Scroll down to watch a video about how his mobile journalism students reported during Covid-19. 

Professor

Anthony Adornato
Email: acadorna@syr.edu
Twitter: @anthonyadornato
Twitter Class Hashtag: #NewhouseMojo
Book Website: MobileandSocialMediaJournalism.com
Personal Website: anthonyadornato.com

Course Description

This course 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 newsgathering, distribution, and audience engagement. Students produce a portfolio of multimedia stories and build their own professional journalistic brand. An emphasis is placed on critically assessing the credibility and authenticity of user-generated content. Students will also learn how to use analytics tools to monitor and analyze the effectiveness of their mobile and social media activity.

Course Overview

TikTok. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. These are some of the social media tools altering how journalists do their jobs and how people consume news today. This course prepares you to evaluate and use social media and mobile devices as professional journalists. By the end of the course, you will have the fundamental mobile and social media skills that news organizations are seeking from today’s journalists. You will learn by “doing.” You will build your own professional social media brand and produce a portfolio of stories using social media and mobile devices/apps.

You and your classmates are future industry leaders, so we will also critically assess future developments related to mobile and social media in journalism. This course will foster your ability to apply the core values of journalism to emerging media forms in productive, innovative, and intelligent ways. The concepts and skills we will tackle include: maintaining a professional social media brand; finding story ideas and sources via social media; using social media and mobile devices/apps for newsgathering and production; social media ethics; audience engagement; and analytics.