In the first of our Polis LSE Summer School guest talks, the Wall Street Journal’s EMEA social media editor Sarah Marshall explained how social media is helping journalists to make news more relevant to readers. Polis Summer School student Eleanor Hudson reports

Marshall, Sarah

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2014-7-8How journalists can use social media to make theirjournalism more ‘relatable’ (Guest blog – #PolisSummer)blogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2014/07/08/how-journalists-can-use-social-media-to-make-their-journalism-more-relatable-guest-blog-polissummer/In the first of our Polis LSE Summer School guest talks, the Wall Street Journal’s EMEA social media editorSarah Marshall explained how social media is helping journalists to make news more relevant to readers. PolisSummer School student Eleanor Hudson reports.The idea of social media as a way of communicating news to people is developing fast so a young person especiallyis more likely to hear of a news story through Facebook or Twitter than through the traditional newspaper ormagazine.So for Sarah Marshall, Social Media EMEA for the Wall Street Journal hashtagging and retweeting has become partof the journalist’s everyday life. Social media is cheap, it is effective, but the technology is constantly changing.Even social media experts can be outdated in a month when a new trend emerges.Social media has affected journalism from two entirely different positive aspects: reporting the news andinvestigating the stories.In terms of reporting the news, Marshall said that although the numbers of followers and shares on a post matter, itis the engagement with the people that is the real goal for journalists in social media.1/3How the WSJ reporters use social media to make their journalism more socialSocial media connects not only news organizations, but also, more importantly, individual reporters directly topeople. In the past, through straightforward print journalism, “a journalist’s job was done after they hit print” saysMarshall.  Now, the journalist not only has to find the story and report it, but they must engage the listener throughtweets, images, video chats, Q&A sessions via video, and any other inventive way that could reach someone on apersonal level. Every news story and post has immediately become more personal, and now journalists must tapinto that personalization that social media provides to reach people.Social media is an effective way to distribute a story, but it is also a good place to find content and gauge reader‘sentiment’ about narratives or issues. However, since social media is so vast, and the volume of information thatconstantly streams through feeds is endless, journalists struggle to find the time or the resources to sort throughthese to get a snapshot of lifestyle, emotion, violence, etc. Marshall showed there are ways to sort through thesemasses of tweets, updates, images, and stories. With Tweetdeck, Storyful Multisearch, Twitter lists, Facebookinterest lists, and engagement filters, journalists can effectively use social media as a tool to develop stories that arerelative to what people choose to look at in their feeds everyday.Journalism is about relating to people. Sarah Marshall made it very clear that she relates to people every day, andthat she works to make sure news stories are ‘relatable’ through social media. Again, it’s not about the numbers2/3game, but it’s about engagement. If people are engaged in news stories, then journalists have done their jobs.You can see Sarah’s presentation here.This article by Polis Summer School student Eleanor HudsonFollow Polis director @CharlieBeckett and the hashtag #PolisSummer for more on the Polis Summer School thisyear.Copyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science3/3

How journalists can use social media to make their journalism more ‘relatable’ (Guest blog – #PolisSummer)

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