Mobile Journalism: What Have I Read About "Mobile and Social Media Journalism" by Anthony Adornato

On day one of the Mobile Journalism course at Ithaca College, I was reading through the syllabus and I realized this was the course I had sat in on when I visited the school. At the time, it was taught by Anthony Adornato and I sat with a girl, who I still follow on Instagram to this day, admiring the website she had put together in this class. As Professor Adornato discussed the blog post assignments and social media use, I felt confident in my decision to go to IC. I wanted just that, to fulfill my then career of becoming a fashion blogger... things have since changed.

In Professor Adornato's book, which we are reading for this course, he goes into detail on the impact of mobile devices and social media on journalism. As you can probably gather, there are plenty of benefits. One area where I truly feel mobile devices and social media are impactful are within community based journalism.

I believe the efficient methods of shooting using mobile devices can make journalists work more personable for their story subjects and provide a sense of comfort, ruling out the intimidation that a large camera and microphone might cause. Additionally, the efficient use of these mobile devices for projects such as snapping a quick photo or recording a quick clip in order to get the most authentic view of the story make for stronger community journalism.

At the end of Chapter 1 of "Mobile and Social Media Journalism" Professor Adornato includes a checklist that discusses following accounts addressing media in journalism, using tags and hashtags to facilitate connection, following sites with newsletters and some conversational pieces to address.

He asks the positives and negatives of an age where anyone can publish content. Simply, I find this nice because it creates an equal playing field, however this also makes for very saturated channels.

He brings up an active audience, which I see to mean readers who comment on and share content by journalists. This definitely is something that has increased since it is so easy to do so, rather than in the past having to write a letter or email to editors.

I think the relationship we see between journalists and their audience today is a much more personal one. There is stronger connection and I feel that journalists are held on less of a pedestal than they were in the past.

As for the skills journalists need in a mobile social world, I would say it is important for us to be proficient in communicating visually as well as verbally because most stories need to catch readers eyes now in a social media feed in order to reel them into important updates.