Google Alerts

I think Google Alerts will be a great help to me, being a journalist. This is because I have set it up to alert me, at least once a day, when the areas I cover are mentioned on the internet.

The patches I cover for the ‘Your News’ segment in the Hull Daily Mail are Hornsea, Sproatley and Beverly Road which is why I now have set Google up to alert me whenever they are mentioned.

Google Alerts have actually helped me recently, because I was alerted about a story published by the Hull Daily Mail that I was going to cover myself. Thankfully, Google Alerts let me know of this new story being published and has stopped me from repeating the exact same thing.

If I didn’t have Google Alerts, I think it could cause complications for me as a journalist. This is because there is always the chance that there is someone out there with the same story as you. Therefore Google would stop me from repeating stories and old news, keeping me on my toes and up to date.

CATS Reflection on Semiotics – 15/10/15

Semiotics, the study of signs, was founded by Ferdinand De Saussure. The study of signs is very important to me, as a journalist, because it helps me get a clearer understanding of what readers would get from my work.

Saussure came up with the theory that there is a signifier, signified and a sign. A signifier is any material thing, which would be what my readers literally see (image, facial expression etc.). The signified is a concept that a signifier refers to, and then when the signifier and signified are both together it makes up the sign. To me, signs are very important because they are the communications between people. Bignell (1997) once stated that “news is not just facts, but representations produced in language and other signs like photographs”.

Another concept from semiotics is connotation and denotation. This is the most simple theory to me and it really helps with visualisations that I create. Denotation is the actual thing that you can see, for example a red love heart. This red love heart would then have connotations of love, romance and valentines day. By taking this into mind when I create things like infographics, I will hopefully be able to send the right message across to my audiences.

There are also communication theories that I have researched, that help explain how we pass messages on. The main theorists are Shannon and Weaver (1949) and Lasswell (1948). Shannon and Weaver’s theory suggests that there is a source, which then goes to a sender, which then goes to a message, and then goes to a receiver, which then goes to a destination. During this communication process, Shannon and Weaver came up with the idea that there may be noise that would interrupt the messages. Lasswell’s theory is very similar to Shannon and Weaver’s, but it suggests that every form of communication is an act of persuasion and it presumes every message has an effect. Laswell’s formula asks ‘who?’, which then goes to ‘says what?’, which then asks ‘in which channels?’, which then asks ‘to whom?’ and then it asks ‘with what effect?’. Personally, I prefer Shannon and Weaver’s theory because to me it’s a more realistic process of communication.

Social Media Verification

As a Journalist, social media verification is really important. I find verification important because the information you share with people can effect your whole career. Within the lesson I was reminded that people will lie about anything for a little bit of attention, and so you should always verify what you see on social media.

People on social media are a great way to discover breaking news stories, and they often create user generated content for people in the news industry. From personal experiences, I have seen newsworthy stories on social media myself just by following the people I know. As good as this sounds, many people have lied and still do about things happening in the world.

The content you will often find on social media are posts, videos and images. I now know that these can be verified in a number of ways to make sure they are genuine, and you also have to ask permission from sources to use their content. The methods of verification, that I have learnt, include:

• get in contact with the source, ask them the 5 W’s (who, what, why, when, where)
• check it’s the right area by looking on Google street view
• look at the weather reports and people’s clothing
• see what’s trending
• contact authorities if they’re likely to be involved
• check picture hasn’t been used elsewhere on regex.info
• run images through tineye.com or google reverse search image to establish ownership
• use the wolfram alpha website which will help you calculate and find things out

If I didn’t use these methods and check my content was genuine, I know it is likely that it isn’t true. As a journalist this would give me a bad reputation for giving out false information, which is why I think it’s vital to verify social media content.