How a Job Hunting App can be a New Form of Contemporary Digital Journalism: Debut Careers

Screenshot: Debut Careers homepage

Deciding, as a soon to be graduate myself that I would like to focus my blog on journalism and social media, I therefore spent a lot of time on my new ‘journalismy’ Twitter account to find new and interesting developments that pose as 'new found' journalism tools.

After much tweeting and exploring, I finally stumbled across Debut Careers,“The world’s first #graduate & #student #careers app.”

Screenshot: Debut Career's Twitter

The mobile app was only launched in October 2015, for both Android and Apple users and because it was such a new development of course I was eager to blog about it. In light of the growth of modern day digital journalism, Debut Career’s is described as a “pioneering mobile graduate attraction” that provides ‘on the go’ engagement in the most extensive digital generation. Users are able to access the app whilst out and about, so they not confined to the limits of their home or a computer available environment, perfect for us app obsessed students, who are never apart from our mobile devices. It’s extremely satisfying knowing that our hand held devices can be considered more than just a phone and our social media platforms can (finally) be put to good use.

Screenshot: Debut Careers

I really enjoyed exploring Debut Career’s lively and engaging Twitter account. They post regular updates on their app, showing users where to look for specific career information and generally letting their followers see what a hardworking and enthusiastic brand they are, which is what I think social media is all about; showing off your good side. They also retweet and post other material associated with their app that is beneficial for both current students and graduates.

Screenshot: Debut Career's Twitter

With much persuasion through Twitter connectivity, I decided to check out their website and download the app myself. I was really surprised at how aesthetically pleasing their website was and the content really caught my attention as it was short and sharp and didn’t mean that I had to scroll through lots of information in order to find out what the brand was all about - much like reading a headline, you want to be drawn in straight away. I particularly liked how they have used quotes from large corporations in order to attract users, as having a renowned company comment on the app makes it more reliable and worthwhile. Similar also to how a news story is constructed, pulling together quotations from a number of sources. The app can be depicted as a form of modern day persuasive journalism, as it is the ‘voice’ reaching out to the ears of the ‘listeners.’

Screenshot: Debut Career's quote

The website is very easy to navigate and offers additional features, such as the Debut Careers blog and any press that they have received.

The blog offers career related debates, general information and guidance, Over the past year blogging has been an important journalist development and has definitely made its mark on contemporary journalism. To read more on blogging and its threat to traditional journalism, read my post here, 
 Additionally, the press section shows recent articles that have featured Debut Careers. Pretty impressive that they have already appeared in prestige news outlets, such as The Telegraph, The Mirror and The Independent.

Much like the website the mobile app itself is stress-free to navigate, simplistic, but engaging in its content. To be ambiguous, this sounds comparable to a news story, whereby the article must be written in simplistic, understandable terms, but must also be attention-grabbing in its nature. 

Screenhot: Debut Careers app

The app allows users to create a personal profile, where by you are matched with suitable jobs (sounds all a little too familiar to online dating, but definitely more advantageous) and you can either investigate further into that job, or search for your own preferences. A lot like finding a news angle or news story. You gather a story, investigate it further and then finally report it, like applying for a job at the end of all your investigating. 

Screenshot: Debut Careers profile

Original picture: Debut Careers app

In relation to the rise in modern day and digital journalism, mobile apps for careers are a great way of connecting with future employers and bonding with your dream job. As adventurous as it may seem, this app holds many symbollic connotations to the act of journalism. From its content to its imagery, all elements stand under a similar umbrella and contemporary journalism allows as to see these hidden parallels with journalism's traditional roots. 

“Drag and Drop” Journalism: The Modern Day Storify

As part of our third year ‘News and Journalism’ module, we were asked to explore Storify. An online citizen journalism tool that is best known for its news curation, by allowing its users to search, select and pull together the focal ‘voices’ on social media accounts, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, in order to produce a story or timeline. Being a tool that was very new to me and something I was therefore unaware of how to really use, I took to YouTube to see how others selected a piece of news and turned it into their own story.

YouTube: Storify Tutorial

Realising this journalism tool wasn’t too hard to grasp, I had a go at producing a story for myself. What I found particularly interesting was the notion of “drag and drop” or “copy and paste” journalism. As a user, I was taking an existing headline and adding my own exciting spin on the story as a way of reporting it back to other citizen journalists.

Screenshot: Storify

 Our assignment had a particular focus on the spread of news through the social media platform Twitter, therefore when creating a story I would only use the ‘Twitter’ search bar. Even though I was able to pull together some really attention-grabbing, applicable tweets from both professional news outlets and everyday tweeters, I was limited in the information I could apply to my story. If I had the opportunity to use other social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, or I was able to apply a YouTube clip, or a personal image, my news story would be more in depth and analytical and would thus appeal to a wider audience.

Screenshot: Storify

Screenshot:Storify

Simple enough so it seemed to drag and drop a tweet of your choice, the website did suffer from a few glitches, which meant that the search bar would not load the Twitter feed and this affected my ability to select the relevant material. Although only a temporary issue, I did also come across another hurdle. I found that seeking an account was extremely username sensitive and if the username was not correct to the letter, number or symbol then the appropriate account would not load. Additionally, many of the notorious news outlets updated their Twitter frequently (and I mean every 10 minutes), so searching for that ‘right’ tweet was sometimes very time consuming. Also one of the stories I posted, the news outlet from which I read the original article had not posted that particular news story on their Twitter feed, therefore I would have to look for the story on other news outlets.  

Not wanting to present just my negative perceptions of this journalism tool, I was intrigued by the way in which the site posed as a form of news curation. A specific news story would in essence be reproduced by drawing in elements from external ‘citizen’ reporters or news outlets on Twitter.

I particular enjoyed pulling together and narrating a story on the Guardian’s “Largest UK sperm bank turns away dyslexic donors”

Screenshot: The Guardian

This was a controversial topic that caused wide spread debate over Twitter.

Screenshot: Storify

Screenshot: Storify

Taking snippets of 140 character news writing and integrating them to form a newly established narrative was a great way for me as a student to gain a greater understanding of what is going on in the news and also allow other individuals to see my own perception of something recently reported on in the news. 

Screenshot: Storify

Screenshot: Storify

A tool that at first displayed itself as lazy and straight forward journalism, has altered my perception to what I believe to be the new form of journalism for the future. 

Check out my Storify here.

New Found Journalism: Social Media for Careers and Companies

Throughout my two months working for the Financial and Educational PR agency FourBroadgate in London, I learnt that social media plays not just a ‘social’ but crucial role in the workplace. I cannot speak for other companies, but my own experience enabled me to use and explore on a daily basis social media, in order to complete tasks for clients. Working alongside both external investment companies and journalists, I discovered in ‘new found’ terms how I became a citizen journalist myself, gathering, pulling together and distributing information from social media accounts that was regarded as very important to our clients.

Screenshot: FourBroadgate

One of the tasks I frequently completed was a social media analysis, using social media analysis tools, such as Followerwonk and SumAll.

Screenshot:Followerwonk

Screenshot: Followerwonk: Gender Ratio

Screenshot: Followerwonk: Location

Followerwonk is a Twitter Analytics website, which allows users free of charge to search for bios, compare content on Twitter accounts, analyse and track and arrange followers. When filling in the ‘social media analysis’ chart I would mainly use the ‘Analyse’ section on Followerwonk. This allowed me analyse beneath the surface of Twitter and collect statistics on the followers of a client’s Twitter account, in particular the location and gender ratio of their followers. As well as Twitter, I also analysed other social media accounts such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Screenshot: FourBroadgate Social Media Analysis

Similarly, SumAll calls itself a “brand new interface”, whereby users can gain a greater understanding of their followers and from this target a specific audience. A website primarily for the use of Marketing companies, as their features help improve social media campaigns and divide a Twitter audience in terms of Time Zone, Network Size and Engagement data, as a way of distributing more precisely and effectively adverts and messages. The website also offers an ‘Autotweet’ section, which allows a series of tweets to be created and then sent out at designated time. All fundamental tasks in both the marketing and PR industry. I used this website much like Followerwonk and categorised follower information and statistics under different headings.

Screenshot: SumAll

Screenshot: SumAll Social Media Campaigns

Screenshot: SumAll Dividing Tweets

Screenshot: SumAll Autotweets

Other companies may use other social media analytic tools, such as Twuffer, which allows the Twitter user to compose a list of pre-written tweets and schedule their release, much like SumAll. This means that companies can keep their Twitter updated without having to take time out of their other work load. Not only for PR and Marketing companies, this can also be an extremely beneficial tool for journalists and journalism organisations, who can connect with their audience over the social media platform Twitter and still go about their day to day news gathering and reporting. In an age of digital journalism, journalists have double the amount of work load, because news can be spread via so many different mediums, therefore Twuffer works as an invaluable tool for busy journalists. A list of other free to use social media analytic tools are listed in this link.

Screenshot: Twuffer

These forms of social media analysis tools seem to be growing in popularity within the workplace and can even be regarded as a new form of journalism, because the data and information collected is beneficial to another individual or company. Additionally, they pose as a form of communicating and passing on information, which pretty much sums up what journalism is. Simply making the whole concept of journalism far more exciting! 

The Changing Face of Journalism

‘Journalism’ has always been a fairly ambiguous term. Every individual, whether that be a citizen, academic or professional journalist has a different way of defining it. But, as a general consensus, the concept usually means the gathering, assessing and distribution of information that is considered newsworthy to that person. Many of us have done and still do perceive journalists as just those who are in the professional industry, those who report on the television or radio, or those who write for a newspaper or magazine. To the many of us who perceive journalism this way, the reported or written news is often shocking and reaches out on a wider level.

By Inverted_pyramid.jpg: The Air Force Departmental Publishing Office. From: Wikimedia Commons

Original image: Newspaper reading 

Newspapers have been the primary means of presenting news since the 18^th century, with magazines making their appearance shortly after. Radio and television joined these mediums of news circulation in the 20^th century and the 21^st century has seen the growth of the epic internet as a way of collecting and dispersing information. At this point we recognise the changing face of journalism!

A wonderful interactive invention that not only allows millions of websites to be browsed every day, but also makes way for the new found definition of journalism, ‘citizen journalism.’ With the ability to roam freely, read information and publish ‘newsy’ material, everyone to some extent becomes a journalist. Even more so after the establishment of our dear old friend ‘social media’ that allows users to produce and share their own content, as well as participate in social networking. Social media helps us all become journalists, whether this is a conscious action or not. In return the skills we develop from using social media to communicate information can lead us on to the correct career path, allow us to build an online CV and make employability connections, granting us the opportunity to learn as well as share.

Many companies will assess a potential candidate’s social media accounts to gain more of an insight into their personality and work ethic, therefore it is very important to publish information that you would want to be read by a future employer. Much like a journalist, you have to be diligent in what you post. Companies will also use Facebook and Twitter in particular to share material relating to their company as well as conversing with their consumers and other companies.

Screenshot: Broadgate Mainland's Facebook page

Screenshot: LinkedIn 

Screenshot: Twitter

It is not – let’s say - that traditional journalism has lost its importance or authoritative standpoint, reporting on news that affects a wider scale audience, whether it be broadcast on television or written in a newspaper is still regarded to most as one the most effective ways in receiving news. However, journalism has in fact grown to become a far-reaching, ever changing term that categorises all under the journalism title and that comes with great thanks to social media!