Digital Search Map

Journalism 12

Social Media Search Map

Mr. Amano-Tompkins

November 11, 2104

Your next assignment is to use social media to search out as much information as you can find on a particular user. You do not have to detail the information you find. Instead, your map will note the links you uncovered that take you to further, deeper information with only a short description of what turned up at each.

The purpose of this assignment is to so provide a narrow but telling snapshot of how closely connected social media users are. There used to be a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Bacon is an actor, and the joke was that each of us would discover we were only six people removed from him. Social media has linked us together so intricately that were that game reinvented, no doubt the gag would be that only three or four degrees of separation exist today. 

A 2013 survey by the respected Pew Research Center found that 73% of Americans use social media. Facebook still tops the chart with over a billion users, but others are very popular, as well. (Job seekers use LinkedIn, for instance. Instagram is built around sharing pictures, and so forth). You will start with Twitter, not just because it’s an incredibly popular application, but because it’s the starting point for most journalists searching for breaking news.

Start at Twitter using a search term that explores an issue in which you are interested. Find five tweets by five different users that link to your search, and copy those links. Next, examine those five links and see which which Twitter poster (ONLY ONE) promises to be the most interesting to explore. Then, you should do several things: 

a. run a search on the user ID on Twitter (to find the individuals other Tweets in order to see what other interests that person has)

b. run a Google search on that person using the Twitter ID, if that’s all you have, or using info you might discover by searching the person’s Tweets

c. search other social media (Facebook; Instagram; Pinterest; Tumblr; Linked In; any others), using any search term or ID you might have uncovered.

d. you must show the results of each search you do (noting even if a particular search didn’t turn up anything)

e. be aggressive and creative in your use of search terms

Each time you find a link that is fruitful (leads to interesting information), take note of that link and copy it down. Dig as deep as you can, and note each new link.

Each time you follow a link, you must write down a short description of what info the link promises to provide. Don’t use complete sentences. A few words will do.

Eventually, the poster or paper you hand in should resemble a map of your searches, with the deepest searches at the bottom of the paper and the original Twitter search term at the top. 

Please make your map neat and easy to read. Make sure that your descriptions of the links you post on your map are accurate and show that you actually opened them and read what they offered. Some might loop you back to applications you had searched earlier, but with a different term. Just follow them using the same approach.

Your assignment is due on Weds/19.