March Madness Through the Eyes of Twitter

By Claire Karon

March madness. This month is dominated by the most intense, grueling, and emotional tournament in college basketball. It consumes the lives of people young, old, sports fans, and non-sports fans alike. There is something fascinating about watching basketball games between teams you never thought would play each other, and trying your best to predict the outcome. Who doesn’t get a thrill out of arguing with family and friends about which NCAA Men’s basketball team is superior?

Especially when you have no connection to that team, or the reason you want them to win is because the team they are playing you absolutely can’t stand. It is the time of the year to prove to yourself how much you know about college hoops, and if you are like me, to prove to your friends and family you know more than them too…who doesn’t like a little bit of friendly competition.

The story is no different here at Marquette. If you kept up with the MU Basketball season at all this year, you know that it was filled with lots of exciting games, devastating losses, and a huge amount of support from the Marquette community. Lots of this support came from one of our favorite social media sites; Twitter. From my perspective it almost seems that Twitter is becoming just as popular (if not more) than Facebook. Especially when trying to reach a large group of people with similar interests. The Marquette community is a very tight knit one. Yet for a “medium sized” school our following is exponentially greater than that. Support from students, alums, families, and the community helped make Marquette’s NCAA Tournament experience that much more exciting. There are a number of different Twitter accounts that are all associated with Marquette University, and during tournament time most of the Tweets are usually something #mubb related.

Twitter Trend Analysis

By Kati Tusinski Berg

Sample tweets from students in Berg's ADPR 1800 course.

A couple of years ago I totally resisted Twitter, but over the past year I have come to enjoy it as a way to connect with colleagues, students and industry pros. Thanks to my colleague Gee Ekachai (@FvrythingPR) for encouraging me to get up-to-date with my social media skills. I have tried to develop a professional brand on Twitter than relates to my work as a professor in public relations in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University. Not only do I use hashtags for my courses (e.g. #adpr1800 and #ccom2000) but this semester I created a semester-long project for my ADPR 1800 Principles of Public Relations classes.

Students were required to create a public, professional-oriented Twitter account for class. I spent one lecture at the beginning of the semester reviewing online professionalism and ethics to remind them about the implications of posting inappropriate content online. Then students chose at least three PR professionals (e.g. @augieray or @ginidietrich), PR agencies (e.g. @ogilvypr @BraniganComm PR-related organizations (e.g. @PRSA or @PRnews) to follow on Twitter.

Old and New Media

By Steve Byers

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that we need to change our thinking about media— let’s quit talking about “old media” and “new media” because it’s just “media.” A fascinating report from the public relations field really strikes home how journalists are both relying on digital media and using it for publishing purposes, whether they are working in a print field or now.

Here are a couple of points from the report, which you should read in depth, although there is a nice summary at Crisis Comm, a thoughtful emergency management blog:

−Journalists are leaning on social media for obtaining news. The figures are startling, 47 percent of journalists get new from Twitter and 35 percent from Facebook.  I use “startling” only in the sense that we haven’t thought about this because I find myself using social media for much of my news. I do prefer blogs rather than Twitter or Facebook only because I’m a news geek who likes news in depth.

− The study reports that journalists say online channels for their news content are more important than print. Many print publications are monitoring digital postings and using their number as part of evaluation processes. Both Twitter (54 percent of journalists use it to disseminate news) and blogs (54 percent) are very popular.

Finally, a comment unrelated to the study. The growth of digital really came home to me − a journalist whose career was mostly in print with some radio/TV−when I found myself quoting an “emergency management” blog. First, I discovered it totally because of digital media. Second, I found myself valuing the information more than its source − in other words, I had total trust in the news value of information that was created for the public relations industry.

The old barriers have totally gone, at least for me.

Steve Byers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication. Read his blog from the college’s backpack journalism workshop in Cagli, Italy this summer at http://rats1.blogspot.com.