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STATE OF THE MEDIA
The Daily Beacon • Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Social Media Week turns online engagement into business connections BELLA HUGHES Design Editor
Social media goes beyond a TikTok for you page (FYP) or an Instagram timeline. Social media is a business platform that connects companies to clients and viewers to virality. UT Social Media Week is an opportunity for students who are curious about starting a career in social media or building a business presence online. Social media strategy student Tamari Davis discovered business opportunities within social media and the analytics that go along with the program. “I did not know about all the numbers and logistics that go into calculating views and engagements until I took ADVT 461, Social Media. Now that I know about Social Media Week I will be participating,” Davis said. In 2012, during the rise of the social media age, Courtney Childers, a professor of advertising and public relations and current interim director of the school of journalism and electronic media, saw potential for business in social media. Since its inaugural year, the event has informed a greater population on how to build a career online.
“Career paths in social have a true legitimacy. It took a few years for people to understand and embrace the true impact of social. Social isn’t all fun and games. Brands use social for strategic purposes, and many social campaigns are tied to significant return on investment,” Childers said. Social Media Week began Monday and will conclude on Thursday, Feb. 23. Clubs and faculty will host guest speakers, inluding panelists with expertise in podcasts, sports journalism and video production who will lead discussion on how to be influential and effective in sending media messages. “Speakers will provide diverse per-
to ensure accurate research. On Wednesday at 12 p.m., Matthew Pittman, director of the Adam Brown Command Center, will host a seminar on how to operate Sprinklr technology. “Sprinklr is a world class social media analytics and engagement tool used by the biggest brands in the world that UT now has access to. In the session I’ll give a birds eye view of what Sprinklr can do,” Pittman said. Sprinklr is not exclusively for CCI students and staff. The entire UT community can benefit from the resource to have a betEricksen Gomez-Villeda / The Daily Beacon ter understanding of the social market. Hunter Foster, a UT alumnus and director of social media at Knoxville-based advertisspectives and experiences to get students ing agency Designsensory, understands the (thinking) about future possibilities,” importance of keeping a brand relevant on a Childers said. The Adam Brown Social Media Command platform that is flooded with content. On Thursday, in an event hosted by the Center in the Communications building is an in-house resource UT students and fac- Public Relations Student Society of America ulty can use to gain insights on audiences and the Ad Club, Foster will share how he and his team launched a Tiktok page and and trends. The center now has access to developed a strong social media presence Sprinklr, a database used by Fortune 100 companies like Microsoft and Capital One. for their client Regal Cinemas. The event will take place in the Communications building Sprinklr uses AI technology to scan media platforms including Twitter, Reddit, Face- room 321 at 6 p.m. and also provides a Zoom option. book and TikTok. The database allows stuFor more information on Social Media dents and faculty to analyze engagement week visit @utkcci on Instagram. and conversations around a brand or topic
Student media outlets continue to fight censorship ABBIE SMITH Staff Writer
Albritton Bell Tower at Texas A&M, where The Battalion was ordered (unsuccessfully) to stop printing. (Ed Schipul/Creative Commons) With the fifth annual Student Press Freedom Day approaching on Feb. 23, the time has come again to look into censorship in student media and what students can and cannot do when reporting. Though the First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom and speech and freedom of the press, student journalists are much more limited than professional journalists, due to
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In this 1988 case, the Supreme Court decided that schools may restrict what is published in student newspapers if the papers are not public forums. The court also decided that schools can limit First Amendment rights of students if the student speech goes against the school’s mission. Censorship is most prevalent in high school newspapers, an example being the recent “pause” by school board leaders on the Viking Saga in Northwest Public School in Nebraska after it covered two LGBTQ+ stories. In another example, a Los Angeles teacher refused to censor a student’s article and was suspended. The suspension has since been lifted. The censorship case which led to the Hazelwood School District decision happened in 1983, when Cathy Kuhlmeir was in high school. Luckily, college students are less likely to face censorship than high school students, but they are often victims of budget cuts (which have affected papers such as those at University of Memphis and Wesleyan University), an indirect form of censorship. Though less likely to face censorship, journalism students spend ample time pondering censorship in schools, no matter the level of education in question. “Censorship can be good when it’s out of protection for groups who already are facing
prejudice and are targeted with hate crimes, hate-speech, or any sort of bias and false information,” said Kevin Thomas, a senior journalism major at UT. “The censoring of fake news works to stop the spread of misinformation. However, censorship in classrooms shouldn’t be ideal.” Michael Martinez, assistant professor of practice in journalism, has taught about censorship extensively in his classes, particularly his media law class. “I think society has gotten more conservative as far as trying to censor voices. They’re trying to get people to shut up and not talk about it – ‘they’ meaning the administration and ‘it’ being controversial issues in general,” Martinez said. “But there’s also been a lot of fights to push back against censorship and many times it’s been successful.” A successful retaliation against censorship is the L.A. teacher, Adriana Chavira, who refused to censor her students’ work and successfully fought back against the suspension she faced. College publications are not immune to direct action by administrators. Texas A&M’s student newspaper, the Battalion, was told by the university’s president, M. Katherine Banks, that they would stop print in February of 2022. The student newspaper’s print was meant to be suspended immediately upon Banks’ request, but after backlash from students and
alumni, Banks decided to allow the newspaper to continue printing weekly until the end of the semester. The paper’s most recent print issue was published on Feb. 16. The fight, however, does not always come from just students, alumni, or faculty, according to Martinez. “When the University of Memphis defunded their student publication, because the administration didn’t like what they were writing about, the newspaper industry in general came to their aid and pointed out that just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. It’s good journalism – what they’re writing,” Martinez said. In fact, according to journalism student Megan Trivette, professors are supportive of students reporting on the “whole” story. “I really don’t think that the professors have had an impact on censorship, in fact a lot of them really encourage us to go out and get the full story,” Trivette said. “We really are provided with the opportunity to write what we want to write.” In reality, the state of censorship in the United States and particularly in universities is constantly fluctuating and must be taken on a case-by-case basis. The question is the same as it has always been: “What can newspapers say? What is the line?” but the answer continues to change.