A simple guide for news-gathering and monitoring includes meaningful tips and valuable tools to assist in both processes. The information in these slides is based on First Draft's webinar titled "How to find stories by news-gathering and monitoring the social web."

1. News
Gathering
and
Monitoring
THE INFORMATION IN THESE SLIDES IS BASED ON FIRST DRAFT'S WEBINAR TITLED "HOW TO FIND STORIES BY NEWSGATHERING AND MONITORING THE SOCIAL WEB."
M.A Candidate at AUC, The American University in Cairo
By: Menna Elhosary

2. What is News
Gathering?

3. The news gathering process consists of two main steps:
Both steps contribute to each other as finding sources leads to
finding the keywords and vise versa.
2. Finding credible sources
Sources are all about where this
information comes from.
Credible sources include authorities,
opinion leaders, influencers, and many
more, depending on the issue.
Keywords define how people are
addressing a particular issue.
keywords include hashtags, short
sentences, and terms.
1. Implementing specific keywords
News Gathering
The process of collecting information for broadcasting and
publishing purposes

4. 6 ways to find relevant news keywords
Speak your audience language
1.
2. Consider informalslangmisspelled words
3. Explore the comments section
4. Create a spreadsheet for frequently used keywords
5. Alter the keywords based on the community you
are exploring
6. Implement boolean search

5. Boolean search
A way of searching in which we use modifiers such as "OR, And, Not" to
control the search results

6. More about boolean search
Based on the results you are looking for, implement these
modifiers, and see the magic happens
SOURCE: WORKABLEWEB.COM

7. Tools To Assist In Finding Sources
Twitter Lists
Followerwonk LinkedIn
CrowdTangle

8. Twitter Lists
A tool that allows you to create lists
of specific accounts (Sources) and
customize your feed.
You can search for lists about a
particular topic.
You may also follow or copy lists
created by other journalists.
EXAMPLE: A LIST OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING BLOGS

9. CrowdTangle lists
A tool that assists in organizing
Facebook groups, pages, and
accounts and tracking these sources.
You can use it to create lists of
sources on Facebook.
EXAMPLE: A LIST OF FINANCE SOURCES

10. CrowdTangle Link checker
A tool by CrowdTangle allows you to check
how a specific link is being shared and in
what context.
Helps in fact-checking and rumors
tracking.
EXAMPLE: HOW THE LINK CHECKER IS WORKING AFTER INSTALLATION TO A BROWSER

11. FollowerWonk
A tool that assists in connecting
with various experts by
searching specific keywords
included in their Twitter bios.
You can arrange the results in
various ways.
It is a free tool with some
premium features.
EXAMPLE: SEARCH RESULTS OF THE KEYWORD "TRAVEL BLOGGER"

12. LinkedIn search
You can use LinkedIn search to
find experts and professionals.
Search by job title or
organization.
Filter the results and narrow
them down until finding the
most credible sources.
EXAMPLE: SEARCH RESULTS OF "BUSINESS COACH"

13. What is Monitoring?

14. Why it is important to monitor online platforms?
This process provides an overview of your online performance, gives
you feedback, and helps track the resonance of your content.
By knowing your audience feedback, you will engage, evolve, and
adopt.
Monitoring Platforms
The process of scanning the output of online media over
various platforms

15. Tools to Assist In Monitoring
Platforms
Tweetdeck
GoogleAlerts
TrackReddit
Picbabun
SnapMap
CrowdTangle

16. TweetDeck
A Twitter tool that allows monitoring
what people publish about specific
keywords, lists, or hashtags.
Whenever the topic is viral, the
results contain a massive number of
tweets.
There is a drop-down icon to filter
these results.

17. TweetDeck Columns
TweetDeck allows viewing the
newsfeed as multiple columns instead
of a single column.
You can control and filter the tweets
of each column.
You can arrange the columns in
whatever order you desire.
TYPES OF TWEETDECK COLUMNS

18. CrowdTangle
A tool to monitor Facebook, Instagram,
and Reddit.
It tracks specific keywords from the
various social media platforms.
It notifies you about updates related to
the topic of your choice.
Contains a "Viral" alert to notify you
whenever a content is trending.

19. CrowdTangle Filters and
Weights
CrowdTangle allows a variety of filters to
narrow down your search results based
on your needs.
Weights is another feature that allows
arranging the results based on specific
interactions such as the total shares or
the angry reactions.
A helpful feature when targeting a
specific feedback, For instance: anger
and disappointment.

20. CrowdTangle LineDisplay
A feature in CrowdTangle, similar to TweetDeck,
enables tracking columns from different
platforms.
It is more powerful than Tweetdeck as it displays
results from multiple websites rather than only
from Twitter.

21. It is an open-source monitoring tool for
Instagram.
It helps identify the most popular hashtags
related to particular keywords and, thus,
the news sources.
It enables creating lists out of these
hashtags and sources.
Picbabun

22. Google Alterts
It notifies you about the keywords of your
choice.
You get an email each time someone posts
about these keywords
This might include blogposts, news articles,
books, or anything based on your filters.

23. Track Reddit
A monitoring tool for Reddit.
It assists in tracking posts on Reddit about
specific terms.

24. SnapMap
It helps in identifying the locations of the
published stories.
It gives an overview of how people respond
differently to global events.
It helps monitor the international audience.

25. Have Questions?
Don't hesitate to contact me!
Menna.elhosary@aucegypt.edu