Liz Heron and Social Media

            Liz Heron former editor of the New York Times discussed social media tactics that we can use to make our social media more news worthy. Heron says that we live in a very social world. In her TED talk she offers us several tips and tricks we can use to make our social media more effective.

            One of the first things she discusses is social medias response to the death of Robin Williams. She points out an Academy tweet that included a photo from Aladdin captioned “Genie, you’re free”. Even though this was a thoughtful and kind post, Heron points out that it could be taken in the wrong way because it could make suicidal people more venerable.

           

            She also mentions how Instagram has created such a wonderful source of news with their 15-second videos. She shows a video about the Islamic state that had been posted to Instagram. She explains that it is an excellent piece of social media, because it is short, tells a story and has no voice over. Even though she does not mention this, Snapchat has the same thing except it is in 10-second videos. Also the user has the ability to explore the video and read a short story about the video.

            Another thing she discusses is the use of the internet to find falsities in other news stories. She brings up a photo of Niagara Falls frozen. The photo was taken at a totally different time than the tweet had claimed. Heron said that this is one of the great things about the internet in this day and age.

            Liz also talks about how social media works in a circle these days and that it is constantly changing.