Rate Your Online Reputation Assignment

1. Eval­u­ate Your Dig­i­tal Reputation

Make sure you aren’t logged into Google. Per­form a web search on your­self. For exam­ple, I searched: “Marie Shana­han”, “Marie K. Shana­han”  “Marie Shana­han UConn” and my com­mon screen name “mariek­shan.” Check image search, too.

If avail­able, click on any links about you. Answer the fol­low­ing ques­tions in a thought­ful post on the class blog.

• What shows up your first page of results?
• How would you rate your dig­i­tal foot­print? Excel­lent, Good, Fair, Poor, or Invis­i­ble. Why?
• How do you think your dig­i­tal foot­print reflects upon your rep­u­ta­tion as a
  journalist?
• How do you think you should con­duct your­self (online and off) if you want/need sources and an audi­ence to trust you?

2. Read This Article

“Online Chaos Demands Rad­i­cal Action by Jour­nal­ism to Earn Trust” by Richard Gin­gras and Sal­ly Lehrman. Octo­ber 16, 2004.

3. Engag­ing your audience

Once you have a work of jour­nal­ism to pub­lish, you need to find an audi­ence for your work. Jour­nal­ists can use the pow­er of the web to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty around the top­ic, if one doesn’t already exist.

You can discuss/promote the work of jour­nal­ism in “places” where your key audi­ence gath­ers, includ­ing social media sites, blogs and off-line events.

Jour­nal­ists are expect­ed to be con­ver­sa­tion lead­ers and mod­er­a­tors, and not just “broad­cast­ers” of infor­ma­tion.

How do you feel about this new role? Com­fort­able or uncom­fort­able? Why?

Add your per­spec­tive on engage­ment to the blog post you’ve start­ed about your online rep­u­ta­tion. Sep­a­rate the two sec­tions with a sub­head. Add hyper­links and at least one image to your post.

Choose “Rep­u­ta­tion” as your cat­e­go­ry. Write an orig­i­nal, key­word-filled head­line. Pro­mote your post on FB with an engag­ing “share­line.”

DUE BY OUR NEXT CLASS ON NOV. 20.