7 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism, Social Media & More

Tue, Nov 5 - Introduction to Solutions Journalism

What: In this webinar we’ll talk about the basic principles and pillars of solutions journalism, talk about why it’s important, explain key steps in reporting a solutions story, and share tips and resources for journalists interested in investigating how people are responding to social problems.  

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Solutions Journalism

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Tue, Nov 5 - The Neuroscience of Memorable Content

What: Learn what it takes to keep your audiences’ brains engaged and likely to recall. The reasons why it is hard for audiences to remember business content. The habits that lead to forgettable content and how to avoid them. The latest neuroscience insights and practical guidelines on how the business brain processes information and remembers it

Who: Carmen Simon, Ph.D. Cognitive Neuroscientist, Founder of Enhancive

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Wed, Nov 6 - Trademarks and Copyrights Basic: Understanding and Protecting Your Intellectual Property

What: Best practices and legal solutions for protecting your brand and copyrights.  

Who: Jonathan Phillips, Partner, Phillips and Bathke PC Attorneys

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Bradley University

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Wed, Nov 6 - Social Media Dos and Don’ts

What: Not all social media platforms are the same, and not all content is equal. Join us for a webinar about getting the most out of your social media presences. We’ll discuss the Dos and Don’ts of social media, some of the hurdles libraries face, and how to increase engagement with your audiences.

Who: Cordelia Anderson, library marketing and communications consultant and the author of Library Marketing and Communications: Strategies to Increase Relevance and Results, from ALA Editions.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Cordelia Anderson Consulting

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Wed, Nov 6 - AI and Educational Leadership: Driving Innovation and Equity

What: In this webinar, you will: Create a clear vision that leaders can use to integrate AI into organizational goals. Gain practical insights into AI tools currently in use. Discuss effective strategies for seamless implementation. Address critical challenges like training, equity, and infrastructure.

Who: Isabelle Hau Stanford University, Executive Director, Accelerator for Learning; Mike Gadsby CEO, 03; Victoria Pu, Ph.D. Co-founder and CEO, PACE App AI; Nneka J. McGee, J.D., Ed.D. Founder and CEO, Muon Global; Megan Pattenhouse, Director of Learning Design, Digital Promise.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Education Week

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Thu, Nov 7 - Visual Storytelling & AI Insights using Data Commons

What: Learn how to use open data to support your work? Have a data story you want to share with your target audience? Curious how machine learning and AI can help you get new insights from your data? Join us for an engaging introduction to these topics with our expert panel, using Data Commons as our primary source.

Who: Mike Yeaton TechSoup Data Commons Program Manager; Hasan Khalid TechSoup UX & Data Visualization Engineer; Mansi Shah TechSoup Technical Advisor, Data Commons

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: TechSoup

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Thu, Nov 7 - How to illustrate stories in your publication without getting into trouble

What: Learn news photography basics, camera tips, sourcing images, and licensing.

Who: Chaz Muth, newsroom director for Trinity Washington University

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Catholic Media Association

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Fri, Nov 8 - The Impact of Layoffs – and How to Weather Them

What: The Institute for Independent Journalists started collecting data on newsroom layoffs at the beginning of 2024, in an effort to uncover patterns of race, class and gender. In this webinar, IIJ founder Katherine Reynolds Lewis will announce the findings of our survey of laid off journalists, and layoff survivors will share strategies for weathering this now-common part of the industry.

Who: Janice Llamoca, Freelance Senior Producer, Former VICE Audio; Katherine Lewis, Founder, The IIJ; Maudlyne Ihejirika, the Field Foundation; Yowei Shaw, Creator and Host, Proxy

When: 12 noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Institute for Independent Journalists

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Looking Down

A small but detailed 2015 study of young adults found that participants were using their phones five hours a day, at 85 separate times. Most of these interactions were for less than 30 seconds, but they add up. Just as revealing: The users weren’t fully aware of how addicted they were. They thought they picked up their phones half as much as they actually did. Whether they were aware of it or not, a new technology had seized control of around one-third of these young adults’ waking hours.

Just look around you—at the people crouched over their phones as they walk the streets, or drive their cars, or walk their dogs, or play with their children. Observe yourself in line for coffee, or in a quick work break, or driving, or even just going to the bathroom. Visit an airport and see the sea of craned necks and dead eyes. We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.

Andrew Sullivan, I used to Be a Human Being

The Web Almost Killed Me

For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long.  If you had to reinvent yourself as a writer in the internet age, I reassured myself, then I was ahead of the curve. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to reinvent myself as a human being.

I realized I had been engaging—like most addicts—in a form of denial. I’d long treated my online life as a supplement to my real life. But then I began to realize, as my health and happiness deteriorated, that this was not a both-and kind of situation. It was either-or. Every hour I spent online was not spent in the physical world.

Andrew Sullivan, I used to Be a Human Being

Tech created a global village — and puts us at each other’s throats

As we get additional information about others, we place greater stress on the ways those people differ from us than on the ways they resemble us, and this inclination to emphasize dissimilarities over similarities strengthens as the amount of information accumulates. On average, we like strangers best when we know the least about them.

The effect intensifies in the virtual world, where everyone is in everyone else’s business. Social networks like Facebook and messaging apps like Snapchat encourage constant self-disclosure. Because status is measured quantitatively online, in numbers of followers, friends, and likes, people are rewarded for broadcasting endless details about their lives and thoughts through messages and photographs. To shut up, even briefly, is to disappear. One study found that people share four times as much information about themselves when they converse through computers as when they talk in person.

Progress toward a more amicable world will require not technological magic but concrete, painstaking, and altogether human measures: negotiation and compromise, a renewed emphasis on civics and reasoned debate, a citizenry able to appreciate contrary perspectives. At a personal level, we may need less self-expression and more self-examination.

Technology is an amplifier. It magnifies our best traits, and it magnifies our worst.

Nicholas Carr writing in the Boston Globe

16 Articles about Social Media & AI

How Meta YouTube TikTok & Others labels AI – Axios  

AI Is Flooding Social Media. Here's How to Make Sure You Don't Get Lost in the Robotic Noise. – Entrepreneur

Does Generative AI Content Have a Place in Social Media? – SocialMediaToday

Meta's AI-everywhere push raises hackles - Axios

Facebook says Sorry its AI Flagged Aschwitz Museum Posts as Offensive – Futurism

More Generative AI Tools Are Coming to Social Apps — Is That a Good Thing? - SocialMediaToday

Meta debuts new AI assistant and chatbots - Axios

LinkedIn taps AI to make it easier for firms to find job candidates – Reuters

Slack’s New CEO Brings Generative AI to the Workplace Conversation - Wall Street Journal

LinkedIn expands its generative AI assistant to recruitment ads and writing profiles – Tech Crunch

Instagram Experiments With Range of Generative AI Elements - SocialMediaToday

LinkedIn Says ChatGPT-Related Job Postings Have Ballooned 21-Fold Since November – Forbes

How to Use AI Tools to Easily Make Short-Form TikTok and Reels Videos – Tech.no 

TECH What happens when we train our AI on social media? – Fast Company   

AI-generated images have become the latest form of social media spam – The Conversation  

Meta’s AI chatbot is coming to social media. Misinformation may come with it. – Washington Post

Are you smarter than a pigeon?

In the 1950s, Skinner began putting the birds in a box and training them to peck on a piece of plastic whenever they wanted food. Then the Harvard psychology researcher rigged the system so that not every peck would yield a tasty treat. It became random — a reward every three pecks, then five pecks, then two pecks. 

The pigeons went crazy and began pecking compulsively for hours on end.

Fast forward six decades. We have become the pigeons pecking at our iPhones, scrolling through news feeds, swiping left/right on Tinder for hours, the uncertainty of what we might find keeping us obsessed by design.

In the modern economy of tablets and apps, our attention has become the most valuable commodity. Tech companies have armies of behavioral researchers whose sole job is to apply principles like Skinner’s variable rewards to grab and hold our focus as often and long as possible.

Market research shows the average user touches their cellphone 2,617 times a day.

William Wan in the Washington Post 

11 Webinars this Week about AI, Journalism, Elections, Poetry & Social Media

Tue, March 19 - How journalists can navigate news avoidance

What: Concrete strategies to try to reach news avoiders with your journalism.

Who: Benjamin Toff who led the Reuters Trust In News Project and Trusting News Director Joy Mayer. 

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Trusting News

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Tue, March 19 - Using Generative AI to Transform Your eLearning into Personalized Learning

What: Join us in this fun, interactive session, where we'll dive into integrating ChatGPT with Articulate Storyline, putting the power of AI right in the hands of your learner. You could use the same techniques with any other leading authoring software. We will also talk about critical do’s and don’ts while planning to use ChatGPT integration in eLearning modules.  

Who: Garima Gupta, Founder & CEO, Artha Learning Inc.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Tue, March 19 - How AI Is Transforming Media Activation

What: Discover how to stay ahead in the dynamic world of AI-powered media activation. You’ll find out: How to implement AI-driven audience segmentation to boost engagement and conversion Ways to use predictive analytics and AI to activate hyper-targeted audiences and maintain strong addressability post third-party cookie Strategies to optimize the deployment of hyper-targeted audiences without the need for proxies

Who: Ericka Podesta McCoy, CMO of Resonate

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: AdWeek

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Tue, March 19 - Investigative Journalism and Digital Threats in 2024 Elections

What: In this panel, leading journalists and experts — who will all be covering elections in 2024 — share perspectives on the impact of digital threats in elections in different continents. They will also share tips and tools about how to better expose the individuals and organizations behind disinformation campaigns.

Who: Priyanjana Bengani is the Tow Computational Journalism Fellow at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism; Malek Khadhraoui is a journalist, trainer, and publication director of Inkyfada, a Tunisian magazine dedicated to investigative and longform journalism.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Global Investigative Journalism Network

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Wed, March 20 - AI + Fact-Checking in an Election Year

What: Participants will complete exercises on how to use them and discover ways to use them to keep their communities informed about the election.

Who: Mike Reilley Senior Lecturer, University of Illinois-Chicago.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free for members, $25 for nonmembers

Sponsor: Online News Association

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Wed, March 20 - Processing the News Through Poetry with the Pulitzer Center  

What: Learn about how thousands of students worldwide have used poetry as a tool for close reading, empathetic connection, and raising their voices through the Fighting Words Poetry Contest. Participants will explore the resources used to craft original poems in response to global news stories and examples of contest-winning student work.  

When: 4 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pulitzer Center  

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Wed, March 20 - Using Design to Stand Out on Social Media

What: Learn design tactics that will help you stand out from the noise and show your audience why they should care. No matter the size of your team or budget, discover how to maximize your impact without breaking the bank (or your sanity).

Who: Eva Taylor, Director Social Impact, Hootsuite; Ezra Morris, Director of Digital Engagement, CARE; Anell Abreu, Digital Content Manager, CARE; Lauren Freund, Social Media Manager, Canva.

When: 11 am, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Hootsuite

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Wed, March 20 - Stopping Climate Action Mis-Information — How Is the Media Complicit and What Can Journalists Do?

What: In this interactive panel discussion, advocates will talk about what can and should be done to ensure fair, accurate and useful reporting around climate action.

Who: Meg McGuire, Founder, Delaware Currents; Aparna Mukherjee, Society of Environmental Journalists; Lauren Yates, Freelance Journalist; Nicole Miller, MnM Consulting; Anjuli Ramos-Busot, State Director, New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club; Marcus Sibley, National Wildlife Federation.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Environmental Journalists

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Thu, March 21 - The Futurist Summit: The New Age of Tech

What: A dynamic summit featuring groundbreaking pioneers, influential policymakers and leading minds about the technological transformations shaping our future

Who: Stefanie Tompkins Director, DARPA; Pat Gelsinger CEO, Intel; Anna Makanju Vice President of Global Affairs, OpenAI; Hemant Taneja CEO & Managing Director, General Catalyst; Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.); Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.); Brian Rolapp Chief Media & Business Officer, National Football League; Sarah Herrlinger Senior Director, Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives, Apple and more, including 11 Washington Post reporters.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsors: Mozella & The Washington Post

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Thu, March 21 - What mainstream media can learn from niche news sites

What: Fundamentally, it is crucial for all newsrooms to make sharper choices about what they report on — and how. Niche news sites have no choice in this, but mainstream news can learn a lot by using these differentiation strategies in all stages of the content cycle. Through the lens of successful case studies from FIN News (USA) and Chemistry World (UK), we’ll explore how making precise editorial choices can significantly enhance the relevance and impact of your content. Together we’ll address the question every journalistic organisation should ask themselves: why do you matter to your audience and how do you make a difference for them?

Who: Rutger Verhoeven, co-founder and CMO of smartocto; Matt McCue (FIN News, USA) and Philip Robinson (Chemistry World, UK).

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: smartocto

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In search of the digital facelift

Unsurprisingly, a large body of research shows that viewing idealised or retouched images adds to the dissatisfaction that many people already feel towards their body. Research by Kristen Harrison, a media psychologist at the University of Michigan, shows that even disclosing that celebrity and advertising images are retouched makes many of us feel worse about ourselves. Becoming more aware of what others edit may heighten our awareness of our own supposed flaws. That may encourage us to spend longer using digital tools to repair them. And once you start it’s hard to stop. I felt better about posting my first FaceTuned photo than I would have if I hadn’t edited it. And since we’re more inclined to post images of ourselves that we like, says Harrison, “it’s self-sustaining because you want to do it again and again and again.” Beauty is attainable for all. Just don’t expect it to be more than a pixel deep. 

Amy Odell writing in 1843 magazine