Azerbaijan’s social media trainees ready to pass on new skills
A four-day intensive workshop on using social media as a journalistic tool was held recently by the IMS-supported Azerbaijan Media Center.
– “I have learned more in these four days than I have in three years of journalism training,” said one of the enthusiastic Azerbaijani journalists after collecting her certificate on the final day of the workshop.
Designed to improve skills in news gathering and dissemination using social media, the workshop gathered 25 journalists and bloggers.
During the four days of intensive learning the participants experimented with their new social media skills and finalised the course confident that they would now be able to pass on their new-found expertise to others.
A full house of enthusiastic tweeters
Words such as hashtags, curation, scoop.it, and retweeting may sound strange to those who have not been introduced to social networking. But for online journalists they are part of a new vocabulary important to master in order to ensure the relevance and accessiblity of their journalistic work and to keep up with changing audience behaviours.
– “Just a week before the course, the term curation was associated with museums and art galleries. Not only for me but also for the most advanced online users. Now, we all know that curation is the tool for sharing information in cyberspace”, said Valida Babayeva, 21, the youngest participant in the course.
While every participant had a Facebook account when the course started, only a handful was on Twitter and only a few had blogs. By the end of the first day, all had set up profiles on Twitter and by the morning of day two, all had Posterous blogs.
Day three saw them using curation tools such as Storify and Scoop.it to gather and share information, and by midafternoon on the final day the 25 participants were building interactive timelines and maps using Dipity and Umapper.
Ready to pass on new skills
Eager to use their new-found skills in their daily work and to pass on their knowledge to others, the long-term benefit of the workshop was highlighted by the participants:
“I will definitely use all I have learnt in my work,” said one of the participants who had successfully built an interactive timeline and map and embedded both in her blog in just a few hours.
Jeyhun Atayev, Senior Project Coordinator with the Azerbaijani arm of Transparency International said: “I am sure, that a lot of information and knowledge, gained during the training, will be put into practice and daily activities by me and my colleagues and counterparts from civil society”.
The course was designed and delivered by David Brewer, director of Media Ideas International Ltd, and founder and editor of Media Helping Media. The local co-trainer was Azer Nezerov [snabela]Azer_n, the translator was Parvana Persiani[snabela]parvanapersiani, who also helped run some sessions, and Valida Babayeva was on hand at all times to take photographs and help participants set up their various social media accounts. The course was organised by the IMS-supported Azerbaijan Media Center and sponsored by the Council of Europe.
