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Best Practices

What’s in a hashtag? How to use hashtags strategically on Twitter

If you use social media, you’re probably familiar with the concept of a hashtag. Hashtags on Twitter are essentially a tool for “tagging” your tweets so they appear alongside other tweets about the same topic. If you are managing an institutional (or personal) academic Twitter account, using hashtags strategically can help you expand your audience by interjecting your voice into existing conversations.

But, when is it appropriate to use a hashtag, and how do you decide how many of your 280 characters to dedicate to them? When should you use an existing hashtag, and when is it a good idea to create your own?

Continue reading “What’s in a hashtag? How to use hashtags strategically on Twitter”
Categories
Best Practices

Dos and Don’ts on LinkedIn

As Social Mediums, we discuss at length the use of different online media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook or a personal website, for sharing scholarly work, networking, and collaborating. Recently, we explored another popular social media platform for professionals – LinkedIn. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is used mostly for professional networking and job opportunities. Since many recruiters and peers will be looking at your profile, it’s important that your online presence is well prepared. 

In this post, we present the dos and don’ts on LinkedIn.

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Tutorial

A Beginner’s Guide to Building Your Website on the Commons

As the semester winds down for students and faculty alike, there’s no time like the present to take a moment to think about your online scholarly profile. Do you have an online portfolio that gathers your various academic achievements in one place? If you haven’t done so already, consider creating a profile on the CUNY Academic Commons!

Continue reading “A Beginner’s Guide to Building Your Website on the Commons”
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From the Web

Facebook: Friend or Foe?

Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, recently released an op-ed in The New York Times, “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” expressing concern about the monopolistic nature of Facebook and the power wielded by Mark Zuckerberg.

Leapfrogging off concerns raised about Facebook’s recent mistakes, including “the sloppy privacy practices that dropped tens of millions of users’ data into a political consulting firm’s lap; the slow response to Russian agents, violent rhetoric and fake news; and the unbounded drive to capture ever more of our time and attention,” Hughes urges for more than governmental oversight over the company: he suggests that the F.T.C. and Justice Department break up Facebook into multiple companies (and thus undoing its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp).

He justifies this call to action based on the need to create a competitive market (which cannot be achieved organically due to the enormous amount of capital needed to “take on” Facebook) and to engender more governmental oversight over sensitive privacy and “free speech” policies, thus curbing Zuckerberg’s lone decision-making as majority share holder.

While Hughes defends Zuckerberg’s character, he questions whether any one person should be allowed so much control over billions of people. And to that end, he leaves us to ponder several important questions, such as “Should we be worried that Facebook owns all of our private conversations and photos?”; “To what extend is the company’s knowledge about our interests invasive?”; and “Is Facebook really ‘free’ or do we pay for it with our time and data?”

Read the full article here: “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook”

A counter-argument in the NYT by Nick Clergg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communications, can be found here: “Breaking Up Facebook Is Not the Answer”

Categories
Tutorial

How to request video recording service at the Graduate Center

If you are organizing an event for your department, working group, or various other occasions, you might be interested in using the video recording services provided by the IT department at the GC. This blog post illustrates how to request the livestreaming and recording services for events that take place at the GC. It also gives some useful tips when publicly sharing the recorded videos online.

Requesting the video recording service through the IT department

  • Fill out this simple IT Media Services Form 3-5 business days prior to the event. Note that you need to provide the name of a person who will oversee the recording. This can be the EO, director, or chair of department or organization.
  • When filling out the form, select if you want your event to be livestreamed and/or recorded. *Remember! If you choose to have your event livestreamed, make sure you have active plans to share the livestream link (sent from the IT) with your potential audience via email listserv or social media. Here are some great tips on how to better promote your livestream.

  • Once you submit the form, you will receive an email confirmation from the IT department. Make sure the date, time, and requested service options are correct.
  • On the day of your event, IT will set up the video stand a couple hours before the event. Note that IT will not be present during the event to record the video. Most likely, you will be responsible for pressing the start and end button, so make sure to read the written instructions attached to the stand on how to start/end the recording.

Accessing and/or downloading the video

  • Once the recording is finished, you will have 15 days to access the recorded video from the GC’s Streaming Video Service. You need your GC ID and password to log in to the website. Only the person who requested the video service can download the video. Since the recorded video is accessible for only a limited time, quickly download and save it in a safe place.

  • To download, first select your video from the home page and then click the “download video” button on the bottom right. There are two quality (high and low) versions of the recorded video. Choose the one that suits your need. If your video is long, the high-quality version may have more than one file.

Sharing the video online

  • To upload and share the video on the official GC website or YouTube Channel, you must have the video captioned and submit it to the Office of Communications and Marketing for review. Find the detailed guidelines HERE on important policies and procedures about sharing videos online.
  • Learn more about some video captioning tools and how to add captions to videos for various social media platforms.