I have now send off my plan for the panel I’m hosting at WxWM this Saturday. Below is a copy of the email I sent to Shona.

For my panel I will be talking about the difference between using social media for a professional purpose and using it purely for personal pleasure.

In running BirminghamRecycled, I’m faced with the challenge of getting journalists into the habit of thinking of social media as a public debate, rather than just a place for chatting to friends. From my experience, the fundamental difference seems to be that most people use social media primary to nurture existing social relations and not to create new ones.

As a news site, our primary goal with social media is to give the publicatiuon a human face, interact with current user but also attract new people. Although most students have been using social media for a long time, they seem almost scared with the idea of a public conversation. They think of social media as a private space to share stuff with their friends and not the world.

I don’t have any real education skills or anything, so hopefully people will be able to chip in with advice on how I can break this down, and help the students understand the difference.

Hopefully there will be a few experts who can shed some light on my problems. As I have no real experience in teaching social media, it would be cool if someone could give me some tips ;-).