Social Media
The Moment for Independent Media: Bridging Cultural Understanding, Providing Fresh Perspectives
By Caty Borum Chattoo, producer and communication strategist for Link TV, assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and media fellow with the AU Center for Social Media.
Back in September of last year – around the 18th, to be exact – a student in a media class I teach blogged about something she was picking up on Twitter and in the blogosphere. But although she was pretty sure that “something” was happening, she wondered why she wasn’t reading or hearing more about it in media coverage. I recall tweeting back to her, “you can find stories on indie and public media, like Link TV, Democracy Now!, NPR…”
If Angela Davis Had Twitter, Way Back When…
Dr. Angela Davis reflects on how social media may have aided her activist pursuits in the 1960s. She is featured in The Black Power Mixtape, which airs this Thursday on Independent Lens. The clip is part of a larger interview conducted by PBS NEWSHOUR’s Hari Sreenivasan and produced by ITVS.
The documentary is the product of Swedish journalists, who came to the U.S. to document the anti-war and Black Power movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film combines music, original 16mm footage, and contemporary audio interviews from leading African American artists, activists, musicians, and scholars.
Women and Girls Lead, Front and Center in NYC
The multi-year public media initiative anchored several high-profile events in New York last month with actor Geena Davis and other key members of the Women and Girls Lead team.
The campaign made a big splash in Manhattan on Tuesday, September 21st with a panel at Mashable’s Social Good Conference at the 92nd Street Y, entitled: Women and Girls Lead: Where Storytelling, Gaming, and Public Media Converge. (NOTE: You can watch the entire panel in the video below…)
The panel was moderated by Aaron Sherinian, VP of Communications at the UN Foundation, and included: Geena Davis (Academy Award winner and advocate), Paula Kerger (president and CEO of PBS), Abigail Disney (executive producer of Women, War & Peace), and Asi Burak (co-founder of Games for Change).
› Continue reading
100,000+ Fans Can’t Be Wrong
Interested in raising your web presence? This past week the Independent Lens Facebook page reached and passed the 100,00 fan milestone. IL’s Managing Editor Brooke Shelby Biggs has been making her social media best practices available in a series of BTB posts. You can find a roundup of those offerings below:
On Social Media, Quality Trumps Quantity
How to measure and maintain quality followers on social media.
Use Geo-Targeting Early and Often
How to geo-target relevant information to your Facebook community.
To Tweet or Not to Tweet?
How to setup and leverage your twitter account.
› Continue reading
On Social Media, Quality Trumps Quantity
Managing Editor of Independent Lens Brooke Shelby Biggs explains how to measure and maintain quality followers on social media.
When you’re just starting out in social media, your focus is going to be on garnering as many fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter as you can. There are tried-and-true ways of accomplishing this, the most effective being (assuming you have a small marketing budget) using Facebook advertising, openly asking fans to share your posts, retweeting others and asking them to retweet you, and holding contests.
› Continue reading
Introducing ITVS’s 2011 Digital Survey
By Matthew Meschery
The following is an excerpt from the executive summary of the 2011 ITVS Digital Survey. The findings, which are available for download below, offer new trends on the digital media environment with a particular focus on independent producers.
Who put the audience in charge? Technology, demographic shifts, and a globalized economy have all shaped a 21st century media ecosystem where power has shifted away from traditional broadcasters and gatekeepers. It’s a shift that’s revolutionized where, how, and why people use media. And content makers and distributors are playing catch-up, trying to figure out ways to reach viewers, make money, and break through the deafening noise of the marketplace.
› Continue reading
Use Geo-Targeting Early and Often
Managing Editor of Independent Lens Brooke Shelby Biggs offers advice on how to geo-target relevant information to your Facebook community.
If your film is screening in Chicago, how much sense does it make to just post that fact on your film’s Facebook fan page, where most of your fans are probably not from Chicago? Not much, for a couple of reasons.
First, as we know from a previous Being Social column, only about 25 percent of your fans will see any given post. That means only 25 percent of your fans in Chicago are likely to see your announcement. That’s not effective, and it looks pretty ham-fisted to your fans who live nowhere near Chicago.
› Continue reading
To Tweet or Not to Tweet?
Managing Editor of Independent Lens Brooke Shelby Biggs shares best tips on how to setup and leverage your twitter account.
So far in this series we’ve focused on Facebook strategies, and that’s because Facebook, when used optimally, has finer controls and options. But Twitter deserves your attention too, whether you are a station, a studio, or a producer.
Yes Twitter is more akin to a sledgehammer than to Facebook’s dull knife, but there is potential to engage a completely different group on Twitter and network with similar people, target particular interest groups, and even drum up buzz for promotions, premieres, funding initiatives, and plenty more.
› Continue reading
The Longoria Affair Nominated for an Emmy
The Longoria Affair (El caso Longoria) — which aired this past November on Independent Lens — has been nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Historical Programming Long Form category. The film examines the refusal of a Texas funeral home to care for the body of WWII Mexican American soldier. Filmmaker John Valadez spoke with Independent Lens about the film and its impact through a series of community screenings.
When you set out to tell this story through film, was there a particular audience you wanted to reach, and if so, did you succeed?
I remember when I first started college, I came across a really stunning and disheartening statistic: the high school drop out rate for Xicanos hovers was around 50 percent and it has been that way for at least half a century. That fact has always troubled me. For Mexican American kids who do get into college they find a world largely devoid of educational materials about how Xicanos have helped shape the destiny of this country. The same absence in history that is so devastating to Mexican Americans is something that ultimately hurts non-Xicano students as well. You can look to the ethnic studies wars taking place in Arizona to see just how determined many policy makers are to maintain this absence of self-knowledge.
› Continue reading
If You Facebook in the Forest Does it Make a Sound?
Managing Editor of Independent Lens Brooke Shelby Biggs offers advice on how to trigger and track engagement on Facebook.
A common misconception about Facebook is that however many friends or fans you have, they will all see each of your posts. This is simply not the case. In fact, only about one of every four of your posts will be seen by a given fan. And it isn’t because Facebook has some dark ploy to censor you, despite the viral rumors to that effect that surface every few months.
› Continue reading
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
- #ILDocClub
- All Video
- Ask Programming
- Audio Podcasts
- Awards
- Community Cinema
- Community Classroom
- Exclusive
- Film Festivals
- Filmmaker Profile
- From the President's Desk
- FUTURESTATES
- Global Voices
- Half the Sky
- In the News
- Independent Lens
- Indie Roundup
- Inside Indies
- Institutional Updates
- ITVS Broadcasts
- ITVS Deep Dive
- ITVS Funding
- ITVS indie roundup
- ITVS Indies Showcase
- ITVS International
- Live Chat
- Minority Consortia
- New Online
- On the Road
- Producer Resources
- Public Media
- Recently Funded
- Social Media
- Social Screening
- Special Events
- Talkback
- Uncategorized
- Women and Girls Lead
Related sites
Film Blogs
Public Media Blogs
-
Get the Beyond the Box e-newsletter, sent monthly with the latest news about ITVS, funding opportunities and more. Enter your email and sign up.
-
Sign up for the Independent Lens newsletter. Get news once a week during the broadcast season (fall-spring).