Black Girls Code: Community tech capacity-building

Tech and media are closely entwined, especially for community media -- and tech skills can provide a powerful boost to empower people and their communities. Meanwhile, local capacity building is a core goal for many community foundations and organizations. Consequently, culturally aware tech education programs can complement the goals of community media and organizations by helping to close the local digital divide.

Rethinking how you utilize social media metrics in practice

Social media metrics can help you tell whether your engagement efforts are gaining any traction in your community. But how can you know what this data is really telling you, and how can social media metrics support sound strategic decisions? 

A recent article by Nancy K. Baym in the peer-reviewed online journal First Monday, “Data not seen: The uses and shortcomings of social media metrics,” explores how to make sense of the numbers.

How engaging citizens in municipal budgeting can help communities

How well cities spend their money is a common theme in many community news and engagement efforts -- but usually this attention occurs only after the budget is finalized. Also, municipal budgets are popular fodder for open government projects, such as the Los Angeles Budget Tool (a recent winner of the Knight Community Information Challenge), and the South Orange, N.J. budget transparency tool launched this year by opengov software provider Delphi.

Some U.S. cities, including New York City, Chicago and Vallejo, Calif., have been experimenting with participatory budgeting -- where citizen participate directly in some aspects of the municipal budgeting process. Does this civic engagement strategy actually work?  

Twitter is better for spreading breaking news, Pew finds

Twitter only has only a quarter as many regular U.S. users as Facebook. But it holds its own with Facebook in terms of how many Americans find news via tweets, according to a new Pew Research Center report. And tends to reach a younger, more mobile, and better educated demographic on Twitter, compared to Facebook.

This probably won't make or break Twitter's much-anticipated initial public offering this week, but it could prove important for Twitter's news engagement potential.

New AP tools for better proofing in your computer's web browser

Today the Associated Press announced that it has started beta-testing two new tools to help AP Stylebook Online subscribers minimize errors.

Mobile community engagement: Link roundup

The winners of this year's Knight Information Challenge are gearing up to implement their projects. Recently I advised these grantees, and their community foundation partners, on how they might use mobile technology and strategies to help inform and engage their communities. Here are some useful links from that presentation.

Why it helps to tell people to share your local news on Facebook: Pew research

Facebook, the most popular social media service, isn't primarily known as a news source. Yet a new Pew report found that 47% of all adult Facebook users (30% of all U.S. adults) report that they encounter news on Facebook. Strikingly, over two-thirds of Facebook news consumers regularly encounter news about people and events in their own community -- including about 44% who see stories about local government and politics. In contrast, just 55% of Facebook news consumers see news of national government or politics on Facebook.

Searchlights and Sunglasses: new digital journalism teaching tool from Knight

Searchlights and Sunglasses, a new online book by Eric Newton, senior advisor to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Newton explores the past, present and various possible futures of news.

"Send to Kindle" button expands audience for in-depth content

If in-depth, resource-style content is a key part of your digital strategy to inform or engage your community, it makes sense to offer it in e-book format as well as on the web. The "Send to Kindle" button is an easy way to make your content on the single most popular e-book platform.

Tablets, e-readers grow more popular: new Pew research

Tablet computers and e-book readers are now mainstream media consumption devices. Pew Internet found that 43% of Americans age 16 and over now own either a tablet computer or an e-book reader (such as a Kindle or Nook) -- and the demographics of who's using these devices could affect your digital strategy to inform and engage your community.