Foursquare, journalism, and a sense of place
Location-based wikis? There totally is an app for that.
I have a confession to make. I live a secret life. By day you know me as the mild-mannered professor of journalism, helping guide young ones in the formation of their journalistic skills. But I have an alter ego.
You see, I am the mayor of Coppee Hall.
For the uninitiated, I’m talking about Foursquare, a mobile Web application that uses location-based systems to let you “check in” where you are using an application on your iPhone or similar smartphone device. If I had to compare it to something you already might know and use, it’s similar to Twitter except that rather than tweeting about what’s in your mind or what you are doing, it’s simply a status message about where you are.
My goal for this post is to sketch out some ideas in hopes that you’ll add yours at the end of it. I’ve been fooling around with Foursquare the past couple weeks after Mashable recently noted it was the social media offering worth watching in 2010. After using it for a while, I am seeing some of the huge potential it offers both fans of social media and journalists. And I see a lot of potential for it in terms of journalism education, as it offers a new way to tell stories and add to the record.
