WSJ Social Media Guru Looks at Media's Role in Fake-News Era

The Wall Street Journal’s social media editor will discuss in a Monday lecture the role of the press in the 2016 election and Donald Trump “phenomenon” — and hopefully, says an organizer, “help us understand what that is and why it matters.”

The speaker, Natalie Andrews, also happens to be a 2006 graduate of the Department of Journalism and Communication at Utah State University. In addition to social media, she covers Congress for the Wall Street Journal.

Andrews presents the free lecture, “2016: What the Hell Just Happened?” at noon Monday, Feb. 27, in room 101 of the Merrill-Cazier Library. And, in an appropriate turn-about for a lecturing social media professional, the event will be tweeted, Instagrammed, Snapchatted and broadcast on Facebook Live by JCOM students.

JCOM assistant professor Matthew LaPlante said Andrews’ lecture is well-timed to explain the current era of fake news, troll tweets and email dumps. “Given her position at one of the nation's largest newspapers, Natalie has a privileged perspective on how social media impacts the national dialogue,” he said. “And given the way social media was used — and some would certainly argue abused — during the 2016 presidential election, that perspective couldn't be more important.”

At a time when “it's clear that legacy news organizations don't control the news cycle anymore,” said LaPlante, social media has filled the gap. He wants his journalism students to experiment during the lecture with the flexibility and immediacy of all social media platforms. His intent is to “demonstrate for our students how challenging it can be to capture news in the moment, how quickly the story can get away from you and how powerful a tool for connectivity social media can be.”

Journalism, he adds, “is always evolving in response to technological and social shifts in media, and part of that evolution, right now, is figuring out the role social media plays in the new media world.”

Despite the Wall Street Journal’s sometimes stodgy reputation, said LaPlante, it was the first newspaper to “go live” on Facebook, broadcasting via its social media channel from the Nov. 15, 2015, Republican debate. The journal now has a robust social media presence, engaging its readers through platforms including Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter, where it has nearly 13 million followers.

Andrews herself notes that Donald Trump early on took hold of the news cycle with his rallies and tweets, broadcasting “a simple message that people connected with.”

“In 1960, television helped give us John F. Kennedy; in 1992, late-night TV helped give us Bill Clinton; and in 2016, reality TV and social media helped give America Donald Trump,” Andrews said. “The change in technology and America led to a wild year no one would have predicted — but maybe everyone should have seen coming.”

Andrews, who was KSL’s social media director from 2011 to 2014, is speaking as part of the Morris Media and Society Lecture Series, which is supported by an endowment in honor of former journalism professor John Morris.

LaPlante said journalism students will not use planned hashtags as they chronicle the event. Instead, he said, they’ll “see if — and how — they grow organically, even in the space of a short period of time.”

If people wanted to follow along, he added, a social media search for Natalie Andrews' name will probably get them where they want to be.

Follow Natalie Andrews at @nataliewsj

Contact: Janelle Hyatt, 435-797-0289, Janelle.hyatt@usu.edu