Jeremy Merrill: ProPublica’s project crowdsourcing political ads on Facebook

After the 2016 presidential election, Facebook received criticism and questions over a lack of transparency into micro-targeted political advertising on its platform. ProPublica has been particularly persistent in its coverage of electioneering on the social media giant. In  the fall 2017, the non-profit news organization launched a project to crowdsource the collection of political ads on Facebook. … Continued

Bots: Tips and Tools

How to use the Facebook ad archive for projects and tips on what to think about before you start!

Millennials: What does ‘news’ mean to this generation?

Diversity means so much more than just race, color, ethnicity, religion, political segmentation, income and education opportunity. It includes generational differences, among others. When thinking about age, we tend to focus on ageism discrimination. Yet, for the news industry, we have the boomers in our wheelhouse. It’s the millennials and younger that are cause for … Continued

When crafting your social media strategy, watch out for the curveball

Hannah Sandfield, Taylor Banks and Drew Matheiu Everything seemed to be going along quite nicely with our project to create a social media strategy for the monthly Cincinnati magazine, until it wasn’t. We then compiled research on Cincinnati Magazine’s competition and best-in-breed other city magazines, and on the social media platforms themselves and how to … Continued