For much of the semester, School of Communication and Media students and faculty have devoted time, energy and creativity to the #FocusImmigration thunderclap \u2013 a multi-platform project that sheds new light on the pressing issue of immigration.<\/p>\n
On April 10, the collaborative project culminated with a School colloquium featuring examples of student work and a two-hour News Lab telecast that was broadcast statewide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a lot of moving parts to this project and they all came together in a very exciting way. We were ambitious for our students and they delivered in a big way,\u201d says Head of Journalism and Television\/Digital Media Tara George.<\/p>\n
She had conceived of the thunderclap as a way to involve students and faculty from throughout the School. \u201cI thought it would be really interesting to harness the breadth of our resources and publish simultaneously around a hashtag so that we could try to create a viral campaign and have an impact,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Introducing the School colloquium \u2013 which featured representative, multi-media projects presented by an on-stage panel of students \u2013 George pronounced the thunderclap a resounding success.<\/p>\n
According to School of Communication and Media professor and clinical specialist Mark Effron, the collaborative project included 32 print stories; 24 digital stories; more than 10 hours of WMSC #FocusImmigration programming; classroom content; and weekly editions of Montclair News Lab on Immigration; in addition to a #MyImmigrantStoryIs booth where members of the campus community could share their immigration stories. The award-winning\u00a0Montclarion<\/em>\u00a0published a 32-page special edition the next day.<\/p>\n School of Communication and Media Director Keith Strudler also acknowledged the achievement and unique opportunity this project offered to students. \u201c#FocusImmigration touched all platforms of the School \u2013 from news production and film to journalism, public relations and social media,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is a real-world experience for our students, who will need to be able to work like this when they graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n To culminate the semester-long project, Montclair News Lab went on air at 4 pm with a two-hour telecast featuring live and taped immigration-themed programming.<\/p>\n Broadcast statewide, it included a live discussion with George and guests, including an immigration lawyer, a journalist who covers immigration issues, and the head of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.<\/p>\n Toward the end of the broadcast, students who had been monitoring social media were thrilled to tweet, \u201cWe just found out #FocusImmigration is TRENDING WORLDWIDE!!!\u201d According to George, the thunderclap\u2019s experimental viral social media campaign was one of the project\u2019s most exciting successes.<\/p>\n Earlier in the day, at the student colloquium session, a student asked George if #FocusImmigration would continue next year. \u201cIt\u2019s on you students to decide whether you\u2019ll want to continue the discussion on immigration or take the focus elsewhere,\u201d George responded.<\/p>\n It was clear that for many students involved, this topic resonated deeply. For Adrienne Bauldock, a senior and newsroom stage manager whose mother is an immigrant from Grenada, the thunderclap was personally meaningful. \u201cIt\u2019s made an impact and spread awareness on a campus where so many of us are immigrants ourselves or related to immigrants,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Learn more: #FocusImmigration<\/a> and #MyImmigrantStoryIs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" School of Communication and Media #FocusImmigration project trends worldwide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":207890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,54,55,43],"class_list":["post-207889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-of-communication-and-media-news","tag-collaboration","tag-focus","tag-immigration","tag-scm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207892,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207889\/revisions\/207892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Trending Worldwide<\/h2>\n