Doug Haddix, executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors, prepared this handout on social reporting for Columbus, Ohio, NewsTrain on Oct. 21. 2017. It includes tools for compiling social media dossiers, searching Twitter and Facebook, other search tools, and forms for crowdsourcing. It accompanies slides: "Using social media as powerful reporting tools." NewsTrain is a training initiative of Associated Press Media Editors (APME). More info: http://bit.ly/NewsTrain

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Social media as powerful reporting tools
Doug Haddix | @DougHaddix | doug@ire.org
Tools for compiling social media dossiers
• Storify: Create a private, unpublished collection of social media posts.
storify.com
• Evernote: Capture, organize and share what you collect across all your
devices. evernote.com
• DocumentCloud: Analyze, annotate and publish documents.
documentcloud.org
• Snagit: “Take a screenshot or capture a video of what you see on your
computer screen.” techsmith.com/screen-capture.html
Searching Twitter
• “How to find breaking news on Twitter,” search terms to use from First
Draft News: bit.ly/findbreaknews
• Advanced search on Twitter: twitter.com/search-advanced?lang=en
• “How to use advanced search” on Twitter, by Twitter:
bit.ly/advsearchTwitter
• Click on “operators” for the full list of Twitter search operators for
advanced search: twitter.com/search-home
• Search for Twitter lists by typing into Google search:
o site:twitter.com inurl:lists keyword or “phrase”
o For example: site:twitter.com inurl:lists “climate change”
• All My Tweets: View all tweets from one Twitter user on one page:
allmytweets.net
• Twitter List Copy: “Copy any Twitter list to one of your own.”
bit.ly/twlistcopy
• Twitlistmanager: Manage your Twitter lists. twitlistmanager.com
• Foller.me: Gathers “near real-time data about topics, mentions,
hashtags, followers, location” for any public Twitter profile. foller.me
• Twitonomy: “Backup/export tweets, retweets, mentions and reports to
Excel & PDF in just one click.” twitonomy.com/
Searching Facebook
• Facebook Signal: “Search Instagram for visual content related to
specific hashtags, associated with specific public accounts, or tagged in
locations around the world.” And “Search Facebook for content directly
related to a story you are tracking and find all public posts on a topic in
chronological order.” bit.ly/FBsignal

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• StalkScan: “StalkScan is a tool that shows all public information for a
given Facebook profile.” stalkscan.com
• Search is Back!: Search Facebook by location, job and relationships.
searchisback.com
• Facebook Graph.Tips: An “experimental Facebook Graph Search
Engine made by Henk van Ess.” graph.tips
LinkedIn
LinkedIn group for journalists: Join the group, attend a 45-minute webinar
and get free premium service: bit.ly/lijournos
Other search tools
• Ban.jo Discovery: Find geo-tagged social media posts. ban.jo/discovery
o “Banjo gives journalists free access to its social media discovery
platform,” from journalism.co.uk: bit.ly/banjofree
o “Is Banjo right for your newsroom? Here’s what worked at
Annenberg Media,” from USC Annenberg: bit.ly/USCbanjo
• Websta: Instagram search. websta.me
• RevEye Reverse-Image Search: Browser extension for Chrome and
Firefox (bit.ly/ffreveye). Right-click on image to search for it on multiple
search engines, including TinEye.
• If This, Then That: Can set it up to automatically save tweets by hashtag
or location: ifttt.com
Forms for crowdsourcing
• ProPublica’s use of forms to crowdsource stories:
propublica.org/getinvolved
• Google Forms: Create online forms for free. google.com/forms/about/