Writing and Editing for Digital Media

Book excerpt: Writing and Editing for Digital Media teaches students how to write effectively for digital spaces—whether writing for an app, crafting a story for a website, blogging, or using social media to expand the conversation. The lessons and exercises in each chapter help students build a solid understanding of the ways that digital communication has introduced opportunities for dynamic storytelling and multi-directional communication. With this accessible guide and accompanying website, students learn not only to create content, but also to become careful, creative managers of that content. Updated with contemporary examples and pedagogy, including examples from the 2016 presidential election, and an expanded look at using social media, the third edition broadens its scope, helping digital writers and editors in all fields, including public relations, marketing, and social media management. Based on Brian Carroll's extensive experience teaching a course of the same name, this revised and updated edition pays particular attention to opportunities presented by the growth of social media and mobile media. Chapters aim to: Assist digital communicators in understanding the socially networked, increasingly mobile, always-on, geomapped, personalized media ecosystems; Teach communicators to approach storytelling from a multimedia, multi-modal, interactive perspective; Provide the basic skill sets of the digital writer and editor, skill sets that transfer across all media and most communication and media industries, and to do so in specifically journalistic and public relations contexts; Help communicators to put their audiences first by focusing attention on user experience, user behavior, and engagement with their user bases; Teach best practices in the areas of social media strategy, management, and use.