J219 MINI Audience Engagement (5 weeks)

Audience Engagement explores how journalists use technology to understand, reach, and meaningfully interact with their communities. The course examines audience analytics, engagement strategy, and platform dynamics while emphasizing responsible, transparent, and ethical use of technology in newsrooms. Students will learn to design and assess engagement initiatives, experiment with interactive and personalized storytelling formats, and evaluate how AI-driven tools can support relationship-building, improve newsroom workflows, and enhance public trust. Through practical projects, the class prepares students to create technology-informed engagement strategies that strengthen connections between news organizations and the audiences they serve.

This is a five week class that meets on the following dates at the end of the semester:

• Week 1 — Apr 7
• Week 2 — Apr 14
• Week 3 — Apr 21
• Week 4 — Apr 28
• Week 5 — May 5