Yesterday's coders' only ways of newsgathering and monitoring have been democratized for all journalists with minimal to no coding needed. Also, many of the tools mentioned are either free or suitable for limited budget.

1. Staying
Ahead
of the
Curve
Essential
Newsgathering
&
Monitoring
Tools
for Professional
Journalists

2. Making Sense of the
Terminologies
Newsgathering: is the active searching of
news (First draft, 2019).
Monitoring: reactively tracking
conversations, accounts, keywords and
Hashtags (Hootsuite, 2020).
(Social) Listening: the process of deriving
“Actionable Insights” from gathered data
(Hootsuite, 2020).

3. The Subject of the Presentation
Newsgathering Monitoring
&

4. Newsgathering

5. 1.1 Newsgathering on Search Engines
1.1.1 Boolean Search
• Based on the nineteenth century English
mathematician George Boole’s logic of
True/False or On/Off.
• Today it is an important tool in online
search using a combination of search
terms and operators to filter the search
results and make them most relevant to
the online user’s queries.

6. Cont’d,
Examples:
• Searching for related websites to a website you
found useful on marketing like Hubspot, you use
this format:
related:hubspot.com
• Boolean search is useful in complex search
queries like for example:
site:hubspot.com”marketing” OR advertising
“Newsgathering and Monitoring on the Social Web” (First Draft, 2019)

7. Cont’d
1.1.2. Date Search on Google
Searching for the most recent
news is only one click on
Google by clicking on “Tools”,
then choosing the desired time
for Google to search within its
frame.

8. Cont’d,
1.1.3. Use different search engines for different regions
• For info. in China → Baidu.
• For info. in Russia and Eastern Europe →
Yandex.
• To avoid the filter bubble (showing you
results based on the search history) →
DuckDuckGo.

9. 1.2 Newsgathering on
1.2.1 Advanced Search
It is Facebook native search tool with
several filters that you can use to find
specific media format for your search
query filtered by date, location, source
and a lot more.

10. Cont’d,
1.2.2 Boolean Search Boolean Search is useful to search for specific pages or groups on
Facebook, as in the below examples.
site:facebook.com/groups "suez canal"
site:facebook.com/pages "suez canal"

11. Cont’d,
1.2.3 Facebook Directory is a goldmine that makes any public personal profile and page
reachable alphabetically.

12. 1.3 Newsgathering on
1.3.1 search my bio is a tool that allows
you to search using keywords that
Instagram users are likely using in their
bios, which helps finding specific
accounts.
1.3.2 Boolean Search for example,
searching for Brexit Party accounts, use
inurl:Instagram.com/p/Brexit party
1.3.3 Google Advanced Search useful for
keyword search on Instagram.

13. Cont’d,
1.3.4 Picuki allows you to search by
profile, tags or locations.
1.3.5 SearchUsers allows you to search
Instagram users/pages and find similar ones
to them.

14. 1.4.1 Twitter Advanced Search
1.4 Newsgathering on
Twitter’s native filter-based search tool.

15. 1.4.2 TweetDeck
A free tool owned by Twitter that acts as a dashboard of unlimited number of
columns with updated tweets about a certain topic. There is a filter that tailors
the tweets appearing in a certain column.
Cont’d,

16. 1.4.3 Tweetbeaver
Cont’d,
A free tool that provides several options that give valuable insights for data
mining, like conversations between two accounts or retrieving an account’s
followers’ list, among other options.

17. 1.4.4 twxplorer
Cont’d
A user-friendly tool that mines tweets and hashtags easily as well as allowing
you to save the data and share it.

18. 1.5.1 Youtube Search Filters
1.5 Newsgathering on
Effective tool that provides multiple options to narrow
down the search results.

19. 1.5.2 Youtube Geofind
Cont’d
Helps you to search Youtube by location

20. 1.6.1 Search Operators
1.6 Newsgathering on
Using Boolian Search operators to search for specific content
published by certain news media organizations. For example:
site:deutsche welle.com
1.6.2 Subreddits Search
Through https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/search, you can
search within subreddits using multiple search filters.

21. Monitoring

22. 2.1 Monitoring on
2.1.1 Google Alerts
The most popular and easy-to-use tool to be
notified with updates in topics of interest.

23. Cont’d,
2.1.2 Google Trends
Placed within the subscriptions
tab in Google Trends. It is less
updated than Google Alerts, yet
is still a useful tool for trending
updates.

24. 2.2 Monitoring on ,
2.2.1 CrowdTangle
• A powerful tool acquired by Facebook
and works on Facebook, Instagram and
Reddit allowing brand managers,
journalists and researchers to follow,
track and analyze publicly shared data.
&
• Currently CrowdTangle allows access to
data from 6M+ pages, profiles and groups
on Facebook, 2M+ Instagram accounts and
20K+ subbredits.

25. 2.3.1 TweetDeck
2.3 Monitoring on
2.3.2 TweetReach
• Provides insights for specific
keywords, hashtags or
usernames in terms of reach,
impressions and activity. It
also gives estimations of the
potential reach you would get
by publishing about the same
topic.
• The tool is free for the first
100 tweets.
TweetReach (Hubspot, 2020)

26. 2.3.3 Followerwonk
Allows you to be updated with
what kind of conversation your
news organization (any brand) is
involved in by searching users’
bios and profiles.
For example: attached is a
screenshot using the BBC as a
brand name.
Cont’d

27. 2.3.4 Mentionmap
• A tool that provides interactive maps
showing you nodes and edges to help
you monitor who mentions your
organization, who retweets your Tweets
as well as helps you gauge how
successful your Tweets were.
• The tool is easy to use and is free for up
to 50 searches/ month.
Cont’d

28. 2.3.5 Trendsmap
• Is an all-in one tool that serves 4
vital functions, namely Analytics,
Alerts, Visualizations and Exploring
Trends.
Cont’d
• In the attached screenshot, the tool shows
you on the world map an interactive
visualization of the most used hashtags and
keywords used throughout a period of one
week.

29. 2.3.6 Twitterfall
• A similar tool to TweetDeck which you can use to
create lists and use filters to explore the most
updated tweets about a Keyword.
Cont’d
• In the attached screenshot, real-time tweets were
retrieved using the key word “Ever Given”.

30. 2.3.7 onemilliontweetmap
• An innovative interactive map that shows you
dynamically the status about a certain topic on a world
heat map using keywords and hashtags.
Cont’d
• Among the available filters is day/night filter and
sentiment filter.
• The below is an example using Ever Given as a
keyword.

31. 2.3.8 Tweepsmap
• An advanced tracking, analyzing and social
listening tool.
Cont’d
• Provides a low cost basic package for 14$/month.
More advanced features are available for bigger
packages.
Source: Tweepsmap.com

32. Social Alert
Tracks Hashtags, mentions and accounts on Twitter and
Instagram

33. 2.4.1 Feedly and its IFTTT tool
2.4 Monitoring on
• Feedly helps you organize the YouTube channels of
interest to be updated with the latest posted videos on
them.
• Feedly’s If This Then That (IFTTT) tool sends you
notifications of the most updated content using
advanced algorithms to send well filtered content. You
can receive those notifications via email, messaging
platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, and iOS
push notifications.
• Feedly also sends notifications whenever a team
member finds a piece of content interesting.

34. 2.5.1 CrowdTangle
2.5 Monitoring on
2.5.2 Feedly
2.5.3 Reddit Keyword Monitor Pro
If you are not tight in budget, using it allows you to mine data relevant to specific
keywords in its 138,000 active communities.

35. Monitoring Tools Across Social Media
Platforms/Websites
Synthesio
Talkwalker CrowdAnalyzer
Mention
ReviewTracker
Mentionlytics
Workbench Brand 24

36. Bonus
Samdesk
A monitoring tool designed
specifically to spot world disruption
events and crises in real-time, track
updates around the clock and plot
social media posts on maps.

37. References
https://firstdraftnews.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/Newsgathering_and_Monitoring_Digital_AW3.pdf
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-monitoring-tools/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-listening-business/
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29437/20-free-social-
media-and-brand-monitoring-tools-that-rock.aspx
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/16-newsgathering-tools-
every-journalist-should-know-about/s2/a553718/

38. Thank You!
By: Christine Guiguis
March 29, 2021

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