Next month, Nigerians will go to the poling stations to elect or reelect leaders. In order to ensure effective coverage of the electioneering process, Google over the weekend held a training workshop for media practitioners in the country.
The training was a was a hands-on certificate program focused on using social media tools, visualisation and citizen reporting tools in “unearthing” and telling elections-based stories.
Participants were exposed to tools such as Google Advance Search, Google Trends, Social Media Streams, Google Alert and Tabula which could be used in sourcing data.
Speaking at the workshop, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Google’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Anglophone, West Africa, urged the participants and other media practitioners to use modern data tools to achieve effective reportage,especially of the forthcoming February general elections in the country.
Kola-Ogunlade said the tools would help the media to get the picture of what was happening at a particular time at different places and getting it to the public. According to him, the tools had eased off the challenges of manpower, expensive time and technical skills which were experienced by media houses.
“These tools can be used to monitor trends about elections in real time, whereby impressions about candidates and even the party are seen,” he said. “With the tools, you can come out with creative visualisation that helps you to communicate your news to the public.”
