By: Anya Schiffrin

For years, we’ve been teaching students in the Technology, Media, and Communications Specialization courses about how high-quality, salient information is essential for societies to function and the ways that such information, including journalism in the public-interest, contributes to democracy by agenda-setting and holding government and corporations to account.

Societies have seen a proliferation of channels and the polarization of audiences as news consumption has splintered along partisan political lines. Countries, such as Canada, with well-funded public broadcasters and government support for journalism have fared better as there is at least consensus on basic facts.

Here at SIPA we’ve also grappled with communication and how best to share information with our students and faculty about events, policies, and information about courses and student organizations. This question has become even more important during the Covid-19 Pandemic as our community is now scattered across the globe.

At SIPA, and at Columbia University, communications have splintered as we now have multiple channels for communicating and for doing our other business too. Course information is available on Courseworks and on Virgil. Professors look at SSOL online to see who has registered for their courses and are starting to use the new Stellic platform to approve audit degree choices by students. And that’s just communication about courses. In order to let students know about events or anything important about SIPA, we’re using email, Campusgroups (replacing the short-lived OrgSync, which debuted at SIPA in 2015) and weekly newsletters. When we review applications, for jobs and for admissions, we use the Slate reader. 

A few years ago, I resorted to handing out flyers to my students in order to publicize TMaC events. In his book, The Attention Merchants, legal  scholar, Columbia professor and internet expert Tim Wu describes how in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, advertisers used colorful posters to get people’s attention. As I handed out flyers, I felt I’d gone back in time but it turns out that those tangible exchanges with real people serve as an effective memory prompt. 

Frustrated with the sprawling decentralization of apps and programs, I began to research the problem and learned that it is due to the nature of the software business. Software companies are not producing affordable  end-to-end solutions for higher educational institutions. As a result, Columbia, like other universities, uses multiple platforms to get work done.  Moreover,  it’s a problem endemic to other fields not just higher education, experts say.

This splintering affects everyone at SIPA. Another example: for information about career services, OCS uses many different social media channels. According to Jill McIntosh, Associate Director of the Office of Career Services, announcements are posted on SIPAlink, CampusGroups, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram every week. When analyzing engagement on those platforms, “LinkedIn sees the highest levels of engagement whereas Twitter is noticeably the lowest.”

Over the years, there have been attempts to address SIPA’s internal communications issues but mostly the solution has been to add yet another platform to the roster. To counter this, in  2018-2019, the SIPA Students Association took matters into their own hands and launched “one email to rule them all”. It came out weekly and was a great start to solving our travails  but doesn’t include most events organized by faculty. In fact, no one channel of communication has successfully reached all the students as well as the faculty. 

Students, moreover, mostly communicate with each other on WhatsApp in groups that faculty don’t see. SIPASA University Senator Fariha Wasti describes WhatsApp as “the platform where all our conversations happen.” This sentiment is confirmed by Dean Samantha Shapses who says: “Students  are still on CampusGroups (our data shows it) but they are also relying heavily on Whatsapp.” 

The problem is WhatsApp groups have limited membership and so students are divided into subgroups (by last name, first and second year) which further splinters the conversations. Virpratap Vikram Singh, an alum told me that back in 2018 when his class formed a WhatsApp group, they “quickly realized that the 255 member limit per group on Whatsapp meant that almost half of our SIPA class wouldn't be able to join the group.” Later, in March of 2020 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Singh created a SIPA-wide Slack “to streamline and compartmentalize communication” that was happening across various Whatsapp groups, “but it never really took off.”

Students say they are bombarded by incessant emails and everyone is convinced they are missing out on some important piece of news. “I find campus groups really confusing. I get my information from newsletters but there are way too many,” said Eleanora Smeriglio, a dual degree candidate in SIPA and the Columbia Business School. 

The density of electronic communication has become so great that folks worry that valuable information is simply getting lost in the woods. Still, McIntosh from the Office of Career Services maintains that their newsletter, which “is sent every two weeks on a Sunday…averages…between 65-70% open rate.” Attendance at events is also holding strong and in many cases is higher now that events are on Zoom. 

In  interviews for this piece, students told me they are more likely to go to events when they see other students going to them. They are also  more likely to meet assignment deadlines when they are in class with other students as they often discuss class projects on their way out of the room. It turns out that the posters which once crowded the walls near the SIPA elevators serve a purpose outside; they were mnemonic devices. Handing out flyers, as I often do, turns out to be quite a good idea, albeit with limited reach.

So is talking to people in person rather than wading through the thicket of online messaging. Faced with too  many emails, students who  want to find out information say talking to people is the most efficient way to find something out.  “I don’t know where to go to get information. I resort to asking colleagues and friends,” said Hansol Chung, a second year MIA/ MPA student.  Similarly, second-year Andrew Carmona who is job hunting says that informational interviews have been the most helpful: “I talk to experts,” Carmona said. 

Anya Schiffrin is the Director of SIPA’s Technology, Media and Communications Specialization