By Natalia Karbasova

Moritz Sauer, journalist and DW Akademie trainer

Today, journalists have an array of digital tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTuve or blogs at their disposal. Any of these tools can help you increase your visibility on the web and promote your content. What should you start with, what are the absolute must-haves and which basic rules should you follow when enhancing your digital presence? In this interview, Moritz Sauer, a DW Akademie trainer, answers these questions and many more.

Social media expert Konrad Weber

Be it the death of Osama bin Laden, the emergency landing of a plane on the Hudson River or armed conflict in Syria, photos and videos made by eye witnesses usually reach the public as initial evidence through breaking news. Today, media organizations are virtually flooded with digital content from all over the world which makes it even more important to pay attention to the sources of information. That is why large media organizations have set up special research teams to verify the content from social networks. Although most of them follow the same rules, it is worthwhile to compare the separate approaches. Konrad Weber shows how renowned international media outlets such as ARD, BBC, CNN and others check the content coming from social media.

At this year’s Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, we met up with Danh-Quy Nguyen, a Vietnamese who studied in Germany and now works as the Deputy Managing Editor for ELLE Vietnam. A few years ago, Danh-Quy was one of the first to receive a scholarship for the two-year Master’s program “International Media Studies” at DW Akademie.

Danh-Quy Nguyen at DW GMF

You graduated from DW’s International Media Studies program last year. Now, you’ve been invited back as a guest and expert for a panel-discussion at the DW Global Media Forum. How does that make you feel?

Firstly, I feel great and honored to be invited by my teachers and colleagues. I think it’s an experience that not everyone can have. So I feel very happy. Secondly, I’m also very happy to see my old friends and many colleagues from Deutsche Welle.

What do you miss most about Germany?
What I miss most from Germany is lots of trees, lots of green and the Rhine River.

Can you apply the knowledge that you learned at DW to your work in Vietnam?
Of course! I learned a lot at DW and I use it in my work every day. The most important thing I learned from the DW Master’s program is how to communicate with people from different countries and different cultures. This is very important for my daily job. As Managing Editor, I have to communicate with different editors and people from the fashion industry all around the world.

Twitter is a great tool to promote your stories and enhance your online identity. Treat your Twitter account as your business card. It should look professional, individual and cool.

That’s why it’s important to customize your Twitter page. If you have a personal blog, see to it that the colors are alike and that you use the same profile photo.

And yes, it is absolutely imperative that you upload a good-looking photo of yourself. Standard red and orange eggs aren’t likely to make a good impression on your audience. If you want them to mind you, you first have to mind them, right? So upload a photo.

Photo courtesy of Mimi_K at Flickr

For a long time, Cambodia’s notoriously landmined countryside had made it virtually impossible to create widespread communication between people. In 2010, only 2.6% of the population were connected to the landline telephone network. 1.4% of all Cambodians were Internet subscribers, most of them using dial-up connections to access the web.

On the other hand, mobile network operators in Cambodia registered more than 7.5 million connections in the same year – an increase of more than 6 million in just five years. Statistically speaking, 54% of all Cambodians owned a mobile phone in 2010.

The country is a particularly striking example for the scale of the “revolution” that mobile phone technology has triggered in developing countries in Asia and Africa. At the same time, third generation (3G) mobile cellular technology is enabling the spread of state-of-the-art data services, such as Internet access on mobile phones. So virtually overnight, people have been linked up to the communications structures of a globalized world – with all the political, economic and social ramification that entails.