In the age of social media, Social Nexus, a new student-run agency is on the rise at Cabrini University. Founded by the Cabrini communications department and headed by Dr. Nune Grigoryan, assistant communications professor, Social Nexus will be a student-run social media production agency where students will learn how to make strategic social media plans and preform research. Jillian Smith who is the associate director of student media and the media center will serve as the student media supervisor for Social Nexus.
In an interview with Grigoryan regarding why Social Nexus was created, she said “The communication department strives to give hands-on experiences to students, and I wanted them to be able to apply the skills they learned in a class in real-life situations.”
Students in the Social Nexus program will be divided up into small teams or hubs to work individually. In total there will be four different hubs, dialogue, research, content creation and curation and news and information.
Each hub has its own role in the program. The dialogue hub will consist of about five students and their main role will be to initiate and lead live chats, live streams and live dialogues on a weekly basis. The news and information hub will consist of about three students and their main role will be to monitor the media landscape to find and share the most recent social media news to share with our community. The news and information team will also keep the community up to date on the latest tools, technologies and methods for using social media professionally.
“The role of Social Nexus will be to fill the gap of Student Media. There is the Loquitur and Student radio. There wasn’t a student-run social media agency before.” Grigoryan said. Grigoryan hopes Social Nexus will become a thriving student-run agency that will provide service and consulting to other Cabrini University departments and communities in the future. Another one of Social Nexus’s goals will showcase the work of students, faculty and staff at Cabrini University through social media.
The content creation and curation hub will consist of about 11 students and their main role will be to create social media content for the Social Nexus accounts. The research hub will consist of about three students and their main role will be working on producing research and scholarship pertaining to or involving social media.
Joshua Jones, junior member of the content and strategy team for Social Nexus said, “I joined social nexus just to try something new, get new experiences and open to new people.” Jones said, “I hope to spread more positivity throughout the campus, and I hope it spreads awareness on things throughout the campus on a bigger platform such as Instagram and Snapchat.” Jones, along with 22 other Cabrini students, will make up the Social Nexus team.
Social Nexus officially launched on Sept. 7, 2021 and will start producing content soon. The Social Nexus room will be in Founder’s Hall room 256.
