The term “backchannel” refers to an online, streaming conversation about a specific topic, often during a speech, conference or activity. Linguists first coined this term to describe a listener's responses during conversations. Now those responses have moved on to social media, and we'll be creating our own backchannel for comments about our course content and your own reporting on your beat. Our class will have its own hashtag (#jrnl301) that will stream on our website so that everyone can review and respond to tweets from class participants. You should feel free to tweet during class discussions or outside of the classroom and think of this hashtag as an opportunity to initiate conversations and promote your own reporting. You may pose and reply to tweeted questions and broaden the discussion by sharing new ideas and resources.