With many reporters now working from home, finding sources and connecting with your community while covering COVID-19 can be more challenging than ever. Restrictions from the authorities, limited access to sources and relevant expertise and narrow opportunities to represent marginalised voices fairly, also add to the pressures. Recognising the toll this situation can take on your mental health is essential. But, despite being on ‘lockdown’, there are many opportunities to use new tools to access trends locally and internationally, and to work with wider networks to enhance your newsgathering. Plus, when you do need to go out to the story, there are sensible tips for you to consider for your own safety.

Once you have finished this unit, you should be able to:

• value adapting your techniques in gathering, reporting on and challenging misinformation in the current crisis;
• feel confident to judge the risks for reporting and prepare accordingly;
• consider own mental health and take steps to protect self;
• appreciate the possibilities to collaborate in networks to enhance newsgathering;
• be aware of social listening tools like TweetDeck, CrowdTangle and google trend for social newsgathering;
• test one social listening tool to track of some of the local trends in sharing content about coronavirus;
• feel confident to talk to managers (if appropriate) about any issues you face.