1. New
uses of social media provide free advertising.
Social media
originated as a place to post things that you feel define yourself, such as
pictures and your likes and interests. As companies started to buy into the
idea of promotion through social media, they began to utilize the various users
to do their job for them. As seen in the Generation
Like movie, social media was used by The
Hunger Games to gain free publicity. After posting about his daily
activities on forms of social media, Ian Somerhalder’s fans are able to like,
comment on, or repost his posts, thus promoting his show The Vampire Diaries for him. These are just some of the many
examples of the advertising done through the use of social media.
“Facebook is now
the most popular social media site on the Internet. Started at Harvard in 2004
as an online substitute to the printed facebooks the school created for
incoming freshman, Facebook was instantly a hit. The site enables users to
construct personal profiles, upload photos, create lists of favorite things,
and post messages to connect with old friends and meet new ones” (Campbell, 46)
“Another social
networking tool – the micro blogging service Twitter – has become a quick,
flexible counterpart to Facebook that can be accessed via texting, instant
messaging, and the Web. Each message (or ‘tweet’) is limited to 140 characters
and generally offers a quick update about what the sender is doing or thinking;
a reply isn’t necessarily expected. Twitter users follow the feeds of friends,
businesses, politicians, or celebrities – like Barack Obama, the most followed
Twitterer in 2011” (Campbell, 46)
Watch the Generation Like video here.
2. Effective
use Public Relations are essential the success of a company.
I have recently
learned how essential PR is to a company, a brand, or even to a person. The
power lays in the hands of those who are in charge or putting out a person’s,
or brand’s, image. Most often those that are in charge of this work for a PR
firm and are responsible for making sure the client is cast in the most
positive light possible. A positive image can boost popularity and make people
realize how impressive the person or brand it. A poor image, however, can cause
people who were once supporters or fans to turn their backs because the person
or brand turned out to be not what they originally thought.
“Public
relations, like advertising, pays careful attention to the needs of its clients
- politicians, small businesses, industries, and nonprofit organizations – and
to the perspectives of its targeted audiences: consumers and the general
public, company employees, shareholders, media organizations, government
agencies, and community and industry leaders” (Campbell, 367)
“…PR involves
providing a multitude of services, including publicity, communication, public
affairs, issues management, government relations, financial PR, community
relations, social networking, and propaganda” (Campbell, 367)
3. New
advancements in technology have caused a mass to personal shift.
When the
Internet was originally introduced, it was such a rare commodity that few
households were privileged to. I can even remember, as a child, spending
afternoons at the library in my town while my older brother wrote papers and
worked on projects using their computers. So much has changed since then,
because having Internet readily available is now look upon as a necessity, not
just a commodity. A perfect example of this personal shift is being able to
access all types of social networking sites and website from my cellphone,
which I pretty much have on me 24/7.
“New
technologies, particularly cable television and the Internet, have developed so
quickly that traditional leaders in communication have lost some of their
control over information” (Campbell, 9)
“The Internet
and social media are changing the ways we consume and engage with media
culture. In pre-Internet days, most people would watch popular TV shows like The Cosby Show, A Different World, Cheers, or
Roseanne at the time they originally
aired. Such scheduling provided common media experiences at specific times
within our culture. While we still watch TV shows, we are increasingly likely
to do so at our own convenience with Web sites like Hulu and Netflix or
DVR/On-Demand options” (Campbell, 9)
4. Multitasking
is a skill to brag about that few people have mastered.
Multitasking has
taken on a huge role in today’s society because people don’t often have the
attention span to focus on one thing at a time. People claim that they are more
productive when they are working on multiple tasks, such as typing a paper with
music or TV providing a background noise. The movie Generation Like proved, however, that these claims are false. Due
to the fact that the brain is constantly forced to switch back and forth, the
work produced is poorly done and has taken twice as long to produce.
“Some critics and educators
feel that media multitasking means that we are more distracted, that we engage
less with each type of media we consume, and that we often pay closer attention
to the media we are using than to people immediately in our presence (Campbell,
p. 27).”
“Media
multitasking has led to growing media consumption, particularly for younger
people. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that today’s youth-now
doing two or more things at once- packed ten hours and forty-five minutes worth
of media content into the seven and a half hours they spent daily consuming
media (Campbell, 27).”
Watch Digital Nation video here
5. Print
news is seeing a decline.
I can remember
as a child watching my father read the paper as he sat across the breakfast
table from me every morning. It was his daily morning ritual to walk to the
mailbox and get the paper, then read it front to back so that he was caught up
on what was happening in the world. Recently, however, my father has stopped
reading the paper everyday. He recently got a twitter, and relies on different
news accounts to keep him up to date. Because people like my father have given
up on forms of print news, the industry itself is having to change and turn to
other mediums to remain current.
“What started
out in the 1980’s as simple, text-only experiments for newspapers developed
into more robust Web sites in the 1990’s, allowing newspapers to develop an
online presence” (Campbell, 233).
“Today, online
journalism is completely changing the industry. First, rather than subscribing
to a traditional paper, many readers now begin their day on their iPads,
smartphones, or computers scanning a wide variety of new Web sites, including
those of print papers, cable news channels, newsmagazines, bloggers, and
online-only new organizations” (Campbell, 233).
Watch Page One here
6. Advertising
is geared mostly towards the limbic brain, but can also affect the neocortex
and reptilian brains.
The limbic
brain, known as the emotional or feeling brain, is the section that processes
things such as music and images. Advertisers play especially into this concept
by using various persuasive techniques that play into people various emotions. Often
times, advertisements use images and music that will appeal to a certain type
of person. An example of this would be the warm fuzzies, which is a persuasive
technique that plays to anything that warms the heart.
“Just as
postmodern design phase developed in art and architecture during the 1960’s and
1970’s, a new design era began to affect advertising as the same time. Part of
this visual revolution was imported from non-U.S. schools of designs...”
(Campbell, 327).
“Most recently,
the Internet and multimedia devices, such as computers, mobile phones, and
portable media players, have had a significant impact on visual design in
advertising” (Campbell, 328).
Watch the
Budweiser Super Bowl commercial here
7. Social
media and information technology threaten privacy.
As soon as a
person puts any form of personal information about himself or herself onto the Internet,
it becomes public knowledge and will remain that way for eternity. Something
that is posted to a social networking site will remain out in cyberspace
forever, due to the fact that it doesn’t just remain on that single site that
it was posted on. As a result of this, privacy has become hard to come by.
People need to be more and more careful about the types of material they post
on the Internet.
“Millions of
people, despite knowing that transmitting personal information online can make
them vulnerable to online fraud, have embraced the ease of e-commerce…”
(Campbell, 59).
“In the simplest
terms, the right to privacy addresses a person’s right to be left alone,
without his or her name, image, or daily activities becoming public property”
(Campbell, 490).
8. Technology
has begun to greatly influence our daily lives and the interactions we have
with others.
Sitting in the
dining hall every night for dinner, I notice that groups of people are sitting
eating together, but not saying a word to one another. Most often, instead of
talking to the people sitting right of them, these people are staring at their
phone screens and interacting with the people that are miles away. The new
advancements in technology have really changed the ways that we interact with
the people around us. The pressure to always be attached to your phone has
impacted the relationships that we have with the people that are close to us.
“Sometimes
called the ‘Big Mac’ theory, this view suggests that people are so addicted to
mass-produced media menus that they lose their discriminating taste for finer
fare and, much worse, their ability to see and challenge social inequalities”
(Campbell, 21).
“We are also
increasingly making our media choices on the basis of Facebook, YouTube, or
Twitter recommendations from friends” (Campbell, 21).
9. The
concepts portrayed by companies don’t always represent the entire truth.
Advertisers use
many different techniques to capture the audience and draw in potential
customers. An example of such is a persuasive technique known as card stacking.
This technique persuades people by with holding information, or taking ideas
out of context. This is a perfect
example of not representing the entire truth. Practices such as these can be
harmful to consumers because, by not understanding all of the information,
consumers don’t know the extent of what they are getting themselves into.
“Partly to keep
tabs on deceptive advertising, advocates in the business community in 1913
created the nonprofit Better Business Bureau, which now has more than one
hundred branch offices in the United States” (Campbell, 327).
“…The industry
urged self-regulatory measures in order to keep government interference at bay”
(Campbell, 327).
See examples of
deceptive advertising here
10. There
has been a shift from news agencies sharing the essential information to
sharing what people want to see.
Television news
shows have always been considered a source of reliable news. They report on
what is happening around the world and the impacts it has on our lives. Now
news agencies tell stories about celebrities and information that isn’t
essential. This results in the information being reported being sub-par.
“It is this
cynicism that has drawn increasingly larger audiences to ‘fake’ news shows like
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report on cable’s Comedy
Central” (Campbell, 443).
“Maybe audiences
would value news that matches the complicated storytelling that surrounds them
in everything from TV dramas to interactive video games to their own
conversations. We should demand news story forms that better represent the
complexity of our world” (Campbell, 444).
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