Caroline made me do it

Everybody has that one friend. They are usually the person who knows all about anything remotely new immediately. This is the person you ask before you buy anything electronic or gadget related for example. They always know what’s the most up-to-date product on the market and more than likely have some experience utilizing it in their day-to-day life because they waited in line the day it came out so they could be one of the first to try it. Some would call these people “hipsters.” Hipsters are those who knew about that new thing before it was cool to know about said new thing. Technically hipsters shy away from mainstream culture and trends, but in doing so, they often end up dictating culture and trends. An example is “distressed” denim (jeans with holes in them.) This style was made popular because hipsters shunned mass department stores and favored thrifting clothes, which were in various states of disrepair or “distress.” The look became popular and viola – now you know how American Eagle and Hollister came up with holey jeans! Hipsters are just a form of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are defined as “a person whose opinions about something such as a product or issue have a big influence on the opinions of others” (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/opinion-leader.) They come in all shapes and sizes. The guy that works at the Apple Genius Bar who showed you how awesome Apple Music actually is is technically an opinion leader. Your local barista who made you try that coffee drink you didn’t think you would like but now love is an opinion leader. If they influenced you to try, buy, or in general change your mind about something, they are considered an opinion leader. But how do these opinion leaders operate in today’s social media saturated world?

I’m going to give you an example of an opinion leader that I utilize quite frequently to demonstrate how opinion leaders utilize social media. I am big into skincare. I’m the girl who doesn’t think twice about dropping $85 on an ounce of serum in the name of good skin. I’ve been a follower of Caroline Hirons for just over three years now (check out her blog here.) She’s a big deal in beauty land. She’s a 40-something mom of four, who worked retail for years and is now a trained facialist and makeup artist. She has a blog and YouTube channel which amass millions upon millions upon millions of views each year. She’s witty, but down to earth. She’s no nonsense when it comes to product reviews and she’s built an almost cult following. When she recommends a product, it’s almost guaranteed to sell out within the week, if not the day. It’s been dubbed “the Caroline effect” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-3344840/I-m-beauty-s-answer-Delia.html.) She has an amazing instinct for knowing what women want out of a product and she goes out of her way to make sure the reviews she writes are thorough, honest, and always enjoyable to read. Caroline is an avid social media user. When she posts a new review on her blog or a new YouTube video with her current skincare favorites (my personal favorite videos) she makes sure to let her followers know. She posts an Instagram story about it, a photo or video snippet to Instagram, tweets out the link, and boom! Thousands of women immediately have a new favorite product. Caroline’s background in the industry (she’s a trained facialist, has worked with dozens upon dozens of brands, and has industry cred) allow her to be a trusted opinion leader, as does her overall personal narrative. Personal narratives go a long way in making opinion leaders. Personal or “character” narratives are defined as “enduring personal stories or accounts that we may understand as being related to particular expressed character types” (Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities.) Caroline’s character narrative is that of a guru, helping guide us all to the land of good skin, while maintaining her wit and charm as a working mom.   It establishes a connection with her and allows us, as her readers/followers, to understand her not only just as a product reviewer but as a friend, somebody you would want to grab a drink with. People trust their friends, and I trust Caroline Hirons to a fault.

Sorry to wax poetic up there, but my devotion to Caroline Hirons is a great example of opinion leadership and how it can impact the market. The “Caroline effect” I mentioned above? That effect is what companies who get reviewed by Caroline come to expect. It means your products are about to fly off the shelves and your profits are going to soar. It’s a very, very good thing. It’s also fairly cheap marketing. By having somebody like Caroline, who has already done the work of cultivating a captive audience, utilize your product, you as a company can capitalize on the after effects. Opinion leaders like Caroline are partaking in a form of Word-of-Mouth communication. For more than half a century it’s been maintained that Word-of-Mouth affects the majority of all purchase decisions (Networked Narratives.) People like Caroline just do it online now versus in person. The advent of social media has changed the way in which most of us partake in Word-of-Mouth interactions. Now instead of calling that hipster friend of yours to discuss whether or not you should buy into the hype of the newest iPhone (what are we on now? 7? 8?) you can just browse online for your favorite tech blogger or scroll through your YouTube subscription box until you find that one channel with the Genius Bar guy you love to watch on weekends. Trust is being formed online with people like Caroline Hirons every day. There’s a reason why YouTube beauty gurus are able to afford $1 million houses (Zoella anybody?) Consumers trust their opinions and brands know that. Utilizing these online, social media opinion leaders can only help brands and their marketers. Is there a potential for blow-back? Sure. But at the end of the day, isn’t any press good press?

I hope you all enjoyed my take on opinion leaders and social media. See you next week for another post!

Source:

Kozinets, Robert V., et al. "Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities." Journal of Marketing 74 (2010): 71-89.

Guess who's back?!

Remember how I said I might not be updating as frequently as I used to last week? Surprise! I’m still going to be posting here once a week on http://paigewester.blogspot.com/ for a little while longer! If you’re new to my neck of the Internet woods you can go read a little about me on my About Me page or go read my first post titled “I am not throwing away my shot” (which, yes, is a Hamilton reference.) If you remember, this blog started out as a way for me to work through different types of emerging media that are available and how we, as strategic communicators, can utilize them to their full potential. I would now like to take the blog and turn it around a little bit. I would like to focus these next few weeks on Leadership and Media Strategies and how we can utilize these strategies in our day-to-day lives as strategic communicators for various organizations.

Diffusion of Innovations theory. Did you just die a little on the inside, because I know I did the first time I read that phrase. Diffusion of Innovations theory is actually pretty interesting though if you give it a chance and can be one of the most useful theories for us as strategic communicators. It effects just about everything in our lives, from technology we use to the food we eat. Plus, it’s a great jump off point for us with this new blog direction! Diffusion of Innovations theory is based off work by Dr. Everett Rogers. Originally published in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations (1995,) the theory itself offers three valuable insights: what qualities make an innovation spread, the importance of peer-peer conversations and peer networks, and understanding the needs of different user segments (A Summary of Diffusion of Innovations.)  So let’s break down the theory and what this all means for us.

Diffusion is defined as “the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” (Diffusion of Innovations.)  Essentially diffusion is how things like new advances in technology, etc. are trickled down into mainstream society. There are four main components found within this diffusion definition provided by Rogers: innovation, communication channels, time, and social system. All these elements culminate to form the Innovation-Decision Process (Detailed Review of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Educational Technology-Related Studies Based on Rogers’ Theory.)  The Innovation-Decision Process is a five step one: 1) knowledge 2) persuasion 3) decision 4) implementation and 5) confirmation. Each of these steps in the process is also accompanied by five characteristics of innovations: 1) relative advantage 2) compatibility 3) complexity 4) trialability and 5) observability. Since I just listed two lists I’m not going to bore you with the intricate details of each one. For the most part they are fairly self-explanatory but if you are interested in going in depth about any of these concepts I highly suggest checking out any of the readings listed above.

The main focus that I want to talk about concerns the Innovation-Decision Process and those who embark on this process. First up are the innovators. These are the visionaries, the dreamers. The innovators “often lavish great time, energy and creativity on developing new ideas and gadgets. And they love to talk about them.” To me, the innovators are the Steve Jobs types. Next you have the early adopters. These are the people who are always “on the lookout for a strategic leap forward in their lives or businesses and are quick to make connections between clever innovations and personal needs.” AKA Hipsters. These are the people who knew about stuff before it was cool to know about them. After the early adopters you have the early majority-the rest of us who are “pragmatists, comfortable with moderately progressive ideas, but won’t act without solid proof of benefits.” Between the two “early” categories you have almost half of the population who participate in a given Innovation-Decision Process. Now let’s move on to the other half.   The late majority “are conservative pragmatists who hate risk and uncomfortable with your new idea.” These are the people who take a lot of work to adopt any kind of new anything. The want to fit in though, so eventually they’ll come on board. Last but not least are the laggards. What a nice name right? These are those guys who “hold out to the bitter end” (A Summary of Diffusion of Innovations.) These are those who may never get on board with your new innovation no matter how hard you work to impress them. Each type of “personality” is different and not everybody is the same personality for each innovation they may encounter in their lives. The important thing is that each personality will exist somewhere in the process and we have to be aware of who they are and what they want in order to get our innovations off the ground.

Now that I have metaphorically talked your ear off about Diffusion of Innovations and the very basics of the theory, how do we apply it and all it encompasses to our jobs as strategic communicators? The biggest, and in my opinion most obvious, takeaway is how important peer-to-peer communications and peer networks are to the development of innovations (see the personality types listed in the above paragraph.)  Without the early adopters and innovators talking with their peers and family members, some of the most innovative stuff to ever happen might not have gone mainstream (think of the iPhone, Facebook, etc. Those spread because people who were first to use them told their friends about them and so on and so forth until everybody now utilizes these two innovations.) It re-establishes the fact that even though we are now officially in the digital age, more “traditional” forms of communication are still the most useful. Talking with others is still the best way to distribute ideas and to invoke change. Thing about your organization that you work for. Do the best innovations come from a memo telling you what to do or do they happen more organically? I know in my personal experience, my company recently transitioned to a new CRM system. While we were all put through the same basic training, after about a month you could clearly see who the early adopters were and how they were helping the early majority, late majority, and laggards understand and utilize this new technology to its fullest potential. Each innovation is different but the personalities who help the innovators achieve the Innovation-Decision Process rarely change.

Hopefully you were able to find something useful in all that! I hope you enjoy the new direction the blog is heading and stick around for the next few weeks to learn even more with me! Have a great week everybody!

Auf Wiedersehen

These past nine weeks have been quite an adventure. I (and I hope you too) have learned so much about emerging media. From social media and networking to how technology affects children growing up today, we’ve dived into it all. My favorite topic I think was crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, and politics. It all tied in so well with what is currently happening in the United States political arena right now. Without citizen journalists would we have known about the impact the Women’s March was going to have? Would we have understood how desperate the situation at Standing Rock was getting? The answer isn’t a black and white “no,” but it’s also not a firm “yes” either.  I think the future of technology, the future of the web, lies in the people who utilize it.  The press is relying more and more on citizen journalists in the wake of their current predicament with the new administration. For the first time ever, people are getting direct, day-to-day updates from the President via Twitter. People are writing more and more about how they feel, how they wish to help, and encouraging others to help as well. As with most things, the power lies with the people and with more data being uploaded every day the web will only improve with time. I personally can’t wait to see what happens next in media.

But, sadly, my journey into emerging media and what that all means for us as professional strategic communicators has come to an end with this post. I have decided to take this project and switch gears for a while. As a result this blog won’t be updated as frequently as it once was but it’ll still be around, don’t worry! I hope you stop by again soon and see where this next journey takes me. Until next time!

A Blessing and a Curse: Children and Technology

This week all of my readings focused on children and technology. How does it affect them? How can we better utilize technology with our kids but also keep them safe? How do kids view technology in their own lives? A lot of research has been done over the past decade or so to dig into this relationship that exists between our kids and their technology. One of the reasons scholars see this as an important area for research is because children are very susceptible to outside influences (mainly friends but sometimes others whom they meet online) and most children are not knowledgeable enough to distinguish between a friend or somebody out to hurt them online. They aren’t properly equipped to deal with maliciousness delivered through technology and this raises a lot of questions for adults and parents alike on how to keep kids safe. There are a ton of benefits to raising kids with technology. A great example that I think about is one of my four year old nephew’s toys. He is learning how to creatively problem solve with this really cool toy called the Code-a-pillar.

 It's essentially a caterpillar made up of removable segments that tell the toy where to go. Some segments make it go forward, others to the left or right. The child arranges and rearranges the segments making the caterpillar's path change each time to move about the room in any way they want to. They can even make it go around obstacles like my little nephew does! These toys are dependent on technology and yet they're teaching him some valuable skills.  Now this same nephew also knows how to navigate YouTube on my phone to find his favorite Halloween movie about Curious George. There’s definitely an act of balance that has to take place with kids and their technology and for the most part this balance is fairly easy to achieve…until that child turns about 12 or 13 and discovers the fun that is social media.

Social media is the big bad in the world of technology for both children and their parents. In some households, it’s a nightly source of arguing and bickering. “Don’t Snapchat at the table!” is something I’ve heard shouted quite often by parents while out to dinner. It keeps them connected but at what cost? Most parents view cellphones and the myriad apps that come with them as both a blessing and a curse. A 2008 study of 60 families with young people aged 11-17 and their parents revealed that both children and parents “regardless of geographical location (urban or rural) – considered that mobile phones were a benefit to young people, and helped to keep them safe.” (The Role of Mobile Phones in Family Communication.) In the event of any type of emergency, cell phones and certain apps are useful and vital to have. Apps like SafeTrek (https://www.safetrekapp.com/) are designed to help anybody feel safe by opening and holding down your finger on the app screen. If you lift up your finger and don’t enter your security pin it will automatically notify police of your location and send a type of “distress signal.” I used a similar version of this app when I was in undergrad and I always felt so much better for having it. This proves the “blessing” part of phones and technology being ever present in kid’s lives. It allows parents to feel connected to their kids when they can’t be there.

Now on to the “curse” bit. Technology is a huge distraction in everyday life, not just for children but adults as well. The average American devotes more than ten hours to screen time a day and that number threatens to grow (http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/.) With all that time looking at a screen and being focused on social media, kids are focused more and more on maintaining those social profiles and making sure they fit in. Adolescence is already a fraught time. You have mood swings, you’re conflicted about risky behaviors you or your friends may be experiencing, and fights with parental figures is an almost constant. Online can be a form of escape for many kids during this time. Empirical evidence has even suggested that “self-disclosure through online communication can enhance the quality” of friendships children can have with each other(Coming of Age Online: The Developmental Underpinnings of Girls’ Blogs.) In a lot of cases, it can seem like social media is all about the “me” factor for youths but in actuality it’s much more about the “we.” In Sonia Livingstone’s article Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation she states that “social networking is about ‘me’ in the sense that it reveals the self embedded in the peer group, as known to and represented by others, rather than the private ‘I’.”  Basically it’s more about the group mentality and “fitting in” than it is about standing out and that group mentality can have some pretty harsh consequences.

As we all know, either from experience or from watching others, kids can be mean to each other. It’s yet another part of adolescence and growing up.  Cyberbullying is a huge part of children’s lives and experiences on social media. Nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online and 1 in 4 has had it happen more than once (https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-cyber-bullying.) Kids know this is happening, and some participate in it just because their friends are and they don’t want to be next. It’s a very serious issue and one that needs a lot more time and attention paid to it before we can really begin to solve it. It’s a huge “curse” of being online as an adolescent. However, happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light (if you got that this was a Harry Potter reference, ten points to your house!) A point of light in all this cyberbullying darkness is that technology is allowing kids to discuss serious issues with their parents or parental figures through technology. There has been a huge uptick in kids communicating with parents via text or social media messenger apps about serious topics like cyberbullying. Many LGBTQ+ children broach coming out to their parents first by bringing it up via text or social media, and even teen pregnancy has been known to be brought to parents attention via text (The Role of Mobile Phones in Family Communication.) Technology has allowed children to feel comfortable enough to communicate with just about anybody, but that also includes the people who care about and love them the most: their parents.

I don’t have children yet, but I found this week’s reading to be very informational and I will definitely remember it as I move forward with my own family someday. Only one more week left before we take the blog in a different direction. See you guys then!

Sources:

Livingstone, Sonia. “Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy, and self-expression.” New Media and Society, Vol. 10, Issue 3, 2008, 393-411.

Davis, Katie. “Coming of age online: The developmental underpinnings of girls' blogs.” Journal of Adolescent Research, Vol. 25, Issue 1, 2010, 145-171.

Devitt, Kevin & Roker, Debi. “The role of mobile phones in family communication.” Children & Society, Vol. 23, Issue 3, 2009, 189–202.

YouTube Taught Me

Branding. It’s a huge part of everyday life and you may not even realize it. Say you are walking down the aisles at Publix one day and realize you’re out of mouthwash at home. Which brand do you buy? Do you stick with Listerine because of its reputation with dentists or do you stick with the good old generic brand because it says “comparable to” Listerine? All of us are different but almost all of us use branding in some way, shape or form to formulate our opinions on things.  Branding has been categorized as “the process of creating value through the provision of a compelling and consistent offer and customer experience that will satisfy customers and keep them coming back” (i-Branding: developing the internet as a branding tool.) But this definition excludes a growing segment of branding that has been proliferated due to the rise of social media. That segment would be Personal Branding. Do you have a blog? If so, how many followers do you have? What about Facebook or Twitter and your number of followers on those platforms? YOU are a brand to those people. When they think of a spunky or sassy individual maybe they think of you because you’re always posting funny commentary on your day to day interactions with people. Personal branding is a vital part of life in today’s digital, social media obsessed world and we all have to learn how to create, manage, and cultivate our brands properly. 

An incredible example of personal branding would be the rise of the Youtuber. I was recently helping out at an elementary school and I asked one of the little boys I was helping what he wanted to be when he grew up. I was expecting the basics…astronaut, firefighter, policemen. But no…he said he wanted to be a Youtuber! The word Youtuber seems like it would be hard to find a proper definition for but nope: it’s easily searchable on the Oxford online living dictionary. Oxford defines the term as “A frequent user of the video-sharing website YouTube, especially someone who produces and appears in videos on the site” (Oxford Living Dictionary.) There are all kinds of Youtubers to appeal to every type of viewer. There are beauty “gurus” who specialize in makeup and hair tutorials. There are lifestyle Youtubers who cover things on their channels such as home décor, fashion, and the latest trends. There are gamers who film themselves playing video games for other people to watch (how meta is that?!) There are even family vloggers who film weekly videos about their families lives in the span of a day or week (my personal favorite of these has got to be The Michalaks!) There’s a Youtube channel and Youtuber behind it for just about everybody.  And these channel curators are making major money off these channels by harnessing the power of their own personal brands.

While many of the top Youtubers do make money off Youtube via Googles AdSense advertising many other popular YouTubers leverage their online notoriety to partner with brands (e.g. Bethany Mota's partnership with Aeropostale) or to become or launch brands themselves (e.g. Michelle Phan's Ipsy). (How top Youtubers Launch their own brands.) Through lucrative book deals, podcasts, and in some cases even movie deals (Camp Takota and Dirty 30 are both movies that were written, executive produced, and star Youtubers,) these creators have forged a new path to fame and notoriety without the help of traditional media. Most Youtubers pride themselves on being authentic, on delivering only content that their viewers want to watch. This strategy of branding themselves as authorities on whatever they create has served these Youtubers well. They have all managed to take their personal brand – the reputation and image that you intentionally create- and make it into a successful business (Fundamentals of Personal Branding.) Youtubers have also figured out that careful strategy of leveraging social media platforms to attain greater influencing power. Most beauty “gurus” on Youtube for instance all started out with blogs. Those blogs grew to YouTube tutorials, which grew into brand endorsements and sponsorships, which in some cases has grown to having their own beauty ranges. Zoella in particular is a big phenomenon in this realm. A survey of 13-18 year olds recently showed that “YouTubers were judged to be more engaging, extraordinary and relatable than mainstream stars, who were rated as being smarter and more reliable” (Why are YouTube Stars so Popular?) These trends show that the phenomenon of the Youtuber is not going away any time soon.

As strategic communication professionals, we can take these lessons from Youtubers and apply them to our organizations. It’s about so much more than maintaining the company blog anymore. Blogs can allow us to control the message being presented to the public about our organizations, in much the same way our media buys and marketing items can. However, these are not enough anymore. We have to be compelling and own our content (we need to be THE experts,) be consistent in our usage of and posting to social media and above all be streamlined. Everything has to flow (much like Youtubers progressions from blogs to the video platform) and the more it flows the more appealing our organizations brand becomes. We can’t depend on a Facebook like anymore to guarantee that somebody out there is talking about us. We have to strategize, make other brands come to us, and make our demographics work for us not against us. If we know our target audience is primarily women aged 25-34 then we can personalize our marketing efforts. Personalization allows us to “precisely and cost effectively target segments and develop more one-to-one relationships” (iBranding.) This is one of the most powerful aspects of the internet and social media. Everything can be personalized to suit somebody’s specific tastes. Our brands need to find their niche much like Youtubers have. The more we appeal to those niche markets the better off our brands will be. We won’t be everybody’s cup of tea that’s for sure. We need to make our communications with those people who DO like us count and personalizing our communications is a great way to start.

Thanks for checking out the blog this week! Only two more entries to go regarding Emerging Media before we change gears. Stay tuned!

The Comfort Zone

I’m not going to lie to you, dear reader. This week was a challenge for me. My readings focused on politics, crowdsourcing and the global impact of emerging media. These readings forced me to come out of my comfort zone in regards to readings about political commentary. It made me realize that I had made that most common of mistakes…I had unfollowed, unfriended, and curated my social media news feeds until I was in a “bubble” of like-minded individuals with no outside opinions allowed. I’m grateful for this week’s readings because at points it made me realize just how damaging that “bubble” can be, and how it’s important that we maintain a healthy perspective, especially when it comes to politics. This week’s post touches on the topic but only lightly and I hope you too gain some perspective as well from my take on how 2016 changed not only the political landscape but the media landscape as well, and how we can try and do better in the future for ourselves and our organizations by recognizing change as its happening through emerging media.

It’s common knowledge in most higher education circles that the tools and platforms used to communicate news and other important information is changing almost daily along with the public's media consumption habits.  To quote a professor of mine, “Teaching about these changes is difficult. In fact, most, if not all, journalism and communication textbooks are out-of-date the moment they are printed because of the speed of advancements in the world of digital media.” This past year was one of challenges for the traditional media, one where the ever changing habits of the public’s media consumption was one of the biggest stars of the 2016 presidential election. Traditional media’s perception, credibility, and trustworthiness have all been called into serious question by over half the country. But how did we get here? Why did the traditional media get it so wrong in 2016 and why didn’t they see this coming? 

Donald Trump’s campaign was able to pull off something that nobody thought they could do. Every poll in the country by most established news outlets had him losing the general election at varying points throughout 2016 by up to 80%. Donald Trump was the end result of years of action by online communities who had gotten more than fed up with the status quo. They were tired of not seeing their voices, concerns, and stories in the traditional media. So they took to the Web, to write and read blogs, to create their own news sites (a la Breitbart News) and to discuss things that they saw missing in the traditional media coverage. In Digital Democracy: Reimagining Pathways to Political Participation, the authors stated that their research pointed towards the fact that “blog readers are involved in a range of participatory activities, both online and offline, and that these two spheres are highly complementary and mutual supportive.” This suggests that a virtual and real world combination of activism is emerging to create a truly digital democracy on both sides of the aisle.

The disparity between this group of actively engaged users and the group who were actively engaged users for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, could not have been wider. Democratic nominee supporters were with traditional media, often sighting the stories most often published as for the greater good (ex. Marriage equality in 2015, Islamaphobia discussion over terrorist threat discussions, and so on.) Hillary Clinton’s camp got it wrong but so did almost all of the established mainstream media. They didn’t ignore what was happening online on sites such as Brietbart News but they didn’t fully engage in it. They didn’t take the time to understand just how pervasive sites such as Brietbart were getting. They didn’t invest in trying to understand the messages these groups were sending and the support they were receiving. Instead they ignored it completely or underreported it and as such, they allowed the biggest change in political history to occur.

Donald Trump’s political career could easily be defined in his use of social media, particularly Twitter. Never in the country’s history has a president been so free and willing to communicate with the public through such a personal messaging tool. Many experts would say that this is what gave him the election. He was not afraid to break hardwired political rules. A few examples of these rules are below, taken from How the political rules changed in 2016, written by AEI.

• ·         Celebrities don’t count.
• ·         Polling and big data don’t automatically generate the right moves
• ·         Outrageous statements aren’t disqualifying.

That last one is yuge. A study back in 2011 found that the “digital divide for social media users is wider between the haves and have-nots than it is between young and old” (So much for digital democracy: New study finds elite viewpoints dominate online content.) Simply put, politically incorrect, working class were (and are) underrepresented on the Internet. Their messages were being ignored by the mainstream and Donald Trump saw that. He was able to take those politically incorrect feelings and give them a physical mouthpiece. And the mainstream media took him at his word. They saw Donald Trump throughout his campaign as someone who was worthy of being taken seriously but not literally, while his supporters saw it the other way around.

So what does all this mean for us as strategic communicators? For me the biggest lesson in learning about the 2016 election was the idea of complacency. We all have a tendency to get in our own bubbles, or comfort zones. Clearly, traditional media were prepared for the old political guard’s way of doing things when the country was ready for a stiff departure from that. They didn’t take the time to see and acknowledge things from that metaphorical “other person’s” point of view. We as a society clearly were caught up in our own typical every-4-year political cycle and failed to notice it crumbling around us. As communicators, we have to be aware of changes happening around us and organizations, even if that change is not one we like or approve of. That change can be online or offline, a new product or tool, or a person running for political office. We have to be willing to take a step back and see it from another perspective before the lack of perspective drowns us.

As I said in my intro this week, I was pushed out of comfort zone reading and writing this week. But I am so glad I was, because it really brought together for me why Donald Trump is now our president and how we can take the lessons currently being learned by the traditional media and apply it to our own work and lives. Thanks for stopping by and see you guys again next week!

Everybody’s got one

Opinion. Everybody’s got one. It’s a touchy subject, now more so than ever before with the current political climate we now live in. Everybody has one and everybody wants to share theirs with anybody who will listen. It’s a basic principal of pluralism and democracy, this allowance to demonstrate and voice our differences publicly. Blogs and other social platforms have made is easier to share those opinions with the world and to develop communities with other like-minded or concerned individuals. These bloggers can sometimes be called “citizen journalists.” Citizen journalism is defined as "the act of a citizen...playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information" (This is Citizen Journalism at its finest.) The draw of citizen journalism is "the prospect of citizens themselves participating in the agenda setting process" (Social news, citizen journalism and democracy.) When people create and utilize blogs, nine times out of ten it is because they are trying to connect with people. They are trying and succeeding in participating in the national conversation by becoming active contributors versus passive consumers. Blogs give citizen journalists that sense that they are taking back the power from the traditional news outlets to dictate the news cycle by contributing their own thoughts and opinions through stories, photos, or videos.

Most of our readings this week dealt with citizen journalists and they all made me think about the same thing…Are citizen journalists (and by extension their blogs and websites) reliable sources of news information and can they compare with their traditional news media counterparts to change the media landscape?

It’s my humble opinion that they are capable of both.  Citizen journalists and their blogs, websites, or whatever social platform they happen to use, are creating their own communities. In many cases, these citizen journalists might be the only ones reporting on their communities, which automatically gives them a healthy dose of credibility.  If you’re the only one investigating, writing, and producing content about a certain issue, community, or area you are going to become an authority.  An example that comes to mind is http://www.northescambia.com/.  This online newspaper (which functions more like a blog) reports events that happen in North Escambia County, FL. This upper half of the county tends to get underreported in the local traditional new outlets that report on Escambia County (local TV Station WEAR and The Pensacola News Journal.) While only in operation for a few short years, it has already placed itself as the news authority for “the North End” of Escambia County.  If any major news events occur beyond the city of Pensacola’s city limits, the traditional outlets depend on northescambia.com to report about it. They have become the source for their community. The last sentence on northescambia.com’s About section reads, “With your help, we’ll provide you with a complete look at what is happening here in our community.”  This website depends on citizen journalists to function and for the most part has done a good job with utilizing these contributors and maintaining their sense of credibility. If an accident of some kind has occurred (an example I’m thinking of is an auto accident) they will take photos and eye witness reports and combine it with the official statement from the Florida Highway Patrol. They have managed to find the sweet spot…providing unrestricted commentary in the midst of sourced information.

The biggest claim against blogs and citizen journalists is the potential for deception or extreme bias, in that these journalists are not beholden to the same ethical standards as their traditional counterparts.  Sources are often cited as being the best way to ensure accuracy and broadness in a journalists reporting. The more sources you have, the better chance you have of presenting all sides fairly. In a study about source diversity in US online citizen journalism and online newspaper articles, it was found that online newspaper articles featured an average of 3.64 sources per article while citizen journalism articles averaged in roughly 1.37 per article.  Traditional journalists do have a tendency to utilize more sources, thus making their articles and opinions appear more credible. However traditional journalists have the advantage over citizen journalists in a key way that changes everything. They have access to official sources, larger databases, new wires, you name it. Citizen journalists tend to only have unofficial, carefully mined sources who may be close to a particular topic but don’t have the official “in.” Think about asking the Pope for a quote about contemporary Catholicism versus your local priest. They may both have the same general consensus on the topic (even using the same verbiage) but the Pope (official source) is going to look more credible than your local clergy (unofficial source.) I don’t think a proliferation or lack of sources makes or breaks you in the journalist world. Look at the Huffington Post for example.  It started out as a blog in 2005 and by 2009 has expanded so heavily it was investing $1.75 million into a fund for investigative reporting. The HuffPo has not been without its share of controversies but its contribution of commentary within well sourced news content has changed the online and traditional media landscapes irrevocably. 

Another claim to support citizen journalists as reliable sources and comparable to their traditional counterparts is in the traditional news’ steady infiltration into the blogosphere. Sites like HuffPo and Newsvine actively use videos and stories from traditional outlets such as CNN and the BBC. In some cases, like with Newsvine, they are even owned by traditional companies (Newsvine is owned by MSNBC.) Traditional news outlets will more than likely never stop influencing what the public views as newsworthy, but I personally feel there is room for collaboration between the old and the new. Many traditional news outlets now include some form of contribution from a citizen journalist. From videos taken on cell phones during protests that are used during broadcast news, to comments on news stories that are then read live on the air, citizen journalist’s contributions are making an impact on the news cycle. They are breaking down the barrier between the traditional "gatekeepers" and the average Joe. I believe this collaboration is critical, now more than ever. We need citizen journalists who aren't afraid to attend protests and report back live video feeds to their own blogs for traditional sites to pick up. Bloggers have the capability to enact real change through their work, be it written, verbal, or visual. Whether we like it or not, opinions do matter, especially when they are voiced with intention. Opinions can and do effect the world we live in. Through establishing themselves and growing their communities, they (the blogs, and the citizen journalists behind them) have the potential to change the media landscape for the better.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s post and come back next week!

Sources:

Pilkington, Ed. "Is the Huffington Post Ready to Replace the Ailing US Newspaper Industry?"The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Apr. 2009. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

(2010). Citizen Journalism at its finest. New Media and Society, 12(8).

Goode, Luke (2009). Social news, citizen journalism, and democracy. New Media and Society, 11(8), 1287-1305.

Carpenter, Serena (2008.) Source Diversity in US Online Citizen Journalism and Online Newspaper articles, International Symposium on Online Journalism.