Category: edci338

Identify the Risks and Benefits of engaging with a Public Audience in a Media Space

Engaging with a public audience using social media comes with many benefits and risks. In Jody Vance’s interview, she mentioned some of the benefits such as how social media helped her build trust, reliability and reputation with the public audience. Social media gave her an opportunity to network and build up her brand to make her more authentic and reputable to people as commentator. In Jody’s case, this helped her even receive a job offer where she was contacted through a private message. However, this does not apply to all occupations and professions. For example, lawyers and government official might have to be more careful because their social media posts might be probed more thoroughly. This was one of the risks that was mentioned Jody’s interview, where she mentioned that engaging with the public audience can help build up your reputation over long period of time but can crumble in a heartbeat due to one mistake. Moreover, another risk using social media for public engagement is that the connection formed might not be at a deep level unless you go out of your way to meet in real life.

How to best address negative replies and critiques reflective of your personal values and
employer social media policy?

Engaging with a public audience will mean that there will be possibility to receive negative feedback and critiques. When this happens, it is important to stay calm and reflect on your personal values. It is easy to loose your cool during these types of situation and engage with the critiques in a negative fashion. By reflecting upon your values, it is important to stand by them and back them up. However, if the critique is inappropriate then it is important to ignore or delete the comment if possible. Sometimes, your employer might require you to not argue with critiques in a manner that paint them in bad way. Users should also be careful deleting replies made by your followers because silencing a crowd can make them more upset and leave more negative messages. In Jody’s case, she mentioned that she received lot of criticism because she was a female in the sports reporting industry. However, she stayed by her personal values and push backed confidently.

How do notable individuals use social media? 

I want to give examples of some prominent athletes that use social media to not only promote their brands but also in the form of advocating for changes in their society. NBA player LeBron James is a good example where he would voice his concerns for racial inequality and police shootings in the United States. This shows that social media can be used more than just networking or building your brand but also advocate for positive change in your society.

References:

1. Hirst, M. (2018). Navigating Social Journalism: A Handbook for Media Literacy and Citizen Journalism (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.4324/9781315401263
2.  MILLER. (2021c, February 28). EDCI 338 – JODY VANCE. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgZOJgJkdyI

Photo by dole777 on Unsplash

Community Engagement in Public Communications

Reading through chapter 4 has shown me that how social media have changed how people engage in advocacy and other community related engagement. This can be seen today how politicians and other celebrities goes out to social media platform such as Twitter and Facebook to advocate for change in our society. The shift from physical advocacy engagement to the online one has occurred in a time where social media gives you opportunity to connect with billions of people around the world. This means people can directly spread their message with their followers and help promote it widely if your followers share with others. In the interview with Markiel Simpson, he explained how he was able to reach out to his targeted audience by using Twitter. In Markiel Simpson’s case, he used his Twitter account solely for advocacy engagement and didn’t share any personal stories. This helped build up consistency and allowed users to follow him because they agreed with Simpson’s sentiment. Due to this, Simpson was successful in promoting black representation in school curriculum and build up a base that made this reform possible. Another important point Simpson made was that social media allows you to build up a network that wasn’t possible in the past. This network comes handy for advocating for changes in the community and helps organize events such as fundraisers to help raise money for the cause. Social media have allowed people who are not well represented in the community and are disenfranchised to have a voice that can be amplified and be heard by lot of people in their community. PLN amplifies this by having followers share the original message causing more people having access to the message. However, the ease of communication between people through social media have meant that more false information can be spread. Therefore, it’s important by the community to recognize what’s true and what’s false. Recently, we have seen that this can be dangerous which we saw in the storming of the United States Capitol. It is really important to distinguish between true and false information otherwise there can be consequences.

Personally, I believe PLN is a great way to raise awareness regarding multiple topics we face in our community. Topics such as climate change, racial inequality, social injustice and economic issues can be discussed in social media and raise awareness of these issues which lot of the people didn’t know much about.

Reference:

Clark, J., & Aufderheide, P. (2013). A New Vision for Public Media – Open, Dynamic, and Participatory. In J. Pooley, L. Taub-Pervizpour, & S. C. Jansen (Authors), Media and social justice (pp. 55-67). New York: Palgrave.

Miller, Jesse. “EDCI 338 – 2021 – 02 – 22 Markiel Simpson.” YouTube, 22 Feb. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCSpm1Lx8-A&feature=youtu.be.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Muhammad Haque  and I am a fourth year student in UVic currently studying Computer Science. I am currently living in Washington DC and taking online courses due to the pandemic. I am originally from Bangladesh but moved to the US when I was in High School. After graduation, my plan is to attend graduate school somewhere in North America to complete Masters in Computer Science. I transferred to UVic from George Mason University on 2018 to pursue BSc in Computer Science.

This course was recommended by one of my friend because I don’t enjoy using social media regularly and don’t maintain any large presence in any social media platform. For example, I use Facebook or Twitter maybe less than 5 times a month. I find that this is one area where I can improve on and help me in my future endeavors. Hopefully, this course will teach me more about social media and how to use it effectively.

Below is a picture of myself taking in front of the Washington Monument.

Picture of me in front of the Washington Monument

I wish everyone good luck and hopefully it will be a fun semester working together.