What makes something go viral? ( https://www.ted.com/talks/dao_nguyen_what_makes_so…)  Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media Why do we watch TV? | Uses and Gratification theory explained 1 CMNS 2180 — Read Think Engage Package Week 2 — Defining Corporate Communication Hi there. Welcome to your first Read Think Engage Package for the course. My goal is to provide you with this single document as a tool to guide your learning and activity each week. In these packages, I’ll give some summary of what we are learning, instruct you to read certain things, and ask you to complete certain tasks. Just follow along! Journals A note about the weekly journals. In the packages, you will find Journal Tasks. These tasks must be submitted each week on Thursday evenings. To make these submissions, I recommend that you create a Journal_WeekX document for each week and collect your responses to the Journal tasks in that document. Some weeks there might be one larger task and some weeks a couple of smaller ones. Formatting is not important here — these are journals and notes. I just want to see your ideas and engagement — although I do appreciate nice grammar as I was an English major many year ago. Please submit 1 Word Document that collects your Journal work for that week. If you don’t have Word, please consider taking advantage of TRU’s access to Office 365 for all students. The link is on Moodle. Or, I will take PDF as a last resort if there is a technical emergency. Ok, let’s get started. Part A — Putting the Social into Social Media Communication In this opening segment, we’ll identify some of the key social, cultural and political issues that surround our use of social media communication. These, along with the theoretical questions explored in Part B, will form a foundation for our study of particular contexts and topics. Read/Listen 1. Watch the video ‘Building Blocks of Social Media.’ This will introduce some of the key issues we will explore. 2. Now go ahead and read Ch. 1 of your textbook. 3. Listen to my Podcast a — The Social of Social Media Communication. You can watch along with the slides if you want to. Engage. For you, to help you learn. Not for submission. As prompted in the podcast, spend some time reflecting on your own use and engagement with social media. We’ll do this a lot through the term. At this point, though, I want you specifically to think about two things: 1. Where you get your information from? How authoritative and diverse is this information? Do you trust it? Why? 2. How do you use social media communication for identity construction and community building? 2 PART B — Communication theory and social media communication Read/Listen 1. Watch the video ‘Uses and Gratification.’ This video briefly but succinctly outlines how we can use theory to begin to explain our patterns of engagement with social media communication. 2. Now, to apply what you saw in the first video, Watch the short video ‘What makes something go viral?.’ Here the producer from Buzzfeed talks about cultural cartography; we need to really start understanding how and why we use social media communication — what do we get from this. 3. Time to read Ch. 2 from your textbook. 4. Now listen to my Podcast b — Theory and social media communication. You can follow along with the slides if you like. Journal — Submit. You have two tasks this week for your Journal, related to the short videos you’ve been watching. The idea here is to use principles from the videos to get you thinking about your own engagement with social media! 1. Rewatch the Building Blocks of Social Media video and the Uses and Gratification Video. 2. As you watch, fill in the table I’ve pasted below. 3. Submit the completed table to the Journal assignment by Thursday night. Building Blocks of Social Media. In the video, they identify 7 ‘building blocks’ shaping engagement through social media communication. For each one listed, consider briefly how important this function is in your own social media use and why; does it vary depending on your personal vs professional use of social media? Identity. How much disclosure/sharing. How much personal information/Privacy? Conversation. How much engagement? Sharing. How users exchange information? Presence. How you can track/see others’ accessibility. Status/location/availability. Needed? Relationships. How users are connected? Nurturing or making new connections? How important is relationship-building? Reputation. How are brands/people viewed? How 3 is this measured? Endorsements, reviews etc. Groups. How do individuals manage their social relationships/contacts? Categories? How to manage groups? Video — Uses and Gratification. This theory assumes audience is active participant in choices around use and consumption of media, to fulfill 4 primary needs. For each one, provide an example of how you use social media to fulfill this need and reflect on whether you think it does a good job at this! • Surveillance — seeking information. How do you do this? What do you look for? What curiosities does it satisfy? • Sense of Personal Identity. Reinforce your own values and beliefs. Help us discover who we are. How do you do this? • Personal Relationships. At times we get lonely — use media to connect/engage. Through media, we can make bonds with media figures/characters (even in mass media), but now sense of interaction/engagement. How do you do this? • Diversion. We need something to pass time, distract, escape etc. What do you do for distraction? Congratulations! You’ve finished this week. A reminder: • Have you submitted your Journal? Exploring the ‘social’ in Social Media The Plan • Introduce key issues/debates/anxieties that surround the use of social media communication • Place these in the context of your own media diet • Posit a couple of arguments about what is ‘new’ In the next decade, will public discourse online become more or less shaped by bad actors, harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust?– Pew Research Center (@pewinternet, 2019) I think anyone on the internet with eyeballs at this time and place is a bargain. Because it’s so new, no one really knows what they’re worth.– Logan Paul (@LoganPaul, 2016) We live in a time where brands are people and people are brands.– Brian Solis (@briansolis, 2013) Key Issues and Debates • Trust. Traditional vs. Social news outlets and other forms of ‘official’ information and content • Amplification. Impact with of course both accurate and inaccurate information. How/why s/t goes viral. • Collective Intelligence. Growth of knowledge through crowd but also ‘mob justice’ • Role of Media Gatekeeping vs Raw content. Representation of diverse voices, mis/information. • Political and Cultural contexts. Social media boundaries/politics despite apparently borderless reach • Media Literacy. Can we accurately and effectively interpret the content and media? • Addiction models of social media. Social and economic implications • Surveillance and data collection. User vs. Product. • Identify Formation. Self-identification and community alignment through social communication. Reflect on your media diet … • Think carefully about how you consume information — specifically hot information like politics, health, social issues. What sources do you rely on? Is there a range of sources? • To what extend do you rely on social media feeds to shape and/or confirm your knowledge and opinions? • How active are you in seeking out a range of different viewpoints on issues? How do you do it? Experiment with your social media feeds — consciously look for information on an issue that you may not agree with. How did that go? • How salient is social media communication in performing and developing your sense of self and community identification? Mechanics of Social Media communication Blah … Blah … ‘networked individuals engaging in interpersonal, yet mediated, communication.’ Storytelling as social media communication? • Personal and professional shifts in how we tell stories • How do we construct our self narratives? • How do we construct our brands? • What does a narrative look like? • Rethink the nature of agenda-setting function of narrative • TRUST • ‘The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that despite a strong global economy and near full employment, none of the four societal institutions that the study measures — government, business, NGOs and media — is trusted. • The cause of this paradox can be found in people’s fears about the future and their role in it, which are a wake-up call for our institutions to embrace a new way of effectively building trust: balancing competence with ethical behaviour’ This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC Social networking sites (SNS) • web-based services that allow individuals to • (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, • (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and Self-construction Self –presentation through connection • (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature Distribution and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. • • (boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 211) of identity through community • While personal branding has become popular, the new mobilesocial media may be best reflected by singer Taylor Swift as an ‘UnBrand’ — ‘a symbol or emblem to a group of people’ that begins as ‘blank space, allowing various groups of fans to identify with her and project their ideal self’ (Honjo, 2016, para. 6). Relational Expectations ‘When it comes to social media communication, individuals present themselves online, and use a constructed identity for impression management in relationships. ‘Social networking sites, such as Facebook, are particularly interesting to communication researchers because they are dedicated specifically to forming and managing impressions, as well as engaging in relational maintenance and relationship-seeking behaviors’ (Rosenberg & Egbert, 2011, p. 2).’ • Existing inter-personal connections can move into online spaces • New connections based in interest (games, fan groups, politics) can be made in online spaces • New ambiguity in self-disclosure — not a question of anonymity, but that identity can be altered — versions of self — in amplified ways • Fluidity and instability of identity opens up potential for unbounded social interaction but also amplifies trust issues Identityconstruction Identity through act of Disclosure • Acts of disclosure (relative control) key to degrees of relationship formation • Online presence created through acts of disclosure that are continuous and ongoing and expected • Consider distinctions between sharing and disclosure — the former does not always indicate the latter • We seek interpersonal connections and to explain ourselves and to understand others • This need to interactivity is the internal logic of social media communication • How does it meet/exploit our desire for connection? Interactivity Community/ Community construction • Unprecedented potential for community construction and engagement • Potential for opportunities for new stories, new acts of cultural production and change • Need to better understand role of platforms, but also the relationships between online community engagement and material change • How communities self-identify through group building, through cultural production, inclusion/exclusion, etc. • Potter world having a tough time with this right now as an example). • Social interaction theory looks at links between popular or positive traits and judgements of sincerity (trust) — links to influence/leadership online • Blurred boundaries of cultural consumption and cultural production as forms of communication. Reshapes how we understand roles of identity construction and representation. Behavior and social settings • Examine relationships in and between social networks for culture-level examinations of behaviours, trends, attitudes • IE — do members of political network suggest relational connection to other social issues? Relational Patterns Influence and Leadership • What is needed to secure and amplify influence within networked environment? • Examine relationship between need to ground influence or momentum within virtual communities to live material events • Performative vs. substantial activism using social media communication? Memes are thought to compete for attention through imitation and iteration: Memes (more next week!) • Memes are ‘understood as cultural information that passes along from person to person, yet gradually scales into a shared social phenomenon.’ • They ‘reproduce by various means of imitation.’ • They are interesting because of ‘their diffusion through competition and selection.’ Purchase answer to see full attachment Tags: social media fake news How Fake News Turned A Small Town Upside Down User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool’s honor code & terms of service.