At the end of our social media course, all of the 2C's attended Future Camp. Our Future Camp was a great recap of the year. We collaboratively devised a plan to uphold and expand our Humber PR network.
We discussed possible future networking events and the frequency of the events. We have decided to uphold and continue our Why Not Wednesdays after we graduate, once every one or two months.
At Future Camp we created some long and short term goals:
Increase and expand our network by holding more events with 1C students
Utilize social media to stay connected; Twitter hash tags, Facebook groups etc.
Create a time capsule from our time at Humber, to be opened in 5 years at a reunion party
Our Future Camp allowed us to create further smaller networks within our larger class network. We were divided into smaller groups based our professional interests and the public relations area we think we are most likely to practice in. There were seven main areas of focus including: Corporate, Agency, Media Relations, Arts, Non-profit/Not-for-profit and Public Affairs and Social Media.
Future Camp was a great way to finish our Social Media course and reinforced the importance of networks.
…and I will choose to answer the questions that best suit my key messages.
Talk Canada, as it is now, is an ineffectual use of social media. Social Media by definition is an interactive platform allowing participants to play an active role in the discussion. Unlike Talk Canada, there is no mediator in social media, no filter and most importantly no script.
Talk Canada is a youtube channel dedicated to “putting democracy in action.” It seems as though Harper is trying to take a page out of Obama’s social media campaign, by using new mediums to reach new audiences, like youtube. The government is clearly open to trying new and innovative methods to expand their viewership.
The 40 minute interview with Prime Minister Harper shows the limitedness of his ability to relinquish control. The interview was contrived. It is clear to anyone who watches it -even just 10 minutes of it - that the questions had been fielded and selected based on the Prime Ministers standard key messages. Every detail of the Talk Canada experience was controlled and planned, up to the smallest minute details, including set and costumes.
Check it out yourself:
Being the first Canadian party to embrace social media and use its expanding popularity to reach new audiences is a great opportunity for the Prime Minister's camp. Even if this first attempt wasn’t as successful, or widely praised as hoped, it definitely raises the bar for other political parties. This channel, if used properly, will allow the Prime Minister to communicate directly with voters.
Unfortunately the interview featured on Talk Canada was an example of two-way asymmetrical communication, although the questions vetted by the mediator were asked by citizens, they were obviously screened. Social media gives citizens a voice to express themselves in an unedited way that has never been experienced before in politics.
Politicians, like corporations, are being held more accountable for their actions and are forced to participate in the social media discussion. Used properly, social media could benefit governments greatly, allowing politicians to connect to voters and citizens.
The first tea party, the Boston Tea Party, was a protest against the British Government imposing the Tea Act. Now, 200 years later there is a new tea party being held in America.
Emerging in early 2009, the Tea Party Patriots have used social media, as well as other traditional media to mobilize Americans in the fight against taxation.
As David Brooks, New York Times columnist, explains in the Toronto Star’s article, Tea Party rattles America, the Tea Party is comprised mostly of members from the educated class.
To learn more about the Teat Party, check out Katie Couric’s @katiecoutic interview with the leaders:
There is a consensus that the Tea Party is a political wild card in the American system and there is a real possibility that it could become a third party. If only they could decide on a leader.
The Tea Party held the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville at the beginning of February. Sarah Palin, the favourite to unite this party was a keynote speaker. Her speech was highly criticized for her use of crib notes written on her hand.
Joy Behar and a panel discuss the controversial Q&A on CNN below:
Having a heavy social media based campaign has allowed citizens to voice their ideas and concerns in a way that has never been done. The Tea Party Patriots have a strong presence on Facebook, Twitter, Ning and Youtube, as well as a standard website.
We in Canada saw the outrage to Harper’s proroguing of Canadian Parliament on Facebook two months ago. Is social media the new political tool? How is a consensus to be reached using the social media platform? How is a leader chosen? How does a group move forward after gathering such a following? How can these groups unite and mobilize further to make significant change?
Innovative Web 2.0 applications and increased bandwidth have empowered the masses. Users are now able to congregate and share ideas and content online. As Deirdre Breakenridge explains in PR 2.0 A Communicator’s Manifesto, PR 2.0 puts the public back in public relations with the help of two-way communication.
But first a basic equation in Web 2.0: users + sharing content + credibility = mass awareness.
Agent of change and best selling author, Seth Godin believes there is a digital divide, which has placed people in one of two categories, the haves and the have nots. Or as Godin outlines in The New Digital, the digerati and the left behind. While the digerati are reading boing boing, the left behinds are still watching the Tonight Show.
Brian Solis of FutureWorks and co-author of Putting the Public back in Public Relations discusses the idea of web content being fully democratized in the video below. Solis believes that users, or the digerati, are the information and concept curators of the web, sharing the content with others who may be interested.
Watch Brain Solis’ full interview:
These curators or users develop online credibility through Tara Hunt’s concept of social capital. Hunt explains that social capital is the currency of the digital world in her book The Whuffie Factor. The book outlines how businesses can use social media to develop and maintain a strong customer base.
Web 2.0 has allowed those who have embraced it, the digerati to become online information curators, sharing content with their followers. Curators with a larger following have stronger social capital.
Here are a couple of examples of how broadband connectivity, or Web 2.0 has put the public back in public relations.
At a recent Third Tuesday event during the Q and A, Mitch Joel answered a question about online damage control. Joel uses a great example of how two-way communication can help a company improve its PR. When Bob Lutz was attacked online about GM’s environmental impact, it was members of his supportive online community that stepped in to defend him.
Watch Mitch Joel’s full answer:
The second example is the infamous twitpic of the napping transit worker. The photo went viral in a matter of hours and was covered widely in the media. This picture and the media backlash have forced the TTC to start a two-way conversation with its consumers.
These are not isolated incidences. United Breaks Guitar is another great example of how powerful the Web 2.0 platform can be.
Web 2.0 has given users a platform to congregate, share content and be heard. As Breakenridge explains PR 2.0 is the true convergence of PR and the Internet. The Web 2.0 platform has also shifted PR’s perspective or focus to the consumers who now have a strong voice. Technology now allows companies to speak directly to consumers, and allows the consumers to participate in two-way communication.
Captchas, those inescapable road blocks standing between you and a pair of front row tickets to your favourite band. You know the screen. The one that pops up with one or two distorted words, asking the user to prove that they do indeed have opposable thumbs and aren’t some robot intruder.
I’ve lost many a good seats because of captchas. What a nuisance! When one is as egocentric as most people are when buying tickets, they tend to only think of the nuisance of captchas in the moment and not the bigger picture. But when you think about how many people use the website to buy tickets or how many sites actually use captcha technology, the results are frightening.
It takes 10 seconds to solve a captcha and on average over 200 million captchas are solved a day. This translates to something like 400,000 or 500,000 hours a day wasted on captchas. Imagine what else humanity could accomplish if they put 400,000 hours into something productive?
Luis von Ahn, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and the creator of the captcha, asked himself the same question. Von Ahn, concerned with the amount of time wasted on captchas, a necessary evil in today’s tech-savvy world, decided the time should be used more productively. He created recaptcha, a technology that uses captchas to digitalize books.
Recaptchas essentially take photographs of books unable to be digitalized because of faded print or illegible fonts. The words photographed are used as the distorted words on the captcha screen. The users, you and I, type the words into the computer, digitalizing the books.
This is how recaptcha, is recaptcha-ing books digitally, making the books more accessible to the masses.
Classroom walls around the world are coming down as elementary and post-secondary schools across cities, countries and continents are connecting to create global classrooms; thanks in part to Jennifer Corriero and Michael Furdyk’s social media application, Taking It Global.
Taking It Global was created by the two Canadians in 1999 to bring awareness to youth through a collaborative learning community. The social media application provides youth with access to global opportunities, cross-cultural connections and meaningful participation in decision-making. The site offers educators a special networking tool, TIGed, which is a community connecting 17,755 students, 3,814 teachers, 1963 classes, 1762 schools in 95 countries. The TIGed community was designed to improve students’ critical thinking, leadership skills and global citizenship, hoping to inspire, inform and most importantly involve youth.
Students at Philadelphia's School of the Future talk about their TIGed experience:
Like the student’s in the video explain, TIGed enables them to connect with people from all corners of the world, exposing them to cultures, beliefs and issues that they may not find in their own communities. While these differences are highlighted, there are underlying similarities among youth around the world, which help students bond and relate to one another.
I believe that it’s programs like TIGed in schools that help fight the generalization and stereotype of youth apathy. In part because programs like this educate students, making them more conscious of the world around them and the responsibilty they have to be an active participant in the world. Through these programs students see that the voice of one person, when joined with others, really can make a difference.
For more information on Taking It Global and all of its various features, please visit my colleague’s blogs: Jacqueline Goldstine and Kaitlynn Dodge.
