Online Communities – Paradise Cove

Internet Lifestyle illustrated with people doing activity in futuristic virtual world.

An online community is a community that forms on the internet. An online community is a group of people interacting, sharing, and working toward a common goal and members interact via social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. They also share in forums, e-mail groups, and even in the comments sections of blog posts and news articles. An online community can also expand out into online community games like Call of Duty or Paradise Cove. Social Media Today have a very informative article on what an online community is. Its described as many things and Elliot Volkman, co-founder and writer for Social Media Today gives a very technical description online communities. He breaks it down into roles and how people participate in online community functions. I suppose from reading the article I used to be a free member on Paradise Cove and I swiftly moved to an active lurker the a contributor and eventually a paid member!

As a longstanding member of Paradise Cove, I talk to people about the same things I would in real life and as I would on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram but its more around a specific topic, product, to offer tips, or sometimes I act as a mentor for newer players. I believe people join online communities because people at home in the offline world don’t share similar passions. So they come online to talk at length with people similar to them who “get it.”

Some people see online communities as seedy internet forums. However they are no longer primitive or explicit forums where hobbyists discuss their crafts or strange interests. Marketing teams now target online communities on Facebook, YouTube and even the game I play, Paradise Cove.  Online communities are ideal for word-of-mouth marketing campaigns and we frequently discuss products and you feel the feedback and reviews you get from your friends on the online community are valid… and of course after you buy or try it… you still have to come back and continue playing online with these people. You can connect with Facebook friends on Paradise Cove also.

The game Paradise cove has been available on the iTunes store since 2012 and I started playing the game then. The objective of the game is to design, construct, upgrade and enhance the Island. For fast development in the game, you really are required to buy ‘rubies’ to upgrade your ships and pass special quests. It has taken me until this year to get to level I am on, without bowing to the pressure of buying rubies and I am now on lv 44.

The pressure to buy started in February 2015 when I had not played on Paradise Cove for about a month. I returned to my island to find that ‘Sweetstrawberryred’, ‘Gamer189’, ‘Dndos12’ etc had attacked my cove, looted the land, and scuttled my ships. I was devastated. It sparked an anger in me that led me to enter in my iTunes password and I bought a sack of rubies worth 10.99 in real money. It meant in my online community that I could instantly repair my ships, complete a few ‘special quests’, and get this, BUILD back up on my LEVELS. I was heartbroken.

The hardest thing by far to stop doing, was paying for rubies & they constantly have these ruby sales which gets you easily addicted!!I progressed so far in my group challenges with my paradise cove friends, an I enjoyed the rush of being leagues ahead. I was bumped down to level 37 while I had a month solstice from the game. Without buying rubies or items for quests, It would have taken me a few months to level back up. I leveled back up to lv 44 in a week.

The second hardest thing for me after my month away to work back, was the respect of my craft guild buddies and my quest friends along with my Island allies. I posted a post on one of my guild pages and asked a question about one of our tasks, and no one replied to me. I felt it was because of my level and my lack of contribution. I found myself writing an apology post to my Paradise Cove community buddies for being offline so much.

Screen Shots of my Island on Paradise Cove

Overall, as much as I complained about the cost of the game, I do believe when you are in full swing, playing the game, that there is great engagement and team work involved. I really enjoy playing Paradise CoveYouTuber Rosianna Halse Rojas, gave a TED talk in Brighton about engagement and involvement on online communities and  her argument though the course of the TED talk, is that while the internet is seen as a distraction, it also gives a chance for people who would be quite introverted or even how certain people who would have just different interests can engage in an online environment and communicate through the online community or game.

The importance of Online Media Tactics for Effective Political PR campaigns that will Influence Voters between the ages of 18-25

The importance of Online Media Tactics for Effective Political PR campaigns that will Influence Voters between the ages of 18-25

Introduction

Political Public Relations communicators need to create awareness of the party and its policies and manage the relationships and the messages that they want their parties to convey. For general elections and referendums in Ireland, TD’s and political parties predominantly use traditional means of political communications and their public relations and is generally carried out by face to face house campaigning. They also use leaflets that they put in post boxes and fix posters on poles around the country. Professional communicators need to realise that publics are not that interested in the political parties themselves but instead the message that they share. It is important that we realise that the public needs to have a visual and informative image of the political party and of their policy issues which help to influence the mind of the voter.

The target age bracket that will be focused on throughout the course of this report will be from 18-25. 120,000 voters in this age category are not registered in Ireland to vote and for the up coming referendum on same-sex marriage in May. It is that demo graph of people who are most likely to vote yes. September 2014, a Red C poll, commissioned by the NYCI, found that up to 30pc of 18-25 year olds were not listed on the electoral register. (Youth.ie, RED C Poll, 2014). RED C is the most frequently published and respected political pollster in Ireland. They publish political tracking polls for our key client The Sunday Business Post on a monthly basis, as well as conducting polls for other media sources, betting groups, political parties and candidates. (RED C Research, 2014)

With the frequency of people turning 18 in Ireland since, that statistic has a very probable possibility of being higher. This is a distinct age bracket where political parties can target effectively through use of online media along with the traditional PR tactics they currently use.

Statistics from (Digital Training Institute, 2014) show that 62% of the population aged 15 years and above are members of Facebook and just over two-thirds of these account holders use Facebook daily. With the shift to social media and online use, our political parties are falling well behind the times in terms of campaigning for support, engaging with their publics and delivering their messages. (The Journal, 2014)

Through research both primary and secondary, I have complied a summary of recommendations to show how political parties can effectively target this age bracket by using traditional & new media PR tactics. 

• A revamp of the current style of face to face canvassing to target 18-25 year olds is mandatory to re-engage with this lost target age bracket. Canvassing online can help improve the communications of a political candidates message if canvasing is provided online. 18-25 year olds are not interested in face to face canvassing and it really only works for older voters.

• By using targeted marketing on social media networks, Professional Communicators can effectively pursue un registered voters and explain to them why it is important to vote. If PR communicators fail to see this gap in their current style of communications, the figure of 120,000 unregistered voters will increase. (Personal Communication, Irish Political Communications Survey, 2015).

• Timing and scheduling online messages out on social media applications at high usage times will help disperse messages from professional communicators. Using applications like Hoot-suite will aid in this delivery as all the different social media platforms have different times and scales of usage (Digital Irish Consumer Report).

  

  

  
  

• Taking inspiration from UK and American political PR campaigns like Clinton’s digital campaign will show how effective that broadcast can be when targeting 18-25 year olds. Imparting a speech on Youtube, declaring the launch of her campaign of Twitter and her usage of Facebook, created a Media Blitz. YouTube videos can be shared freely on Facebook, Twitter, Google and other networks, and posted to blogs or websites. This might grow organic views to a level where paid ad placement isn’t needed. By harnessing your supporters, and encouraging them to share your video online, you have the ability to reach your electorate directly in their homes and on their mobile devices. 

• Youtube is also another online social media application that to date is unused by professional communicators. YouTube tutorials are increasingly popular, with 31% saying they view regularly. An issue was highlighted in the Personal Communications survey 2015 by comments left by participants. Some found it very difficult to register to vote as there was no accurate guide to follow & there was no way to apply online. Another recommendation I would have for PR communicators would be to create an online medium for people to be able to vote and to share it by targeted marketing through social media. The ease of access would greatly increase the amount of registered voters in Ireland. These new digital PR communication techniques were used recently by Hillary Clinton.

  In April 2015 she launched her political PR campaign via Social media. There was no press conference or media gathering and it was announced by one tweet and a Youtube video. The massive social media blitz sparked a huge response for Clinton and set her campaign off to a great start. The Americans have realized that social media has quickly become one of the most prominent ways for politicians to connect and engage with the public. Clinton and other candidates are now going beyond the ‘traditional’ channels of Facebook and Twitter, to others, such as Snapchat and Periscope, as they seek for broader ways to engage with voters. (The Journal, 2015)

• Measurement of the effectiveness of a Political PR campaign can be measured more effectively online. While there is no effective way of measuring the ROI of a poster campaign, there is with video – YouTube campaigns can also be tweaked within minutes ensuring you get the most out of the budget. Imagine being able to change where your poster appears at the click of a button, based off real-time data of how many people are looking at it where it is now. While there’s still a place for traditional forms of advertising, video commercials will be more effective in terms of being eco-friendly, cost efficient and in targeting a candidate’s electorate.

  Professional communicators can show results by adapting to online methods as they can gauge their measurement. Youtube videos will show how many views and also leave spaces for comments, which provides a facility where members of the public can respond back with comments. Video ads can be distributed through specific filters allowing refined audience targeting and video will attract 3 times more inbound links than posts with plain text. (Viddyad, 2014). Its important to deliver a message and give people the opportunity to communicate back. The public information model from Grunig and Hunts 4 models of communications, is currently the preferred method of communication for Political communicators. PR practitioners need to adjust to the two way symmetrical model and use two – way communication styles. This will enable professional political communicators to negotiate with publics, resolve conflict and promote mutual understanding and respect between the political party, member, representative or message to its publics. There is a high level of activism on social media and its users like to contribute. Grunig & Hunt, 1984).

Reference Section

Primary Research:

Online Survey 2015

1. Personal Communication, Irish Political Communications Survey, 2015, Results on request.

Secondary Research:

1. RED C Poll on Youth.ie: http://www.youth.ie/nyci/RedCNYCI-poll-30-young-people-aged-18-25-not-registered-vote
2. Digital Training Institute: http://www.digitaltraininginstitute.ie/social-media-trends-in-ireland-may-2014/
3. Red C Research: http://www.redcresearch.ie/polling#sthash.8WMjaVsz.dpuf
4. Video Blog: http://blog.viddyad.com/2014/04/28/case-study-irish-political-marketing/

Books Referenced:

1. Ronald D Smith, 2013.Strategic Planning fro Public Relations. Routledge.

2. Ellen Grunig, 2003. Public Relations a Practical Approach. Gil & Macmillan

Reports Referenced:

1. Shane O Leary, Irish Digital Consumer Report 2014

Target Marketing, Can be used for the greater good in the Cyber World.

To give you a little crash course is target marketing, il start with what its all about. Target Marketing is where a specific businesses, company or cooperation targets specific marketing material to a person to appeal to a persons likes or interests. My thoughts on target marketing are if they can target specific material at you in terms of your movie likes, food likes, general interests, then they can certainly use this means of target marketing to target our needs. By needs I mean what we require, what we need and what we want. For example, if someone was sick with a form of cancer and was receiving treatment, the targeted marketing they could receive could be remedies to reduce chemotherapy after effects of the treatment. If targeted marketing picked these factors up from your personal online profile and your digital footprint online, we could re vamp the way marketing worked for the greater good.

Targeted marketing currently seeks people by answering these questions as found on Bplans. Beside from a persons general health point of view, I looked at these target marketing questions and give them a slight twist.

• What is their gender?  – Gender is important because yes, even today we are defined by what we do if we are a man or a woman. Talking from a person in a heath perspective, there are a number of sicknesses that can be diagnosed to only men and not women or visa versa.
• How old are they? – The more specific your age the more you can be targeted. For example, you and your mother might both share an interest in shoes but your interests lie more in what boohoo.com can offer, not whats in Marks and Spencer’s. Your age is an important factor in determining treatments for sicknesses. For example, certain medications or treatments are not recommended under or over a certain age.
• What are their interests or hobbies? Finding out what people are into will help you connect with them. Engagement is important when your trying to appeal to someones specific needs. If a person for example shares a particular interest in ceramics because they find it therapeutic to alleviate the stress of their lives and anxiety of their jobs, they could have targeted marketing around specific engaging topics on there hobby or interest rather than pushing items for sale.
• Where do they live? Is what your promoting suited to a more selected geographical style of marketing?Geography is sort of a limiting factor for items or products that the cyber world advertises to us? Are they able to get to you easily? Is there plenty of parking? Public transportation? Can you deliver? Is it available to buy for the market I am targeting? These are very important aspects and questions to consider when targeting an audience for specified marketing.
• How do they make a living? Knowing what your primary target markets employment status can help you adjust your marketing hours to fit their needs, or help you devise special offers in line with their work patterns.
• How much money do they make? Depending on what your market can afford, you can push treatments, medication and services that they need that meet their budget.
• Do they own their own homes or do they rent? Depending on the answer and what you sell, you may need to tweak your messaging to resonate with your audience.

I can see targeted marketing being so much more specific to a persons needs in 20 years time. I would love to see a world where if a person was struggling in pain from a condition, with little or no money or time to seek treatment, had a facility online where targeted marketing would aid and help.

“Brand is what others say about you when you leave the room.” – Daryl D’Souza at Tedx

Daryl talks about his own personal experience with his brands creation and the importance of marketing via social media. From a PR perspective, using target marketing effectivly to the point where you can alter and improve a persons health would benefit both the customer and the company. It all roots back to the old phrase: One person will tell another person about a good experience and one person will tell many about a bad experience. If someone was able to gain a better incite to their own personal health, and find ways to help or make better, a situation (health or other) that their in through targeted marketing via online mediums, why are we not doing it already?? Target marketing is already used to enhance companies product sales, why not use it to help people with out a personal monetary value on its head? We have the marketing tools already there to be able to help people.

Pretty Little Cyberbully

I have been watching Pretty Little Liars for the last 5 series and I cannot wait until the 6th. There are extremely large quantities of the online kind of bullying on the show. From video leaks to phone hacking to network hacking. This A character really is a very well versed and highly skilled cyberbully. A has a layer kitted out with all the hacking tools you need to spy, pry and alter the lives of any teenage girl. Should you not be worried that there is a show like this on TV showing people all of this information? Could people learn from it? While Pretty Little Liars has great story lines, there not quite with it with fact. For instance, when ‘hacking’ CCVT footage, a charachter in the show will simply say, ‘if I enhance the image’ & have a clear representaion of that image in 2.3 seconds. After investigating there is not a program yet invented or in process at the moment that will give you that high definition in 2.3 seconds. However, there are alot of youtube tutorials I was able to find! For example:

Only recently have we been able to narrow down who A is after 5 seasons. A left a non existent digital footprint to delete all its evidence of bullying and blackmail to the stars of the show. The show gives a new twist to the hellish high school/secondary school drama you can experience. I think a show like this can actually aid to helping people rather than give people ideas.

ABC ran a “Delete Digital Drama” event in aid of Cyberbulling awairness in the USA.

Emily Osment, lead actress of ‘Cyberbully’, an ABC origional movie said she: ‘ wanted to do it immediately. But it was really the Delete Digital Drama campaign that was planned to run with the film that put it over the top for me. I knew I would not only be feeding my creative hunger, but doing a good thing and spreading the word about a worthy cause.’
The interview article on the Huffington Post from 2011 gives you an idea of what an actress experienced during 11 months of filming, living the live of a cyber victim. During the build up to the movies release for the ‘ Delete Digital Drama campaign, Shay Mitchell, otherwise known as ‘Emily’ on PLL commented on encouraging people to speak up about cyber bullying because no one should have to deal with being hurt by others and ‘not to keep it inside’. This video clip at 1.30 seconds the interviewer starts to ask Shay about her opinions on cyberbullying and her comments after playing a character on the show who is cyberbullied.

I think that nowadays, people all around need to be prepared for the types of attacks they can be vulnerable to. I think shows like PLL and a Movie can be effective in informing others and helping them cope and giving them ideas in which they can seek help. Cyberbuling is serious and can lead to serious mental health Issues. Google have a host of cyber videos for awareness building of cyberbullying on youtube.

The Celebrity Hacking Trend – Plain Cyberbulling or Clever Publicity Stunts?

Celebrities do suffer from their fame. There are no shortage of stories about celebrities accounts being hacked online or their phones being stolen and hacked. They need to deal with sex tape leaks, nude photo leaks, other indecent photo leaks, damaging recordings etc.

A celebrity sex tape is typically an amateur pornographic video recording involving one or more celebrities which has, intentionally or unintentionally, been made available publicly. Such video tapes are often released without the consent of their subjects, and could potentially damage celebrities’ careers. In 1988, a sex tape caused significant damage to Rob Lowe‘s career.

Kim Kardashian West was victim to a sex tape leak in 2007 when her former boyfriend Ray J sold it and shared it online. However later that year was when Keeping Up With The Kardashians debuted on our screens. The reality TV star was as glorified socialite before the release of her tape and it made her family show on E as popular as it was.  

Paris Hilton suffered a leak around the same time as the Simple Life debuted. Socialite Paris Hilton has had to develop a thick skin over the years. You might recall that the 1st sex tape leaked of her was when she was a teen. She filmed a sex tape with her then-boyfriend, Rick Salomon, which went viral back in 2004. She later sued him for leaking it and has always denied rumors that she’d consented to the leak in order to gain publicity for her reality TV show. “people want to be mean, that’s their problem. It used to be really hurtful. I would call and cry to my mom all the time but now I just laugh.” – Paris Hilton.

Now don’t confuse me. I’m not saying that these celebrities have actually planned their hack. I actually genuinly feel sorry for these celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence. On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, and with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur, Reddit and Tumblr. The images were believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple’s cloud services suite iCloud. Apple later confirmed that the hackers responsible for the leak had obtained the images using a “very targeted attack” on account information, such as passwords, rather than any specific security vulnerability in the iCloud service itself.

This event, trended on twitter using  #Celebgate” and #TheFappening“. A lot of people criticized the authenticity of the images, others felt that the distribution was a major privacy invasion. Worldwide however, the main concern was how safe iCloud computing actually was. Sara Angeles, staff writer from the Business news daily outlines 8 reasons why businesses should be petrified about using the cloud. As if Jason Segel & Cameron Diaz hadn’t scared us enough!!!

Cyberattacks should be people’s main problem with the cloud. Anyone anywhere can hack anything that is stored anywhere on the internet. Angeles also points out legal liability and government intrusion along with 5 other very crucial pit falls of the cloud. The Cloud does have its vulnerabilities, so how about phone hacking??

Phone hacking to me feels more invasive. With how too guides sprawled around the internet, everybody can act like John Reese, from Person of Interest.. hmmmmm.

In the show, they target and bug people by being in a close enough vicinity and engaging in using a hacking programme. Once successfully hacked they can listen to voice mails, read messages, listen to phone conversations and edit and recieve your texts.

I have looked at celeb photo hacking, and leaking. iCould sharing and oversharing. Video tapes and viral video leaks and phone hacking. These are only but a few means that people use to divuldge more information/money/pain/suffering out of their subjects of interest.

Print Media to Online Media

Print media will never be completely replaced in favour of online media. While cyber cultures, online media and social media usage are on a constant rise and will continue to rise, there will still be a strong value held in print Media.

As you all probably know, Johannes Gutenberg invented a mechanical moveable type printing  which started the Printing Revolution and was widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period. The revert to online media is another revolution that will work along side and in conjunction with the print media.

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Print media will always have advantages over its online counterpart and visa versa. Forbes outlines 7 reasons why print media will not stop in favour of print media. They are tangibility, credibility, branding, target marketing, engagement, less print adverts and QR codes. I have listed out my thoughts on each reason they proposed.

1. Tangibility – Print is physical and can last and reside in houses, stores, or offices until they are discarded by you. Internet posts, adverts, articles can disappear into cyber space with a click of a button with out your control. But this is based on a person not discarding it and throwing it away or misplacing it. It is possible that you could hold a higher advantage of online news as it could remain online for years and you can always print from online.
2. Credibility – People can see printed sources as a more legit pice of information rather than what they read on the internet. With pop ups, spam mail, spam adverts and viruses that can be accidentally clicked on & downloaded while browsing on the internet, people will always be safer with a print source as there is no imminent danger in a print version. Saying that though, people now prefer hearing more than one version of a story or article and use online means to do this. Less and fewer people buy different types of papers to compare the same story.
3. Branding – creating an aesthetic awareness of your brand, Forbes say is stronger in a physical seance. I agree as a graphic designer, but it does not mean that you can’t create a visually appealing version for online purposes that can be shared among the vastly growing social media population.
4. Target Marketing – Forbes say that you can place adverts in speciality magazines, newspapers, newsletters that will relate and appeal to a specific target market that can be harder to appeal to online. I disagree as most print outlets now have an online sources where the same strategy can apply and with data analytics and you can target specific groups online too.
5. More Engaging – Forbes say that print media is more engaging and Iagree to a certain extent. People only spend roughly 5-15 seconds skimming online articles and engage less than what they would reading a printed article. A study shows that people read digital screen text 20% – 30% slower than printed paper. (Alshaali & Varshney, 2005). However I do think its important to remember that Articles in a print publication are limited in the type of assets they can incorporate. For example, print media can only include a photo (and the inclusion of a photo is usually dependent on space) and occasionally QR codes, aside from text. With online features, you have ability to share other assets you have created, such as slide shows and videos, making your client and their product or service that much more attractive to potential consumers.
6. Less Print Ads – As more and more businesses are turning to online advertising, publications are now less crowded on print media and it can essentially strengthen your print advert and some newspaper editors and magazine editors now charge less for advertising space. From experience this is not common to all media print outlets, some actually charge more for space as there not getting the same volume of business.
7. QR Codes – QR codes have bridged the gap between print and online media. A QR code can make the way you read your print media interactive, which gives you the best of both worlds. It does bridge the gap Forbes, but its doesn’t completely fill the void. In 10 years time the majority of online content will be video.

While I believe one will never completely rule out the other, print media will suffer scale wise within the next 20 years and we will see a shift to small-scale distributions of papers, and magazines. Promotions media will always remain, but there will also be a majority shift towards online.

For campaigns, events, PR, Design ETC, the medium you use will be heavily reliant on your target market. The Social Media Examiner have listed the Future trends of Social Media. Blastmedia have listed out the benefits of using online media which is worth a read as they give a different perspective than that of Forbes.

Our society has gone through a weird, unremarked transition: we’ve gone from regarding the Net as something exotic to something that we take for granted as a utilitarian necessity, like mains electricity or running water.

I came accross a TED conversation ‘Is there a future left for Print media?’ by Naomi Zuiverloon. Her conversation provoked many interesting responses which are interesting to read and consider. If you have the time, their is a series of 12 Talkds about  Our Digital lives on TED. The two I thought were most interesting were Johanna Blakley on Social media and the end of gender and Clay Shirky on How cognitive surplus will change the world.

Journeyman Pictures created this 8 min snippet of a film about print media vs online media. The full film is available to rent on their website.

As always, thank you for reading my blog but for now ….

#Selfie

The Selfie cyber culture today are concerned with their online presence, appearance, reactions from followers and their results. When you post a photo of yourself on the internet to be looked at by your peers or people you may not know, when you get a like your ‘up’ but when you get no likes your ‘down’. There is also the danger that your self-esteem may start to be related and tied to how many likes or comments you receive once you post a selfie. Lauren McMahon, writes about our selfie obsessed generation on TheCircular.

I have taken selfies, but really not to extent that some people do. We all have our Facebook, twitter, Instagram or Snapchat friends that really love sharing their ‘staged’ mug. What prompted me to write this blog was a recent grocery shop I was on. While shopping in Lidl I saw a girl by the fruit section taking a selfie of herself and a banana. She obviously wasn’t happy with the first result because she went on to take a few others from different angles. Then, there was issues with the filters she was using so, she rang someone who helped her through the dilemma. It was a tough call, but they decided that ether ‘Perpetua’ or ‘Hudson’ would be just fine. These are filters on Instagram for those of you who don’t know that can distort the colours of the picture you take. I waisted about 6-7 mins of my life watching her, but she saw it as she devoted 6-7 mins to maintain her online image and presence.

Selfie accessories…

selfie buttons

standered selfie stick

iPhone camera trigger

zuckerberg selfie stick

selfie brush

timer capture

We are even accommodating the selfie culture by creating selfie accessories. Now I would have thought that you need 1- yourself and 2 –  a camera, but NO. The selfie enthusiast will come complete with a bank of accessories. Such as, The Selfie stick which to be honest I can see the benefits of it. Like, if you were taking a group picture and you want to be in it, its amazing. Whip out the stick, pop your phone on, time the shot, DONE. Everyone’s happy. This stops you from asking a stranger around you to take the picture, and you don’t have to worry about your phone/camera being broken by another, who’s only trying to help or being stolen by that person! (because it has happened!!) You also don’t need to use a tripod, you don’t shake your hand as much with a selfie stick and there is much less of a chance of dropping your phone with the selfie sticks. Phonearena.com surprised me. The only selfie accessory to date that  I was aware of was the selfie stick, but there’s more. They have composed a list of the 5 most useful selfie taking accessories for the selfie-obsessives. Read about them, quite interesting really. One does not simply just take a selfie.

I personally thought that the HISY button was clever as I use a similar device for photo shoots as a photographer. It’s almost like the amature’s progression button towards professional techniques. HISY aims to help you take a selfie with an iPhone more easily. It’s a simple button that connects to the phone via low-energy Bluetooth, and takes control of the built-in shutter camera. HISY’s battery lasts for two years if you take 100 photos daily, which means the little’o button will last for a while. And when it expires, you can replace it with a plain CR2032 cell straight out of your local electronics shop. Of course, the gizmo can be used not just for selfies, but for all kinds of photographs too, even video. HISY doesn’t need a special app to run, it connects directly to the iPhone’s camera app, and can only be used with iPhones ISO7 or newer. Unlucky for the Android selfieists.

As much benefits as there are for using the selfie stick, there are a few cons too….

Museums, concerts, stores and some clubs are now banning the use of these sticks as there seen as a hazard and disturbance. In early March, two American tourists were arrested after they carved their names into a wall at Rome’s Colosseum and then the pair took a photo using a selfie stick. (true story). Rebecca Strong, Staff writer for Bostinno, has written an interesting article about our selfie obsessions and writes about it as an addiction. Can you actually develop a selfie addiction. When I thought about this, the answer I came up with was, Yes. Like any other addiction, it would come down to your personality and how influenced you can be as a person by trends, fads, peer pressure and whats fashionable.

In 2014 Ellen DeGeneres broke the Internet & beat Obama with most retweeted tweet with the Oscars Selfie with a Samsung on stage, but later switched to an iPhone backstage, which makes me ask the question, what is the selfie enthusiastic’s phone of choice for #Selfie. Bostinno have actually gone the extra mile and have listed features of the most popular selfie phones and also have taken the same picture with each phone to show you the difference in quality.

Few Facts Of the Origins of the word Selfie:

In November 2013, the word “selfie” was announced as being the “word of the year” by the Oxford English Dictionary, which gave the word itself an Australian origin. A “selfie” is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: ”a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smart phone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” The example they use is super-helpful because it also contains some etiquette advice: “Occasional selfies are acceptable, but posting a new picture of yourself every day isn’t necessary.” (hint, hint). Also The word Selfie, was coined by a drunk Australian in 2002. On January 28th 2014 The Chainsmoker’s released a song called #Selfie. It took the world by storm and verified the selfie culture as we know it. Bustle is a good website with great articles and facts on selfie origins.

Some people take the selfie obsession to far (Girl with the Banana in Lidl) or even the Cellfy Stic (which is now mainly used for bathroom selfies)… WHY??? -> others are just jumping along on the trend band waggon as am I. Selfies are fun, rather than living in the moment and remembering it from memories, you can take the memories while living in the moment.

So Until the next blog post,

The Web Changes News – And PR – Forever

Introduction

Since the beginning of time humans have engaged in different forms of communication and its the medium of communication that we use, has changed. We started with gestures and developed verbal communication and then we learned to write. We have communicated the same way every time, the sender sends the information through a medium to the receiver. Within the last few years with the developments in digital communication, the medium for delivering news has shifted from printed news to online news. This has brought a major transformation in news paper sales firstly and it has drastically changed the way public relations management is controlled. People now have come to expect that along with an old media approach, that their will also be a new media approach. Many people would be of the opinion that the old style media, for example, a press release to a newspaper company for publication via print is dated. While I would agree some what with this, being a digital native myself, I still would firmly believe that we as PR practitioners should never rule it out completely because there is still a reliance on these means of communication to a certain demograph of people.

How ‘new’ media differs from ‘old’ media

The Internet in recent years has brought a revolution in how we communicate, which has summoned a transformation in how Public Relations is practiced. Before there was a heavy reliance in the print media press release and now we are seeing a steady shift to online press releases. With a rapid change in technology and digitisation, it initiated a shift where people are now currently moving away from printed text to digital text for news, learning and communication. PR practitioners now need to adapt their skill sets to be more relatable to the shift in the newer digital trends. Rupert Murdock in 2005 addressed the American Society of News Paper editors in Washington DC and tried to convince people, that the ‘traditional’ media, or as we know it now, ‘old’ media, is changing as people are now using different means of gathering news. (Guardian, 2005) 

“We need to realise that the next generation of people accessing news and information, whether from newspapers or any other source, have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from”.

When Murdock put his voice forward in 2005, he was initially laughed at by his peers. Now 10 years later, the print media has succumbed to the demand for online news. Every paper available in shop shelves now have an online version for free or you can avail of a subscription online. People don’t just want to rely on one source of information when they are looking at the news. A lot of this could be due to the cynical nature of people nowadays, but is also to do with the fact that people want more opinions and versions of the same story, particularly if its of interest.

“What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel’ – (Rupert Murdock, 2005)

Carnegie carried out a report on how there is a definite migration of old media to new media between the ages of 18-34 on how people access news. The dramatic shift in how young people access the news raises a question about how the scale and the flow of information will interact in the years ahead. (Carnegie 2015) The report showed that in 2005, there were already trends to show where old media news was headed. By using internet portal sites, our phones, tablets, we are now able to source news other way than just print news papers. We can access, blogs, forums, news websites and social media. Each of these devices and functions have challenged the way we access information and process it. It challenges the way traditional media and its historic function and puts to question where traditional news media will be in the future. It’s also posed a challenge to who produces new. Citizen journalism, blogging sites are changing the nature of how we as PR practitioners manage our clients reputation and because of this, we are now using these tools too, to come before possible issues online.

The paradox between how new media is now used rather than the old types of media, is that, it was the digital immigrants who invented these technologies, but its the digital natives, who don’t see restrictions with new media uses are developing the mediums in which we view media. People born from the early 2000 on are described as the digital natives and the generation before are the digital immigrants.

Jeff De Graff, author and journalist for the Huffington post describes digital natives as Free agents:

‘ They view the world horizontally, in equalitarian terms. Rather than dividing the world into hierarchies, they see everyone as existing on an equal level. They embrace the benefits of sharing things and ideas with each other and, in doing so, they cross boundaries. They are driven by values. For this reason, many of them are distrustful of traditional cultural and social institutions: marriage, religion, government. In opting out of these institutions, they have declared themselves micro segments of one — free agents.’

In 2005 when Murdock addressed the American Society of News Paper editors, he received an aggressive response. Digital natives imagine a world with minimal institutional structure and are more open to diversity in cultures and backgrounds. PR practitioners who are still learning new technologies have an advantage now where they can learn from the digital natives and keep up with the new trends in PR and their clients reputation.

It is the opinion of Alyshia Kisor-Madlem, blogger and journalist, that it really comes down to numbers when you think about how the web has changed news today. For example, the traditional print media for the New York Times has a circulation of 2 million copies, while the online version has over 15 million visitors a month. (Blastmedia, 2012) .

I believe that while printed or old media still remains important and will do for at least the next 10 years, newspaper companies should be preparing for and gearing towards having a smaller printing demo graph and working on their online presence and persona. PR partitioners currently depend on old media trends like newspapers and radio to manage their clients retains with the mass public, but they also now have to include digital and social marketing services. Renatta Murphy, the managing director of Cameo Communications in Cork, Ireland, has been quoted saying that ‘If for example, if The Examiner in Cork, stopped or shut down, it would affect all Cork PR Practitioners work. It would make Clients divert their business to a part of the country where their was a large-scale news print’. (PR talk, 24.03.2015) I believe that currently, today businesses should and still do hold a lot of value in the old styles of media, but for a PR partitioner, it does depend on who you’re representing and what they need you for. Roderick Udo, event manager for Appelpop festival also said during his presentation for The Art of The event seminar in 2015, that while there is now a heavy reliance on social media to promote and inform members of the public events, you should never underestimate the power of traditional media like the press releases, articles in magazines and news papers as the target market will always have access to these forms of media. I do believe that it had added to the PR practitioners job, but I believe it has enhanced it. You can reach all types of audiences with editorials online and also with physical print copies from media sources.

Conor Barron, the digital Marketing executive for Bord Gais Energy, wanted to promote the Bord Gais energy Theater to a younger audience, and the vast majority of this PR awareness campaign was mainly promoted by new media means like the use of twitter, hashtags and google + hangout to appeal to the target market it was trying to reach. (The Art of The event seminar, 2015). The type of media predominantly used for this campaign was new media, if this campaign was carried out by traditional means of media, it would not have carried over the same effect as it simply would not have reached the necessary target market.

The impact of the web on traditional mass media

It used to be the case that with ‘old’ media, almost everybody in your locality would get their news from a few select newspapers, radio stations or television channels, and so we as PR practitioners knew which channels to use to reach the general public. The PR profession had mastered communicating through traditional media but the emergence of the web meant the tools and tactics we used to reach our publics had to be developed quickly or we would be left behind.

New media and communication technologies have had a noticeable impact on public relations, in particular how organisations are able to communicate with their multiple publics. A multitude of studies have examined the phenomenon of social media, and its impact on different types of organisations. (PRSA,2014).

Statistics from pew-internet show Demographics of Key Social Networking Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Linked’In. With multi platform use of social media, which is regarded as new media, on the rise, it’s now more important than ever for PR practitioners to adapt to using new media as well as the old media styles. Pew surveys showed that 52% of online adults now use two or more social media sites which is a significant increase from 2013 when it stood at 42%. It also showed that more than half of all online adults 65 and older (56%) use Facebook. This statistic represents 31% of all seniors that took part in the survey. Another statistic to take from their survey is that roughly half of the internet using young adults from the age of 18-29 use instagram and 49% of Instagram users use it daily.

Dustin W Supa, performed a qualitative and insightful study of how social media, otherwise known as new media, has impacted the PR practitioners job. The responses he received from interviewing 34 practitioners showed that many practitioners found that it gave them an advantageous approach to PR and carrying out their jobs and also found it easier to find out information on journalists. They also stated that their relationships with journalists have become more personal. The question asked, that provoked such a strong response was: “What impact has social media had on the media relations function of public relations?”(PRSA, 2014)

One practitioner responded:

“Definitely…it’s an opportunity to talk with reporters and establish a relationship in a less formal way. You can talk with them about anything from the weather, to a mutual favorite sport to the industry they cover. You can show them love by retweeting an article they wrote. Some reporters even tweet media opportunities that you can respond to right then and there…Overall, social media helps you see what kind of person a reporter is. It humanizes them, which in my opinion, makes it easier to talk with them when it comes to client work.”

The nature of new media also impacts news and how we consume it. Johanna Blakley gave a ted talk on how we are targeted by media and marketers and an interesting point I took from the video was that from their research carried out, it was females that are predominately social media networkers,  that use new media interfaces. Media companies believe that if you fall within certain categories that you are predictable in certain ways. Online media has also shifted the way that we are now demo graphed by media companies and we are much more refined as individuals now because of this. Traditional media demographics have changed. The TED talk is roughly 8 minutes long and below the video I took a few screen grabs of statics and their times on the video.

Reference Section:

• http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/apr/14/citynews.newmedia – Date accessed 15/03/2015
• http://carnegie.org/publications/carnegie-reporter/single/view/article/item/124/ – Date accessed 18/03/2015
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-degraff/digital-natives-vs-digita_b_5499606.html – Date accessed 22/03/2015
• http://blastmedia.com/2012/11/06/online-vs-print-media/ – Date accessed – 22/03/2015
• http://www.prsa.org/intelligence/prjournal/documents/2014supa.pdf – Date accessed 22/03/2015
• http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Vol8/No2/ – Date accessed 22/03/2015
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR4LdnFGzPk – Date accessed 25/03/2015
• http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_social_media_and_the_end_of_gender?language=en – Date accessed 25/03/2015
• http://blog.iain-tulungagung.ac.id/chusnulchotimah/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2013/11/Global-Purel.pdf
• http://www.academia.edu/3245711/Time_to_bridge_the_gaps_issues_with_current_social_media_research_in_public_relations – Date accessed 25/03/2015

Cybercrime, Get Ready!

Its becoming harder to protect what you put out online, than your physical belongings at home.

Recently, a friend of mine was burgled. Her house was broken into while she was at work and a lot of expensive things were stolen. Her smart TV, Macbook Pro, iPad Air, the list goes on. However the robbers didn’t take the expensive granite top pool table, smart microwave(it talks to you, I kid you not), a orthopeadic massage chair or a load of other quite expensive valuables. She was very worried about her TV, Macbook and iPad Air, but it did occur to me, it would have been far easier to take some of the other items, I mean the TV was hard enough to mount on the wall (i was there), but taking it down, in one piece, must have been quite difficult. All the stolen instruments that were stolen, were connected together with the same iCould account and her iCould key chain stored all her email logins and her PayPal details. The detectives on site suggested to my distraught friend that it seems it was a cyber crime. My friend at the time snapped back and said she wasn’t “Hacked”, but burgled.

The detectives advised then that she had an awful lot of other valuables that would have held a better market price to sell off again. They said that the guys who robbed her, robbed only those items(the ones I listed above). He asked her what they all had in common, and she said her iCloud account. PANIC PANIC. Cybercrime can happen online, but it can also happen in the real world. Cyber crime apparently cost the Irish government 630 million euros in 2014. Read more about Irish cyber crime statistics in this article.

She did what she could to change as many passwords and wiped what she could from these devises, but really, had the damage already been done?? I mean she had left for work at 730am and was home at 6pm to find that certain items had been stolen. Had the burglars taken the information they needed from her, before she tackled what she could?? There was no way of telling. It got us into a very interesting conversation though. Even 5-10 years ago, if you were robbed, you were robbed. You didn’t necessarily panic at the thought of your couch, tv, desktop Gateway(computer) or your Dell’asourous box(computer) being lifted. You felt hurt, upset, invaded, insecure. You may have even felt a sigh of relief as the Computer you used, you didn’t know how to use it anyway to save such personal details of you on it!

Anyway to recap, we wiped her iCloud account from all stolen devises(obviously after we tried find my iDevises, FYI, NOTHING), took it to her savvy technician friend to remote wipe key chains, and she was advised to wait. She also had to contact her employer to let them know, as she would have had work projects on these devises that would not really have been for public knowledge. There is actually no way to hive yourself piece of mind in the case of this.

About 2 weeks after the burglary, she was contacted by AIB, her banking branch to let her know that in Dublin somewhere, (well I know where, but I can’t tell you) to advise her that there was a series of unusual transactions taking place together. My friend was putting diesel into her car on her way to work & at the same time someone was using it in Dublin & spending pretty flamboyantly. She verified immediately this was not her spending in Dublin and to cancel all transactions and her bank account.

Long story short, they burglars were found, as were a lot of her stuff, and from her key chain details saving her bank details, they had made A LOT of copies of the same card using a card copying machine.

Cybercrime will be a huge issue by 2020. If we don’t wake up and prepare, we will be sitting ducks for hackers, crackers and burglars all around. These burglars were not your usual run of the mill, steel and shift on goods sort, they were the type to see what had value and inside value that would give them more financial knowledge. Go-Gulf is a website that hosts a series of blogs on different topics. It’s an American website so the statistics will represent the american economy, but to be fair we are never too far behind. The blog post that particularly caught my eye was about the rate at which cybersecurity rates will rise and cost by 2017.

This TED talk features speaker James Lyne.He talks about cyber crimes that happen every day, and what we can do to prevent them or stop them completely.

“James Lyne reminds us that it’s not only the NSA that’s watching us, but ever-more-sophisticated cybercriminals, who exploit both weak code and trusting human nature.” – TEDTalks

Hackers and Crackers

Hackers…..

Hackers modify & add code – so when the code they edit changes, it does something entirely different than what it did before. Many people ‘hack’ their own systems to alter or change how their systems work, or hire hackers to do if for them.

Anonymous are a group of hackers you may know already. Most recently, Anonymous released a video and a statement via twitter condemning the attack on Charlie Hebdo, where 12 people including 8 journalists, were murdered.

The video messages they posted had a powerful announcement from Anonymous:

“We, Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you, the terrorists” and promises to avenge the killings by shutting down your accounts on all social networks.”

On January 12, they brought down one of the Jihadists’ websites. However, critics of the action warned that taking down extremists’ websites would make them harder to monitor.

Wednesday the 5th of March, technology giants Apple and Google announced that a ‘Freak Attack’ left millions of users vulnerable to hackers, which they are working hard at the moment to fix. Software makers use US software makers to use weaker security in encryption programs sold overseas due to the USA’s national security concerns. Read the article on The Guardian website for more information about this potentially massive problem. Site’s like Groupon, Khol and American Express were affected and vulnerable since Tuesday the 4th of March 2015.

Dan Goodin, security editor at Ars Technica writes about the dangers of this ‘Freak Attack‘ and what it means for us and our privacy.

Crackers….. 

A cracker is seen as the more malicious of the two. Crackers break into someone else’s computer system or network. They intentionally bypass passwords, licences and computers and breach security. Obviously, the activities of most Crackers are considered illegal. This website gives an informative account of crackers and what they do that s illegal if you want to know more about Crackers. Fear not, you can protect yourself against being cracked or being hacked by following a few simple steps. It may not protect you fully, but it will at least make it hard for them!!!