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

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.

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!!!

 

Online Identity

Your Online profile Digital Identity is a term used to describe the persona of an individual which presents across all the online communities that you’re a member of. When we use sites or services like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Ebay, Google or LinkedIn, we leave a ‘digital footprint‘. Every photo you share, posts you make, items you search/buy, tweets you twurp or email sent, you leave a footprint. The footprints you make are used to generate your online persona and silently build an online profile of you. There are many websites that are starting to do this with striking degrees of accuracy. This information that is collected can be used to target you for marketing purposes, data collection, profile building, profile scanning, DNA data collecting, analysis & observation. I, like most of you would have assumed, the trails we leave are just for marketing. However, now that I am really thinking about what could very likely will be its other uses, its easy to see how our online information can be miss used. The black-market of the future will sell real lives or invented identity for a costly fee. People in the future wanting to start over and become someone else will have the ability to do so. I believe that society as we see it now, will in 30-40 years time, be drastically different. Picture a futuristic world where entry to buildings is based on an intelligence system that analyses your human presence & matches it ti its online data on you in a matter of seconds. The online data footprints we leave are all tracked, monitored & recorded. From now I recommend you to be careful what you share. Sites like specify, intel, pipl or even a quick google search will show what information about you is accessible to the public.

Every movement we make online its tracked so the image above as an imaginative visual of you.  Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt said: Online Developments in Anonymity. However anonymous you think you are online, even by creating a pseudonym, you can be ID’d. Andrew Lewman, The executive director of the Tor Project plans to re-anonymise the web. The Tor software confuses a users web traffic by bouncing the signal to different locations, so anyone that is watching is unable to trace who you are or where you are. Lewman spoke about how important our identity online is: “The ability to be anonymous is increasingly important because it gives people control, it lets them be creative, it lets them figure out their identity and explore what they want to do, or to research topics that aren’t necessarily ‘them’ and may not want tied to their real name for perpetuity,” Aleks Krotoski, has been writing about interactivity since 1999. She has a PhD in the social psychology of relationships in online communities. She also writes articles feature pieces and opinion pieces. While browsing, I came across an article she wrote on Online Identity: Is authenticity or anonymity more important?? The article is well worth a read as she questions and quotes high authority figures in the interactive world. How To Be ‘Identity Savvy’ online & to watch what footprints you leave Statistics from CNN show that Identity Fraud is on the rise and growing since 2010 where the figure rose from 10.2 million to 13.1 million in 2013. I have formed a few useful steps in how you can protect your identity online & use online applications wisely. We don’t need to live like hermits in tinfoil, but having a degree of awareness helps.

• Use strong passwords and do not share them with anyone. A random combination of numbers, letters and punctuation over eight characters long is recommended. Do not repeat a password that is used for other accounts. If one password is leaked, at least your other passwords are different.
• Check your billing and account records carefully to detect potential identity theft early. Online banking updates almost immediately. When logging in to your online banking system, ensure that you have complete privacy.
• If your signing up to newsgroups, offers, mailing lists, use your less frequently used email address. Be careful when signing up to mailing lists – spammers use the unsubscribe button to validate addresses.
• Only share your primary email address with people you know.
• Only make online purchases from companies that have a clear privacy policy and secure payment pages. There usually obvious to spot, Paypal for instance, have a specific size, and locations on websites they appear. Using Paypal is usually a safer alternative to using your bank card details online.
• Think before you fill out online forms. Ask yourself, how much information do I need to enter into this site?
• Keep a record of what information you have given to whom.
• Be careful how much personal information you post or reveal online.
• Users who share addresses, telephone numbers, birthdays, and other personal information put themselves at a greater risk of identity theft, stalking and harassment. This includes information you post on social media.

• If you use social networking sites, adjust your privacy settings to control the amount and type of information you want to share, so that people you don’t know very well can only see certain parts of your profile.
• We all have fun on social media, checking in, taking pictures of what we are doing and sharing them, but be careful how often you do this. Out and about statuses let people know your not at home. Take this lollipop!
• Think about what information you may have online that is spread across multiple sites. Identity thieves can piece together your identity from public information piece by piece like putting together a puzzle. The footprints we leave can not be washed away.

Mario Rodriguez who is a faculty member of Communications and Media Studies Department at Stetson University gave a TED talk the 12th of April 2013 on Facebook Privacy & Identity – Exploring your digital self. He studied Facebook privacy for his dissertation and compiled alot of primary research you might find interesting. His particular emphasis on privacy is not only relevant to the job market but shows that online privacy is an essential topic for cultivating 21st century media literacy. He also discusses Social media privacy and questions our representation online.