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.

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

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.