monika'a blog

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PUBLIC HEALTH:CAMPAIGNS AND COMMUNITIES

Public health issues are serious business, and organizations are increasingly developing effective social media campaigns targeted to their specific audiences. Utilizing various available social networks, government agencies and non-profits are able to combat rumors, encourage behavioral changes, and share information, all while allowing their audiences to engage and share feedback. there have been some great public health campaigns in the past that raised a lot of funds for their respective causes. one of the biggest example is the ALS ice bucket challenge.it started to raise awareness about what ALS was and involved people dumping cold water on themselves and tagging 3 friends. this campaign was one of the most successful in the history of public campaigns and raised over 115 million dollars for the ALS association alone. Scientists were able to fast forward research and promising breakthroughs for the incurable, little-known disease are on the horizon. The level of engagement in the viral campaign is almost unparalleled, with organizations holding world record-breaking challenges, celebrities and other people of notoriety jumping on board to raise awareness and money.there are many ways for organizations to develop campaigns which will resonate with people to raise awareness about something important. social media campaigns around public health are very effective and show strong results. Health practitioners, researchers, and agencies should also consider the potential benefits of using social media for obtaining rapid and timely data about trends and patterns in health. although there is a lot of superficiality in sharing these campaign. A like or a comment on facebook won't affect anyone but actual donations will help. although this can be a big problem with public campaigns, liking and sharing create awareness and the campaign can reach more people and hence more donors.

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CROWD SOURCING IN TIMES OF CRISIS

With the rise of social media platforms, crowdsourcing has become a powerful tool for mobilizing the public. Crowdsourcing is basically the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content  from a large group of people and especially from the online community.recently when hurricane maria attacked Puerto Rico, and destroyed millions of lives and costing over 91 billion dollars of worth of damage, crowdsourcing was the main way through which people raised millions of dollars for the survivors. people from all over the world donated to make a difference. many organizations like United for Puerto Rico, American Red Cross, Salvation Army raised funds to deal with the crisis. Demonstrating social media’s resilience during emergencies, Twitter feeds also assisted in coordinating help, shelter, and food for the distressed. Mobile food truck drivers scrambled into operation, micro-blogging their locations while distributing provisions to the cold and famished.3 As microbloggers uploaded geotagged information, hybrid alliances formed between online platforms and offline places. An interactive crisis map of Peurto Rico with links to Facebook, Twitter, text, or email connected those in trouble with local evacuation centers and emergency shelters with real-time updates from the Red Cross, FEMA, and other municipal agencies. Later, the crisis map served to document the extent of power outages, as well as the availability of grocery stores, gas stations, pharmacies, charging stations, warming centers, and senior services – all provided by neighborhood residents. Crowdsourcing doesn’t only help emergency services and the media during times of crisis; it can also provide organizations with access to new ideas, deeper consumer engagement, opportunities for co-creation, optimization of tasks, and reduction of costsBut, she thinks it’s only a matter of time before crowdmapping and crowdsourcing, in general, becomes a more accepted reporting tool in North American journalism. While there are some superficial differences, she says the challenges of verification faced by crowdmappers aren’t that different from the challenges most reporters face. “It’s a lot of the same strategies you would use  in-person.”

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TROLLING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONFLICTS

Bullying has always been a major social issue for the last few decades, but with the advancements in technology, a new form of bullying known as cyber-bullying emerged. It is more evasive and harder to define. the biggest technological advancement that gave rise to cyber-bullying was the rise of anonymous blogs and social network sites such as Twitter, which allows its users to hide behind its screens and hide their identity. cyber bullying is a serious crime with 50% of teen admitting that they have been bullied at least once. the after-effects of bullying on its survivors include violent behavior and suicidal thoughts. A study conducted by the University of Manitoba concludes t since a sadistic person is described as being vicious and degrading toward others, it’s possible that the internet allows them to redirect their energy. If they’re inflicting harm through anonymous words, perhaps it’s preventing them from doing something much more destructive in person eing anonymous empowers the bystander with the ability to film or photograph the offender and upload the content to social media, shaming and exposing their behaviour without having to risk the bystander’s safetyA paper by the School of Law at the University of South Australia argues that illegal, offensive content can already be regulated by existing legislation and non- illegal but offensive, bullying behaviours should be regulated by the social media providers, in fact, “Facebook self-regulates in accordance with its policy which is more stringent than the broader parameters the Australian law provides

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ACTIVISM AND PROTEST

For many people, social networks have infamously become outlets for proliferating ill-informed political opinions. But it is giving way to a new era—one where social media, among other Internet resources, is being used to change public opinion, mobilize activists, and even shape public policy? I don't think that its wrong to say that some degree of change is afoot. Right now we're in the midst of a series of marches—including last months march for gun control. One of the first march, starting in 2011, was the Occupy Wall Street movement. What started as a small protest rapidly swelled into an international movement, drawing awareness to the concentration of money in a few wealthy "one-percenters." Wall Street occupiers pulled this off by using Twitter to spread their message. While Occupy was, by many accounts, a disjointed, leaderless, and arguably failed movement, its success in mobilization sowed the seeds that bore fruit in subsequent activist campaigns. here previous social media advocacy presented a problem and asked people to care, Black Lives Matter identified an issue that faces its supporters every day—the regular killing of unarmed black people by police officers. In ratcheting up this salience, Black Lives Matter harnessed feelings already present and organized them into a coherent movement. This sort of grassroots mobilization is not new to popular movements, but Black Lives Matter was the first to replicate the process on social media. In the past, political posts on social media were vilified for their inability to affect real change. But successful popular movements show a different reality. When people feel that they have a legitimate grievance to redress, they will go to great lengths to make it known. Social movements can and do draw from accumulated knowledge gleaned from previous movements and activities. Historically, this is passed down from generation to generation and movement to movement. Social media has changed the ways in which this knowledge is being recorded and passed on. A less obvious issue is the lack of understanding of how social media affect the organization of activist networks. 

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POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

The use of social media is becoming a specialty of political and citizen engagement for many millennials. Social media users who regularly talk about politics are most likely to use social media for civic or political purposes and social media users who have a strong party and ideological relationship - moderate Democrats and orthodox Republicans - sometimes, on both sides, there is more potential to moderate to use social media for these purposes. Young users are the users that post their views about issues, post links to political content, encourage others to take political action, follow political parties on social networking sites, follow elected officials on social media, and political content. It is clear that in many developed countries, public participation in traditional forms of democratic engagement (such as voting, political parties, and business associations) has decreased, but its results are fighting. On one hand, some have expressed deep concern that these developments are a devastating blow to our democratic institution. Other people take a more positive approach and argue that instead of declining, democracy is changing, and citizens are looking beyond established political institutions to express their political preferences and to achieve their citizens and political goals, Find new creative ways, at the end, when a person does not want to be a content creator, it has been suggested that online The Sheer could lead to political engagement. The central basis of this argument is that social media can increase the exposure of the person towards political information and social movement when friends and family are associated with news stories or expressed political opinion. But as soon as social media becomes our real public sector, some have raised concerns about the effect of this algorithmic paradigm on democracy. Despite the initial democratic aspirations for the Internet, some suggest that these algorithms shape the content with which we engage in such a way that does not increase the nature of our democracy. Strategically, political groups can use the new media very effectively. Online social networks, which feature social media, can act as a powerful distribution channel for political messages. It is understandable to take advantage of online social networks for promotion. We are more likely to trust politicians than to politicians, in contradictory form. In public interest, social media-driven Spike activists create windows for opportunities to influence the creation of public policy for groups. Because the public sector affiliations are fast strung through social media, it is not important in the context of political participation but in terms of political results. Facebook itself has acknowledged that the study is being done to find out the diversity of information for which users are exposed to the platform. The way in which political groups interact online, their large-scale study shows this conclusion. The suggestion of these studies is that homophilic - like the kind of cooperation - and identity issues shape the network and the two networks to which we attach both online and offline. For this reason, we need to reflect the leaders of political and civil society on the language they use, and strive for a discourse to be socially united, with which we involve all citizens can

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Is Tumblr A Blog or Social Network Site.

Tumblr is a site which is used as a hub for creatives and hence most blog resonates a specific style. But the key to promote the blog is through networking with other bloggers and being active, although the main focus of Tumblr is on the content that’s being generated but not the creators. This has created a confusion as to if Tumblr is a blog or social network. Tumblr is more of a place where people like to look at cool things. People just re- blog instead of liking or sharing and there is no pressure in creating new content compared to other social networks which are highly monetized by the users to make money.

The user base of Tumblr is very young too. Tumblr allows crazy customization of blogs as well as HTML editing which allows its users to create a completely unique experience which is very different to all social networks. The opportunities for paid content on Tumblr is very less compared to social networks too. They do not have many ads and the original posters cannot be traced back times. A recent survey shows that Tumblr users spend at least 14 minutes on it per visit which is higher than any other Social network platform.

Tumblr was found in 2007 as a blogging platform, which was its initial function but it has not changed as it encountered a lot of traffic and people can follow each other and maintain contact.

Analyzing Tumblr’s social network yields interesting results. The network of all Tumblr users is a directed network in a sense similar to network assuming that a blog is not on private any person can follow a Tumblr user. Although a lot of times the connection is one-sided.

Tumblr is still emerging as a social network. Although it doesn’t have the engagement of other social networks or the scale of followers. Tumblr has been around for a while but being acquired by Yahoo has changed its place in the marketing world so Tumblr shouldn’t be replaced as a primary blog but used as a supplement for content marketing.