#johngeraghty

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Big Data & Target Marketing (Week 10 – John Geraghty)

The dawn of the digital era has entirely revolutionsed the way humans process, understand and interact with information. As suggested in the video, libraries and books are no longer our sole reference for analysing the human experience. Big data is an extremely diverse currency that has emerged from Web 2.0 that allows us to perform tasks that once upon a time, would be deemed impossible. The almost unfathomable scale of the data available gives us global access to all possible information about human response and human innovation – and while this has raised various ethical concerns regarding privacy, it has allowed business (particularly in the field of marketing) to flourish.

  In an article written for the NY times, Charles Duhigg (2012) makes a commentary on the marketing methods of department store, ‘Target’ in the United States. Through an intensive process of target marketing and data analysis, Target revealed to an American father that his teenage daughter was pregnant before he knew at all. The store’s marketing team managed to find this out through closely tracking their consumers spending habits. This is achieved through the use of ID numbers for each shopper, allowing the marketing analytics department to closely examine specific customers. The team then sent advertising material to the address of the girl, promoting infant related products (Duhigg, 2012).

  (Sourced from www.polyvore.com)

This raises various ethical issues for consumers, especially the Father of the pregnant teenager. Should large corporations such as Target have the ability to hone in on people in this way? The methods used to analyse consumer behaviour in the 21st century allow companies to understand so much more about our lifestyle, even to the point of predicting pregnancies and then trying to win us over with specifically angled promotion. The use of the internet now also plays an extremely important role in business target marketing.

  In the current media environment, an online presence is almost essential for any modern business to thrive. Coupled with this, a strong understanding of the analytics associated with online consumer interaction is required to gain a comprehensive understanding of their motivations, wants and needs. Hashtags (#) play a crucial role in this process and allow marketers to easily coordinate discussion around certain topics with their consumers (Woodford, 2014).  I only needed to browse my Facebook feed for ten seconds before finding a promotional video from ‘V Energy Drink Australia’ promoting their new energy drink. An interactive social media campaign encourages consumers to upload videos of them pranking their friends, tied together with the hashtag, ‘#kaboomamate’. This type of promotion allows companies to see the ways in which their consumers interact with the product and also has the consumers advertising the product itself through both the video and the hashtag posted from their individual social media (Venergydrinkaus, 2014).

 View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTSkz9RWRhs 

This once again poses certain ethical dilemmas in massive companies knowing so much about our motivations. It seems almost inevitable that corporations will continue to manipulate the technologies available to them. It is probable that moving into the future target marketing will become even more specifically angled to consumers of various backgrounds, trying always to win us over by tailoring to our differing needs.

  Reference List

  Duhigg, Charles. 2012. “How companies learn your secrets.” New York Times, February 16. Accessed May 9, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1329521286-bAJ8Lu/xck%20DQwMUzVaodQ&

    Venergydrinkaus. 2014. “Adrian Van Oyen introduces #kaboomamate.” YouTube video, posted May 8. Accessed May 9, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTSkz9RWRhs

    Woodford, Darryl. 2014. “KCB206 internet, self and beyond: Week 9 lecture notes.” Accessed May 9, 2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232451_1

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New Media - Power Relations, Politics & Engagement (Week 9 - John Geraghty)

As it has been explored throughout the semester, it has become apparent that new media is becoming more intertwined within our lives by the day. The idea of living not only with this new media, but also ‘through’ and ‘in’ these technologies has affected us immensely; it is really no surprise that modern tools such as social media are also effecting our power relations and politics. Through tools such as Facebook, Twitter and the like, social media has indeed allowed for the mobilisation of activism on a grand scale, but are these movements actually effective in instigating political and social reform?

  Discussed in the lecture was the notion of empowerment that is given to people through social media (Sauter, 2014). Shirky (2011) suggests that this new media now allows people to utter, connect and freely engage in discussions regarding political concerns. Shirky further contends that society as a whole is constituted by power relationships; proposing that whoever has power has the ability to shape institutions and organise society around their values. With this power however, counter power must exist, and it is suggested that in the Internet age, this power allows people (through new media) to collect forces and mobilise crowds and encourages open discussion and debate on political issues (Castells, 2012). Shirky suggests that this sense of togetherness revitalizes public participation and can even precipitate activism that undermines the governments control. It is debatable however as to whether or not this contemporary activism is instigated by new media and is truly effective in making change.

  (Sourced from http://blog.stantonstreet.com/the-social-media-revolutionary-from-slacktivism-to-activism/)

There is strong evidence to suggest that through empowering ‘the people’, new media reinvigorates society; ultimately making it more democratic. This is exemplified through countless repressive and democratic regimes that use the Internet to make their voice heard such as the ‘Twitter revolutions’ that occurred in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 (Beaumont, 2011). (Also see ‘Facebook revolutions’ video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQiKEruA48w). Others such as Gladwell (2010) however, contend that the place of new media does not make an exceptional difference to government, power and domination.

  Gladwell proposes that fundamentally, social media is ‘simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact’. Gladwell challenges the effect of ‘weak-tie’ connections such as a Facebook friendship, questioning whether or not such a relationship is powerful at its core. In defense of social media, Shirky suggests that ‘social media tools are not a replacement for real world action but a way to coordinate it’ (Shirky, 2011).

(Sourced from www.neh.gov) 

At the heart of Gladwell’s argument is the debate over social media’s real effect. He proposes that revolutions have occurred long before new media tools of this caliber existed at all; lending wait to his contention that they don’t hold extreme power. Many great social changes have occurred without email, texting or social media such as the African American civil rights movement. Gladwell agrees that the tools made available to us in the current media climate are effective in bringing people together but not necessarily effective in causing change. He suggests that new media has greatly effected power relations, politics in engagement but proposes that while ‘activists were once defined by their causes they are now defined by their tools’ (Gladwell, 2010).

    Reference List

Beaumont, Peter. 2011. “Can social networking overthrow a government?” Sydney Morning Herald, February 25. Accessed May 3, 2014. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/can-social-networking-overthrow-a-government-20110225-1b7u6.html

  Castells, Manuel. 2012. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  (Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit). 2011. “Teaser IOC "Facebook Revolutions? The Role of Social Media for Political Change in the Arab World". YouTube video, posted September 5. Accessed May 3, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQiKEruA48w

  Gladwell, Malcom. 2010. “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted.” The New Yorker, October 4. Accessed May 4, 2014.http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

  Sauter, Theresa. 2014. “KCB201 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 8 lecture slides.” Accessed April 17, 2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232450_1

  Shirky, Clay. 2011 “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” In Foreign Affairs 90:1. Accessed May 4, 2014. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media

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Computer-mediated Communication (Week 7 - John Geraghty)

Through the broad range of tools and technologies that have emerged with the Internet, communication is now mediated in, and works through new media environments. With the advent of social media, things like instant messaging, emoticons, and forums have a strong influence on how we communicate and shape our discourse – both online and off.

  Online communication, or ‘computer-mediated communication’ blurs the line between speech and writing. Crystal, (2006) refers generally to this type of communication as ‘written speech’, suggesting the words are written but are intended to have a conversational tone. This is exemplified through the process of instant messaging; a type of conversation that originally stemmed from formal emails, in which the prose is relaxed and is more similar to physically speaking with someone. These new creative ways of engaging allow us to connect with our self, each other and the world, but does this new form of mediated communication enhance or impoverish human communication as a whole?

(Sourced from www.theverge.com) 

Emotion is a very important factor in human interaction and is a source of heated debate when discussing the benefits of computer-mediated communication. Emoticons are a virtual representation of facial expressions that are formed by keyboard characters, with the intention of conveying feeling and tone in an online conversation. These ‘graphic signs, which are used to indicate an emotional state’, allow the author to simply communicate specific emotion through text, whether it be happy, :) or sad, :( or any other general feeling. This shortened and fragmented way of conversing is often referred to as the ‘language of immediacy’ in which text and time constrictions are shortened, often due to the discomfort of writing out full sentences on a mobile device (Skovholt, et. al. 2014).

(Sourced from www.emotasia.com) 

Many argue that emoticons are a crude way of portraying emotion and are even ‘eroding’ written and spoken language. The forums in which both instant messaging and emoticons are used are also scrutinized for impoverishing human communication. Both Baym (2010) and Crystal (2006) suggest that the nature of certain online conversation circles is mean and aggressive and abandons social etiquette; there is no denying that many threads on sites such as ‘reddit’ contain a plethora of inappropriate, politically incorrect and offensive discourse.

  Baym (2010) further contends however, that certain social norms are beginning to establish online and an understanding of appropriate behaviour is spreading. She suggests that computer-mediated communication is beginning to develop etiquettes that are similar to those in real life. Sometimes in conjunction with formal rules and terms, such as the banning of offensive videos on Facebook etc., ‘netiquette’ is often displayed, enforced and managed by communities in order to ensure that communication is not inappropriate.

  So does this language adapt to us? Or are we adapting to it?

  While many factors such as instantaneous messaging, emoticons and etiquette can suggest that new media is impoverishing communication, Baym (2010) suggests that we are not negatively effected by new media and that we use it to ‘work around barriers, rather than submitting ourselves to a context- and emotion-free communication experience.’ If the developing idea of ‘netiquette’ is any indication, it could be contended that the nature of the messages we send to each other will determine the nature of the medium we send them on. As Pinch and Bijker (1984) suggest, ‘Technologies come to meet the needs of the social groups that use them. We discover technologies as much as invent them, and the social environment in which a technology diffuses influences the way in which it evolves’. Computer-mediated communication does not impose or determine our communication; it merely gives us a new way of doing old things.

  Reference List

Baym, Nancy. 2010. “Ch 3: Communication in Digital Spaces.” In Personal Connections in the Digital Age, 50-70. Cambridge MA: Polity Press.  

  Crystal, David. 2006. “Ch 2: The Medium of Netspeak.” In Language and the Internet. 2nd ed, 26-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Skovholt, Karianne, Anette Grønning and Anne Kankaanranta. 2014. “The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E-Mails: :-).” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Published online before print. January 10, 2014. doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12063 

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