Hacktivists or Privacy Invaders?

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Hacktivists group Anonymous claims to be virtual vigilantes defending the copper conductors of the internet. They claim to be activists, exploiting big business, government, and personal security in order to build awareness. Forming a movement, Anonymous is anti-SOPA and for the sharing of whatever information over the internet freely. Anonymous has an unknown number of members that carry out large malicious attacks on targeted websites and persons. The actions of Anonymous are a peaceful protest against censorship, their efforts have uncovered crimes, and has arose awareness of social issues in America. Do you think their actions are warranted?

Seeing is believing and purchasing with video marketing

“When it comes to getting your company message to potential customers and clients, Video Marketing is a sure bet. And, this is not just hype. The facts are simple, video marketing offers benefits and advantages that other forms of marketing media simply cannot provide. This makes video marketing both efficient as well as powerful in terms of helping your company get your message out to the masses.” 

~ Birdie Maule

                                       What is video marketing?

             In today’s high-tech, hyper-connected world, any size business can use market videos to reach a large target audience of potential customers, at minimal cost. The basic definition of video marketing is using a combination of video components such as visuals, text, and audio to convey a company’s brand message to its viewers. Like a traditional commercial on television, your marketing video should advertise the advantages of your product or service to potential customers. These videos can be distributed (for free!) to your target audience through solo ads via email, search engine marketing, social media pages, and video sharing sites. The real marketing aspect comes into play when the video content is optimized for search engine ranking and distributed online to sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. High Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings make it easy for millions of potential customers to find your video, and eventually be funneled toward your company and the product or service you are selling.

Politics in Social Media

The use of social media is becoming more political. In fact politicians now use social media to outline their position on issues involving the country. They get responses from the public, or even articulate their position directly to constituents.  The 2012 presidential election results are in, and it is evident that social media played a larger role than ever in the outcome of the election. Can social media even predict the outcome of an election? Politics in the media has led to three key developments: communication between politicians and the public, campaigning, and greater involvement of youth in politics.  

           Facebook Post: #VoteNow  

Politics has now become one of the most influential subjects in social media and cyberspace. Politicians are using social media to connect with the public in an effort to gain feedback on challenges and issues that the people see our Country facing. Politics in social media has become a leading subject among younger voters like never before. About four out of five people are involved in some sort of political group, have commented or liked a discussion posted by a politician. More people have established means of communicating through social media than any other communication method. Many groups have formed and articles have been published on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other affiliated sites. It seems politics would fit right in with social media.  

        Breaking News: Twitter & Facebook are on the rise!!

Social Media: The Parental Dilemma

“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.” 

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

                                               

                                                                             Why all the fuss over such a great thing?

With parenting, there is always some new event, technology, or situation that parents must weigh and measure the pros and cons before a decision is made. As a matter of fact that’s what parents are, the last bastion against the corruption of the future generation. The future is rife with possibilities and pitfalls. With social media, there are bountiful amounts of each, and an increasingly obscuring vision with which to judge it. As parents, it’s important to promote independence, self-worth, and the capability to solve problems in a child. Social media has proven to increase these very things in adults with a measure of caution, but with the ever present cyber-bullying, identity theft, creeper threat and draw into mundane activities such as online gaming, how can parents guide a child to greatness without hindering their independence? When approached with this dilemma, parents must make a critical judgment call in order to provide clear guidance to their child on how and when they can be trusted with this great to, but how can this be achieved?

Cyber Media & children : They Are Who They Tweet

                                                              

OUR KIDS 

                 They Are Who They Tweet

             According to a poll cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics, 22% of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times each day, and more than half of them log on more than once a day. It reports 75% of teenagers own their own cell phones and 25% use them for social media and 54% use them for texting, and 24% use them for instant messaging (O'Keeffe, Clarke-Pearson & Council on Communications and Media, 2011). Adolescence has always been considered the most difficult emotional and social development phase in a person’s life. It is when adolescents and tweens discover their individual ways of interacting with others, their personal images of themselves and their opinions and feelings about the world they live in. The journey for our children has become even more challenging than ever because their social and emotional evolution is occurring while they are using social media formats such as the Internet, Face Book, Twitter, instant messaging, and texting. The explosive growth of social media, smartphones and digital devices is transforming our kids' lives, in school and at home.

HEY TWIT, QUIT TWEETING AT YOUR DESK!!

            Social media in the workplace is nothing new, since the days of the BBS system people have been communicating with each other via work computers. The rise of social media is a double-edged sword for employers. While there are many new legal questions that have risen we will focus on who owns the relationships that are created at the work place, and does this entire social media add or subtract from production. Ultimately social media is here to stay, and it can be a very powerful business tool. 

With the rise in social media, in all aspects, many companies are now hiring people too manage their social media pages. Image that getting paid to be on Facebook and Twitter! The biggest problem with hiring someone for this is when they inevitable happens, they leave. Who now owns all of those followers?  “If this ownership issue is not hashed out at the beginning of employment, the employer and the employee may both believe the account is theirs.”(Quast, 2013)  So do they own the followers or does the company own those followers? Just like anything, accounts with X amount of followers are a commodity now, and have monetary value. Employees and employers are both arguing misappropriation in many different theories regarding ownership's of contacts and further accounts information’s. Furthermore a “lawsuit over the 17,000 Twitter followers that one employee amassed during his employment using a Twitter handle referencing both the company’s and his own name – just settled, leaving the legal community and employers with little guidance at this point.” (Quast, 2013) This has risen big questions about how employers are protecting them self against former employees. Certainly employers must consider the best legal action when hiring and an individual, and know what the courts considered to be the factors of ownership's of such social media accounts.

Communication Technology: The new Media in Society: A Review

Communication Technology:  The New Media in Technology is a book designed to educate as well as help professionals evolve in the ever-changing field of communications.  Chapter 1 titled The Changing Nature of Human Communications covers the changing nature of communication methods, changes in the labor force as well the governing factors in the future of the information society. Chapter 1 serves as a crash course into how and why human communication is always going to be evolving. An example the chapter uses is when the communication field switched from the daily use of a type writer to a computer. Even though this example is a little dated, but it still serves as a foundation into the evolution of communication methods. Chapter 2 titled, What Are the New Communication Technologies covers the four eras in the evolution of human communication which include writing, printed material and telecommunication.  Examples that the author uses are transistors and semiconductors, the invention of the microprocessor, video conferencing, satellite communication and wired cities. It’s important to note that the book is a little dated but the examples used help keep professionals and student humble in the history of the communication field. Chapter 3, History of Communication Science, is where the communication theories take on a mathematical formula. The reader is introduced to two engineers in communication Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, both of which played major influences in the mathematical side of communication. Shannon’s research focused more on information technology while Wiener focused more on cybernetics.