Mass Communication Modifications

It’s undeniable that mass communication and journalism, in general, are changing at a pace that’s hard to believe. As we discussed in class, this change is good, bad, and everywhere in between for the process of educating and keeping the public informed. Much of this change is a direct result of technology giving new outlets and forcing the hands of news providers to do more and in different ways to get news to people, while also arming them with new techniques in how to do so.

In the current day, people can get news faster than ever before thanks to increased time spent on the computer as well as phone news applications. This bolstered interaction between news sources and audiences allows for the public to get news earlier and also filter what kind of things they want to know with more ease. Instead of having to read through papers to get certain sections with limited coverage, there’s now something for everyone on all topics that can be instantly found. However, this increase in competition, as well as lack of filter on the internet, has led to several conflicts as well. There are countless stories of companies having to lay to off employees due to this new market. The increase in sources and competing markets have made it much harder for the old giants to stay in front. While it’s been said before, it’s direly important that all sources, no matter who or what they cover, are ready to change as fast as the internet and potential audiences do or they’ll quickly feel the impact.

While media communication’s face has changed a lot over the recent years, it has also given lots of good new tools to those who use it. In class, we went over many added elements that have furthered the ability for readers to digest and understand info given by communication outlets. These included data visualization, targeted ads, integrated advertisements in stories, and more. All these tools once again have made the experience of any given user have a more personal feel, which is something I anticipate will only continue to head in that direction as more tools become available to draw in and retain audience’s attention.

Mass communication is a tricky situation that will continue to change and morph for the foreseeable future as the experience for users gets better and better, but the people supplying that content may have to jump through more hoops.

Public Relations Revolution

As the relationship between consumers and the online world continues to develop and change, the way public relations get content out adapts to it as well.

A simple truth is that more and more people prefer to get their news, entertainment, and more from online sources rather than traditional methods every day. Cable-cutting continues to grow in popularity along with newspapers experiencing a decline in interest of printed versions, both of these a direct result of an increasing potential internet audience. While

For me, I’ve realized that public relations has more layers and is more complicated than what I originally thought. Keeping the attention of the consumer is not as easy as it may seem, and changes to marketing strategies and content may sometimes have to come quickly to keep up with the way people view things.

As much of one our linked articles addressed, the upcoming years will feature a heavy focus on blending new strategy techniques with this new frontier of news media. While this new style of advertising is important, it’s just as important to keep the people aspect of it in mind. When Envoy came to present in class, they mentioned that new kind of advertising often work products in more original ways then what we’ve previously observed with straight up ads. Instead, people can now often see things like product placement in videos, sponsored stories, or native advertising around articles that help make consumers not feel like they’re just another number getting advertised to in a lazy way.

In a similar vein, companies have adapted to a point where they target people to reach out to other consumers. Those that have healthy social media followings can serve as good natural advertisers of one’s product, while also remaining unobtrusive or too obviously angled to be an ad.

One personal example I have of this is my cousin, Sean Bryan, who’s known as the Papal Ninja on American Ninja Warrior. After finishing third last year, he gained a lot of attention on social media. This opened up opportunities on social media for him to post things on his story about new types of juices or protein shakes he was trying that were in sponsorship deals with him. People who saw posts may be more inclined to try the product, as it’s somebody they went out of their way to follow and see what they’re talking about.

While several new strategies and techniques for public relations are playing out as the internet continues to change, I believe the number one skill that aids in being successful is being aware of the changing market and being able to think of new outside-the-box strategies accordingly.

Media Business’ Changing Market

“There’s about half as many journalists employed in the United States as there were when the Berlin Wall came down… the newspaper industry is in a profound moment of business crisis.”

This quote by Nicco Mele in the podcast is what, in my opinion, is the best representation of the road journalism (or at least print) is heading down at the moment. While not all is doom and gloom, it’s undeniable that the internet is quickly changing what news outlets must do to be successful. In class, we’ve talked about different examples of both the cause and effect of these issues that some news media organizations face. Because of these issues, we’ve seen an innumerable amount of different journalistic companies make cuts to staff/pay, generate less money, and find themselves shifting towards more online content and presence. The biggest key and also the hardest challenge that these companies will always face is, obviously, how to stay economically viable while still maintaining their identity.

As the way people get news shifts more and more towards technological channels rather than the printed newspaper, the way that these papers generate money also changes. The fact that printed ads cost more than online ads for companies to run through the newspaper becomes void when the users who will see the commercials in the first place switch to getting their news from the internet.

The way an increasing amount of people get their news is not going to change back to print for the foreseeable future, so news media has to find other ways to stay economically viable. Three possible ways to counteract this problem are to charge more for ads, don’t let users run Adblock, and be conscious of the types of ads that are run.

The first solution, charging more for ads, is probably the least viable. If news outlets were all to simply upcharge companies who wanted a space on a page, they could lose potential partners and those companies may just find somewhere else to invest that money. However, I do think there’s something to be said about how online advertisements likely have higher customer engagement rates, as they can be personalized to be things that they care about. I can only speak for myself in this situation, but I know I’m much more likely to at least acknowledge online advertisements as compared to printed ones as they can take me right to a product and sell relevant things to me.

The second solution is to make sure that users who come on to your site either can’t browse while using an adblocker, or get a message requesting to disable it. As more people in the public learn of the trouble media companies are facing in trying to create revenue, I know of people that are willing to disable Adblock as they browse sites. While that’s certainly not the case for everyone, I think telling users that turning it off will help the site stay in business can go a long way.

Lastly, the type of ads sites run matter. While there’s no real right answer to this problem, I think types of trends can work better on a website than others. Native advertising is a type of marketing that both gives readers a very in-depth advertisement, while also keeping the appearance of the website more clean and professional looking. More specialized ads such as these can help create new revenue for news media, as companies will likely have to get more creative with ads instead of just throwing up a bunch of direct links ot products in the sidebars of a story page.

 

Keeping Morals in Mind

No matter how the stories were ultimately received by the public about R.J. and the other children, Diana and Monica were not vultures in the way they conducted themselves while covering this story.

I’d like to note that in my opinion this article was incredibly well written, and once I started to read this piece, it had me 100% invested all the way through the end of the entry. I think the author did a wonderful job conveying the feelings of not only herself throughout the process, but also how R.J. and his mother were perhaps doing as well. Sugg admits that while she ended up being a big part of R.J.’s life near the end, it initially took some poking and prodding with Michele to allow for her to get access past a remedial level with her child.

This, however, does not change all the positive benefits that came from Sugg’s coverage for just about everyone the story touched, whether it be other moms reading the story, Michele, R.J., or even herself.

Palliative care is a subject that obviously no one wants to ever have affect them in a personal way. I know from experience that it can be an odd thing for those on the outside looking in. While it gets attention, anyone who perhaps knows family members or friends of those being cared for often have a hard time distinguishing what the line is for interacting and/or sending encouragement to those it effects. Because of this, I can see why support groups like those Michele were involved in became an important part of her life, as those people were the only other ones who truly knew what she was going through. Even furthermore, if it was hard for the mother to sometimes get support from those around her, it begs the question of how a journalist could ever enter the picture and hold an appropriate and healthy relationship with the family while still doing her job.

As noted in the piece, however, I think the author did a good job walking that line of doing what she was there to accomplish, while also being a positive character in R.J.’s unfairly abrupt life. Because of this, both Michele and R.J. allowed for her to play a bigger part in it over time as she was able to stay in the room for more of his activities, talk to him, and even play games with him. She got everything she needed to write her piece not through overstepping the boundaries of the kid’s personal life, but rather making connections and forming a personal bond.

I don’t generally think there are many cases where a reporter can be a vulture. I believe that most of the time, the public is entitled to know the truth, albeit one of the hitches to that is if the story involves kids. Most reporters are trying to do what’s best for the public, as noted by how truth is generally valued more than anything else in journalism.

More Followers, Less Meaning

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and whatever else people use nowadays are all integral parts of our society. While new apps may come and go and replace old ones (i.e. Facebook’s predecessor MySpace), they hold the same core ideas and serve the same purposes that have become a staple in the way people interact.

For me personally, I have made dozens of connections with people online that I never would’ve met otherwise. The internet is the only way to stay in contact and talk about common interests that originally brought us together.

Just the same, there have been people I’ve first met in real life that I’ve gotten close to that I wouldn’t have really been able to keep in close touch with if social media didn’t exist.  Those I met in grade school, or at week-long Summer camps are just some of the people I likely would’ve grown much father apart from when they were out of my life in the typical “see them everyday” sense. Now, I instead get to see what they’re up to, show them I like it, and even comment on it if I’d like to.

If people fall into either one of these two groups, I try to keep up those relations when I can, as they really mean a lot to me and have honestly become a fairly sizable part of my life.

Now, could a different case be made for those you interact with often in real life every day, and how it may affect one’s real-life connection to those people? Absolutely.

While technology provides a way to keep in touch with people when not directly around them, I think it’s fair to claim it’s complicating relationships in more ways than we realize.

First is the way that we default to technology in almost any given situation. Whether waiting in line for a drink at Starbucks, on the subway, or even during dinner when you’re around family, there are many studies starting to come out against the effects that doing so can have on our relationships and our mental health. To me, it seems that a society as a whole is more and more willing to sacrifice the individual in-person time you get with people to instead keep connected with groups of people as a whole in the digital world. Keeping connections with everyone makes us feel better than maybe having fewer, more intense relationships with people that may happen on a deeper level.

Another negative to communicating in the digital world instead of the real one is like what we talked about in class. There’s no sort of gestures or facial tones for people to pick up on, leaving many things possibly open to interpretation. If someone asks if how you’re feeling, your possible response of “good” or “good :)” can be taken in two different ways. Even furthermore, HuffPost makes a good point that not only can your exact text message language set the tone, but how the person you’re feeling in that given moment can change how they interpret it just as much.

While communication on the internet is an absolutely great tool that lets us communicate with anyone we need to reach at any given moment, it can often make those conversations less precise or exact and mean less or different things to people. As we go forward, it’s important we maintain the balance between staying in touch with everyone, and refining relationships in real life.

Programmed Technology Programs Us?

My phone and the amount of raw information and power it puts at my fingertips is really something incredible. I think it’s easy to forget and not appreciate how mind-blowing the things that all phones can do nowadays were even just a short ten years ago. Reaching a good chunk of anyone on the entire planet is literally a few touches on a handheld screen away.

With people knowing that you’re quite literally attached at the hip to your phone, I think society’s expectations of how a person should stay connected have changed, and that’s where always having to be in touch with the people in my life can become too much.

The fact that news can spread so fast, whether it be politics, family, sports, or whatever is absolutely great. I used to have notifications on for multiple apps including the “News” app on the iPhone for relevant politics and ESPN for my favorite sports teams. I love being in the know as soon as anything that’s significant to me happens, and for years I tried using all the outlets available to me to make the most of that.

That was until I started to realize that if my phone buzzed, my desire to be the first one to know was affecting my life in ways I really didn’t want to. I would pull out my phone perhaps at dinner with my parents, or talking to my friends, or sometimes in extreme cases even during class. While I never really felt overwhelmed by the technology itself, I had let it get to a point where it was negatively impacting my life because of my connectedness with it.

Something my Mom has made note of over the years is to make me aware of the threats of phone addiction, and she definitely never lets me forget it. While I discounted her points for a long, long time, I eventually caved and looked into it, and I can honestly say what I found scared me, especially when I recognized some of the patterns of those people within myself. Ever since that, I’ve made a real effort to cut back both on total phone time and how often I check notifications.

There’s absolutely a middle ground being the positive and toxic things that come as a result of technology. There’s no denying that at the end of the day, technology is still this wonderfully awesome thing that lets us connect with family at any given hour of the day, get food delivered right to our door, and literally save lives. However, there’s a very fine line that’s important to find that separates being able to get the most out of services available to us, and letting it infest our lives in negative ways, especially as more purposes are created every single day. I realized not too long ago that I was crossing this line, and I really didn’t want to be doing so.