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Better later than never, study tips and related information-3rd December

Dear reader, today’s lecture was full of information. If we speak broadly, it is about learning. How to learn new information, how the information is taught and the implementation of new technologies into the learning process. A good source for that is an article by Stine Lomborg “A state of flux…”, from it, I will give you some tips.  In my opinion, it is important to start off with some tips, as later I will give you valuable information that you might need in the future. So, first of all, we have to talk about scholarly approaches. One of it is to study anything with its history. When you study a topic no matter in which speciality (math, social, languages) you have to get into the history of it. Not only to broaden your vision but to explain to yourself why it became this thing. Secondly, be suspicious of power. Don’t let age or degree of a person fool you. If it is a professor that teaches your subject, you still have to make a small fact check before taking the information as being true. Ask questions, that’s a simple one. Don’t be shy, there are no stupid questions, especially when you learn. Lastly but not least is to look at everything in the social world through dialectics. Just to remind or tell you, dialectical thinking is looking at the object from a different perspective. Never consider only one side of the question, always check both before telling the “truth”. Now after learning some tips let’s start with some new material. Social media in spreading knowledge. Just ten years ago it was not a big deal, but now many professors from top universities do have social media accounts to promote themselves and to spread knowledge. One of the examples is Academia, from this week’s reading “Facebook for Academics”. Academia is a service for sharing papers and research between academics without any border such as financial which is a bid deal now. Due to the large student fees in universities, it cuts off a large number of people who want to learn but cannot afford higher education. But going back to the Academia website, it changes the regular professor’s job to teach a student to actually creating the whole brand that is around him such as website, Instagram twitter and even YouTube channel. One of the good examples of new media professors is Jordan Peterson. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto (my university) and if you have not heard about him, it’s okay. He is a very media person, with 1 million followers on Instagram, 1.3 million on Twitter and millions of views on his talks on YouTube he spreads his knowledge and ideas for free. In addition to that, he promotes himself by appearing on talk shows and podcasts such as Joe Rogan podcast. But let’s talk about new technologies and how they affect education. From the late 20th Century governments of different countries tried to make education accessible, even if they did increase the fees they had other plans. Erindale College (currently UTM),  was in fact built to make the TV streams of lectures to national television. This idea did not happen and it was forgotten. Now YouTube is one of the biggest sources of education of this kind. No matter what subject you are looking for, you can find video recordings from lectures or professors creating explanatory videos. However, if we look at the situation from a more official perspective, there are a couple of free services that are open to any internet users. Open Yale Courses or MOOCs offer their visitors courses and lectures on many different courses from different universities. Now, if you are a university student, you probably heard the idea of gamification of education. It is a controversial topic, the idea is simple, transfer some of the mechanisms of computer games into the study process. This can include levels, currency, new rules and instant feedback. Something like a death in the game, if you die, you see “dead” on your screen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in education, you have to wait for the results of your essay or assignment for a while, yes multiple-choice exams might be graded in a day, but this brings to the second problem. When you die in the game you can re-try as many times as you want (depends on the difficulty). This is something impossible in examinations, you have to re-take the whole course if you fail it and you have to pay for it again.

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Are we promoting a new coffee machine or making a presidential campaign?

Promotion strategies are the same for anything that you promote online, that was the main idea that I took from this week’s lecture. If you have knowledge in Social Media Marketing, you might agree with me, but for a person who starts to learn the basics, it might be something stupid. First of all, we have to look into the basics of any social media campaign. Knowing the basics of your product before advertising it. The same goes for the political campaign. You have to know the main goals of the politician and his plans for the future. Creation of the plan of posting, that also goes for both ways. In any case, if you are making a social media campaign, you need to plan out your target audience and plan out days and time on when to post. The good idea is to prepare posts in advance, in case of unknown trouble, you have a monthly amount of content. Diversify your channels, is the rule for any social media promotion. Even though your primary audience might be on Facebook, you still have to use Twitter and any other platform to increase search engine results and affect connected audiences to yours. The reason for that is sometimes it is hard to reach audience only from one side, and even if you reach it, they might not be happy seeing what your campaign is about. This week’s example was in one of the readings. An article by The Guardian from 2016, regarding the “Facebook Bubble”. It is a matter of the fact that the pages that you follow and people who you are friends with limit the news flow on your home page to one side of any argument. However, it does not only relate to Facebook. If you watch only Fox News, you are on one side of the argument as you see the news from one perspective. The reason that no one is angry at the newspapers of Tv in the same way as on social media is the definition of social media. You can access any information on the internet if you try hard enough. So when people are making their profile page on Facebook, liking and saving the post that they like and share an opinion with, it’s their fault that they get only one side of information. This makes people’s opinion even stronger, as the same people in the comments support them and see supportive news. It is hard to explain to people that it is not the fault of social media, but their fault that they limit the spectre of news that they see. So from this article, it is kind of obvious that people who are interested in a specific topic will get even more supportive information if campaigns are done correctly. An example of a good political campaign is the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Good social media presence, even currently, he uses his twitter account and Instagram, people love it. The campaign was diversified in different social mediums, and it was just well done.           Even if it seems like a simple job, it is not. The role of campaign press secretary includes a hard work of research and preparation of post for different mediums. The hardest part, however, is not to become the next Howard Dean. Howard Dean was a good candidate for a presidential election back in 2004, but in one of his speeches, he screamed. In my opinion, the thing that ruined the whole campaign was not the scream but how media reacted and forced it to be a big deal. So if you are planning in the future to become a campaign press secretary or if we are talking broadly, a social media marketer, do significant research before you post anything. You have to be prepared for any reaction and stay close to your post for a while, so in order, if something goes wrong, you could post a plan B.

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Is Journalism dead or it is just chilling - 19th November

The first thing that comes to my mind when we speak about journalism or news is a fantastic movie called Bruce Almighty. If you haven’t watched it, I do recommend it. However, it will not explain who the journalists are and how they are living in the days of the internet. About that, I will tell you today in this post. The last lecture, which was entitled Disrupting Traditional Journalism, we discussed the profession of journalism from its roots. I will not guarantee that reading the post will give you a degree, but it might help you to improve your writing and knowledge about the whole topic. Starting with the quote of some wise people, Alfred Hermida, a professor from UBC said: “ Journalistic practice is providing a critical account of daily events, gathered, selected, edited and disseminated by a professional organisation.” In simple words, a journalist is a combination of a filter with concentrator for information. A journalist finds information, check if it is legit, re-word it so more people would understand it, if it is a specific topic, and post it in a news site. Journalists must do their work unbiased, even though it is impossible in some countries, you know which ones I’m talking about. However, the press is known as the fourth branch of government, as they do put on sight all of the insights that might affect citizens. It might lead to some troubles with the law, like Snowden, but he was not a journalist but more an insider. So ideally, journalists are watchdogs, they look for any information and put it on the spotlight so people can be the judges. But I did say ideally, as many news websites or channels are owned by people who are interested in politics and might force one type of news and block another. 

         Going more in-depth on what journalist do, we can look at some of the rules. AP Stylebook is a book of standards such as using a.m. and p.m., numbers 10 and above are numerical, and the numbers bellow are spelt out, etc. It was initially published in 1953 by Associated Press and Norm Goldstein, but it was tweaked many times. Currently, you can get it for 22 USD per year on an automated renewal. It’s not bad, but I guess if you work in a big news source company, they will give you one. If you write news posts on Twitter, you might not even need it at all and that how we transfer to the new age journalism.

         Twitter currently is not something new, and everyone is used to it, but when it just appeared, many journalists were in a panic. It did affect news sources but did not kill them, the same way as the internet acted. You still need the journalists for many things. For example, to filter Twitter and provide checked information to the reader. Twitter transformed from a thread to a helper and became just a quicker source of information for journalists. It changed news to something that is going for 24/7 and not twice a day on a TV. A short video regarding Twitter journalism did explain a lot of common things and changed my opinion on the necessity of journalists. As I did mention before they act like filters, they do fact-check, they can provide clear information and be unbiased, even though they could lose their job if they post something that goes against the main idea of a news source. Twitter is a fantastic tool for getting news. I get all of my news from there, you have both random journalists, people and big news corporations in one place, with the ability to comment and share, it is amazing. 

         Not so amazing is BuzzFeed about which assigned reading was. Not only in was a fun source at the beginning, and now it became a yellow press with some stupid quizzes and big yellow tags on the page like “LOL”, “WTF”, “omg” and some other “cool” tags. I do not have anything against people who use BuzzFeed as their news source, but I can point some things about it to you.  Started from the memes now we are a legit news source is the idea behind every writer in BuzzFeed. Some reporters from the study said that they are doing serious stories one at a time to build up credibility the same way USA Today did. Well, I guess for some people they did become a legit news source, but not for me. People from Europe and Russia, the ones who know BuzzFeed, mainly are familiar with it only by doing the quizzes like “what kind of tomato u are by your toothpaste brand”. I don’t want to be a hater of BuzzFeed, and I’m here to tell you something new and useful. Therefore, let’s finish on some overall idea. 

         Journalism did change a lot after the internet and its outcomes, like Twitter and online news sources. It does not mean that the profession is dead, and there is no point in doing a degree in journalism. It just opened up more sources of information and more platform for journalists to gather and share news, you still need skills, and you have to know how to write in such a way, so people believe your story.

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Market yourself or how to make    them trust you - 12th November

Well, well, I want to ask you if you trust me. You might not know me as much as I would like to, but that’s what we have now. Reading this blog, you might ask yourself, what for? Well, it is to teach you some vital techniques to make your content better for your audience. This was kind of mood for the lecture. Put some respect and be hones are two things that are number one to start your journey of becoming a famous “media person”. I mean it is obvious as you are not a stand-up comedian who is getting trucks full of money, so to be respectful to the community is the answer to many questions. That does not mean to find every single post related to your topic and like it and comment as if people will see too much of you, they might be pulled away for you trying too hard. Therefore, try to comment and like what you actually find interesting in your community. That is supported by saying be honest, as if you like every post and comment nice things, you are not honest, only if you actually find everything interesting, but in that case you have to justify it by saying “that’s actually cool not every blog writer posts what they have learned on a lecture”. Use just your common sense and be honest, that might be a lesson for this part to take home. The whole topic of this blog/lecture goes around trust, and a book by Borgan and Smith called “Trust Agents”. It does give a lot of advice, it could be logical, but some people do not pay attention to the details. Even though web gave people the sense of anonymity, but if you are planning to create accessible content, it is better not to hide, or make a reason to that and play around it so people would be interested in your “mysterious persona” as much as your content. Unfortunately, you can not stay forever under the cover, and at one point in time, you have to show your face. Therefore this next tip comes into the list. Try not to post anything that might harm your reputation. As you don’t know when and where it might appear. It did happen to me just a day ago, when something that a friend of mine posted more than five years ago appeared just now on a popular YouTube channel and not in his favour, at least I was in the background, and nothing was said about me. So be conscious whenever you upload something on the internet and in case someone finds it out, do not try to block the comments or hide it, it will bring a much worse problem. When you are familiar with some basics of what does content creation, include in itself, it is time to promote yourself and your creations. First, we will talk about free stuff. It will only use up your data if you are using mobile to do it. So, acknowledge, comment and participate, those are the easiest ways to promote yourself. By acknowledging I mean do reference to more prominent personas when you do something similar and don’t afraid to mention them or even shout out if you use even a slight idea of theirs. If it is a more significant media, they might notice you, or if they do, they might also promote you as you did mention them before, but only if your content is worth it. Comment and participate, are a kind of the same thing, as you can join in discussions online mostly by commenting and expressing your ideas maybe as a review in your blog or YouTube channel. I hope you found some of these tips useful and they will make your way to the top more natural and without any downfalls.

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What are those blogs

That’s an assignment for my university, but at least it does worth to read for people who want to find some tips on writing and creating for different social mediums 

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First Blog 5th November

Hi everyone, this week is the first time I do the blog post, finally. The reason for that is the topic of the lecture. Mainly we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of being an influencer or a content creator. I wouldn’t name myself as an influencer, at least now, but I’m a content creator.

So I would like to point out the most prominent disadvantages of being a content creator is the competition. Doesn’t matter which niche you will choose for your content, there will be someone already, so you have to think about making the content as unique as possible. Some people are already famous in the webspace, and therefore you might be lost among thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand people who make content related to your topic. The first pump for many popular content creators was a “viral” post or video, but you can’t control it as when it leaves your computer the audience determines whether it is worth being viral or not. Secondly, if you read this post now, probably the topic you plan to make content on is going already for a couple of years. According to sources, some of the content websites or content YouTube channels were created over a decade ago. They do have an audience that probably is not looking for any new content.  Following on the problems that you might meet before hitting success, if at all, is that you cannot control it. Luck, time and might be family background will take a more significant part than you. Even that a study in 2018 said that most talented are lest successful than people less talented but luckier. That’s all hypothetical as measuring how lucky you are is an odd thing to do. 

But is not all bad for you my fellow creators, there are a couple of advantages in being a creator, starting with the time you were born. Ah, you fellow boomers might be a little late for that, but my generation, I would probably say people that are from thirteen to late twenties are in good shape for that. The matter of fact, being a “digital native” that is the term used by Prensky, is a benefit and an advantage to you guys. We are not “digital immigrants” we were born with the internet being a thing. Even though I would argue that people who are famous on the internet now are pioneers as they follow up with the updates and new items appearing on the web. This brings itself the understanding of the whole culture of memes and slangs non-cringe stuff as we, the young ones create it. Also, people of your age might not be so interested in what you have to say to them, but you will probably find your primary audience in a three to six years age difference.

Rhetoric

How to make people read through your thousand-word blog, or watch through an entire video that you upload on YouTube might be compressed into rhetoric. Rhetoric is the process of I would say transferring thoughts, actions and other things through language or symbols to the final idea that you express. That might be difficult to get, but it gets even harder if you are not familiar with things such as Logos, Ethos and Pathos. Those are Aristotle’s “proofs”. To start with Logos, it is “reason” or “disclosure” to simplify it even more, the logic and reason behind something are logos. Ethos is using your authority or status to convince your reader and Pathos is using emotions to pass your argument and to do all of the things to make your audience continue reading.

It was not the whole lecture about just those things but in my opinion, the most useful one.