#spurious clout

[mariacallous]

This week Kit Connor, the young star of Heartstopper, Netflix’s dreamy LGBTQ romance, came out as bisexual – but not by his own choice. “Back for a minute,” he tweeted, referring to his self-imposed break from Twitter due to previous harassment. “i’m bi. congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. i think some of you missed the point of the show. bye”

A feverish entitlement to details of celebrities’ sexualities has been growing online for years, with celebrities being increasingly called on by fans and media to “come out” and confirm rabid speculation. Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Jameela Jamil, Rita Ora, Billie Eilish, Yungblud, Shawn Mendes and most recently Connor have all been pestered to confirm their sexualities amid obsessions over the most spurious of clues – a paparazzi photo, a music video, a choice of role. Connor faced a storm of scrutiny when pictures emerged of him holding hands with Maia Reficco, a costar in a new film. For touching a woman, after playing a bisexual character in Heartstoppper, Connor was accused of “queerbaiting”, a criticism levelled against stars who are believed to be “performing” queerness for clout.

It is this same kind of thinking that leads to arguments that Harry Styles shouldn’t be allowed to wear a green feather boa until he confirms how he identifies, or Billie Eilish being criticised over mildly sapphic scenes in a music video, followed by demands that she “come out” in order to justify them.

Queerbaiting was originally a criticism directed at films and shows that would hint at LGBTQ+ representation without actually depicting it, in order to attract LGBTQ+ audiences without having to lose the straight ones. Think of when the directors of Avengers: Endgame spoke publicly and loudly about having queer representation in the film, only for it to turn out to be a single line spoken by an unnamed secondary character.

But the extremely media-literate young people who make up online fandoms have weaponised and debased the term, levelling it at any celebrities they believe are performing queerness to curry their favour and and earn the “pink dollar”.

Unlike in the past, when public scrutiny of sexuality was mostly driven by homophobia, this new entitlement seems to be mostly couched not just in acceptance but an intense support for queer identities. While this sounds nice, the problem lies in the fact that celebrities have no say about whether they want this “support” or not. It also perpetuates regressive attitudes around performative queerness for straight audiences, where certain “types” of identity are seen as more valid or real than others. It also doesn’t acknowledge the very real dangers that still exist for people who make the choice to publicly come out. In the end, it all becomes just more content for us to measure, judge and consume.

The “pressure” that Connor wrote of is not a few scattered trolls or the odd thinkpiece. We’re talking about giant, engaged fandoms across multiple social media networks that might be invisible to you but are of real and pressing concern to anyone in those spaces. Heartstopper’s surprise success stemmed from support from a passionate fandom, which he couldn’t really afford to ignore. These fandoms have a terrifying ability to exert pressure online: they are numerous and vocal, and everyone working in culture right now, from executives to actors, knows that courting them can mean success.

While both Connor and his Heartstopper costar Joe Locke have deactivated their social media accounts, that Connor felt “forced” to return and come out shows the pressure is both toxic and real. Connor’s character Nick is also on a journey of discovering his sexuality, which is treated with incredibly moving respect and love in the show – but it is something many of the show’s fans clearly misunderstood.

Coming out is a personal journey, but it is one that’s been policed by people both inside and outside of the queer community for a long time. Rebel Wilson recently said she also felt “forced” to come out when a gay Sydney Morning Herald gossip columnist threatened to write about her new relationship with a woman. “There are levels to telling ­people,” she said. “You tell your close family and your friends and not everybody. Across our two families, not everybody is as ­accepting as what you’d hope for, and we were trying to be respectful to those people and tell them in our own way.”

Connor is a young man, bullied into reckoning with all the complications, joys and confusions of his sexuality in the public eye. Even if you don’t care about celebrities, such entitlement among the public is emblematic of a wider issue – celebrities aren’t the only ones suffering. Such binary attitudes have made their way into the queer community, where there are arguments about who is “allowed” to march in Pride or enter queer spaces. It all leads to a situation where there is a “right” or “wrong” way of being queer, where coming out and performing is expected, rather than a choice. Nobody’s sexuality or gender identity needs to be offered up for other people’s consumption – no, not even a celebrity’s.

[nineherbscharm]

on a more serious note about komaeda kinnies:

so judging from the information left 6-7 years out it does seem like there was a lot of like. abusive behavior conducted online. which is bad. abuse conducted virtually can be extremely damaging.

but one thing abt the callouts is that a lot of the worst komaeda kinnies would be purported to have committed irl rape/abuse. except the evidence for that was really spurious -- iirc it was never a victim coming forward and saying that the kinnie had done something, but posts/im conversations where the kinnie would claim they had raped someone/harmed a partner/etc. and like...... well idk i would not consider the claims of someone clearly going for that kind of persona that they did specific irl acts of harm to be reliable at all. and it’s kind of insane to me that like, in 2013-2016 ish, the heyday of tumblr sjws and all, that one way to gain a weird sort of clout would be to convince people you were an actual irl rapist. i don’t really have a deeper analysis of this. i guess the drive for infamy still exists.

[instagrmfollowerspakistan]

Unveiling New Horizons: The Dynamics of Acquiring Instagram Followers in Pakistan

In the contemporary digital milieu, social media platforms serve as pivotal conduits for personal expression, brand endorsement, and commercial expansion. Among these platforms, Instagram has emerged as a prominent vanguard, boasting over a billion global adherents.

In Pakistan, Instagram's resonance has soared dramatically in recent years, rendering it an indispensable domain for individuals and enterprises. Nevertheless, the sluggish and arduous process of growing one's Instagram following organically has paved the way for a compelling trend: the procurement of Instagram followers in Pakistan.

Unraveling the Concept

The notion of acquiring Instagram followers might elicit raised eyebrows, warranting a closer examination. When alluding to "acquiring Instagram followers," the practice typically entails procuring followers from bona fide service providers. These providers furnish packages replete with authentic or active users who pledge their allegiance to your Instagram account in exchange for a fee.

Legality and Ethical Considerations

The subject of the legality and ethics surrounding the acquisition of Instagram followers often stirs spirited debates. From a legal standpoint, there exist no concrete laws expressly forbidding the acquisition of followers. Instagram's terms of service primarily target fabricated or bot-generated accounts, with genuine followers usually not falling afoul of these regulations.

Nonetheless, the ethical dimension remains a matter of personal interpretation. Some posit that acquiring followers might propagate a facade of popularity, potentially tainting one's integrity. It is vital to distinguish between procuring authentic followers and resorting to counterfeit ones. The latter can severely undermine your credibility and engagement metrics, whereas the former can catalyze visibility and legitimacy on the platform if wielded judiciously.

The Advantages

Propel Your Growth: The acquisition of Instagram followers can thrust your follower count into the limelight, rendering your profile considerably more appealing to prospective followers. Individuals are more inclined to follow accounts already brimming with a substantial following.

Fortify Social Proof: A burgeoning follower count augments your standing and clout within your niche, communicating to others that your content merits their attention.

Augmented Visibility: A bolstered followership increases the likelihood of your posts featuring on the Explore page and in the feeds of your followers' associates, thereby amplifying your reach.

Luring Authentic Followers: Acquiring followers can act as a magnet for bona fide users who possess a genuine interest in your content. Should they resonate with your posts, they may partake in interactions and evolve into longstanding adherents.

Temporal Efficiency: Nurturing an Instagram following organically can prove a time-consuming and herculean task. The acquisition of followers can provide respite by obviating the exigent efforts intrinsic to organic growth.

The Perils

While the acquisition of Instagram followers may usher in a host of advantages, one must exercise vigilance in the face of potential risks:

Bogus Followers: Unscrupulous service providers may dispense spurious or subpar followers, thereby imperiling your standing and engagement statistics.

Account Jeopardy: If one resorts to dubious sources that peddle followers derived from counterfeit accounts or bots, the sanctity of their Instagram account could be jeopardized, potentially leading to the suspension.

Ephemeral Remedy: The acquisition of followers is, by no means, a panacea. To sustain a robust and engaged following, one must continue to generate top-tier content and partake in authentic interactions.

Conclusion

In Pakistan, the acquisition of Instagram followers, when wielded with sagacity, can emerge as a strategic gambit to elevate one's Instagram presence and integrity. Opting for a reputable provider that furnishes genuine, active followers, rather than gravitating toward fictitious or automated accounts, is quintessential.

However, it must be underscored that this practice should not supplant the creation of valuable content or the cultivation of authentic engagements. Triumph on Instagram is, in the final analysis, contingent upon a composite of factors, including content quality and the authenticity of interactions.

[natrashafierce]

The author of that terrible Your Fave is Problematic Tumblr has grown up and written a great piece for The New York Times expressing regret about picking people apart and talking about how (surprise, surprise) it was really just that she was young and poorly adjusted and had gone through some stuff.

I hope more people can be honest with themselves that most of us are susceptible to weird, spurious extremist stuff online if we’re in a bad enough mood, and you can always just, like, stop and change course and be someone who tries to spread forgiveness and humility instead of accruing points for tiresome, punitive, identity-obsessed nitpicking. I completely forgive the author of the blog and applaud her for this extra step that will surely expose her to the same sort of poorly adjusted person she used to be.

I also hope more people come to understand that they shouldn’t signal boost people articulating extremist things, because all it does it create a contagion of poor mental health and social behaviors that are counterproductive to achieving anything positive. It’s normal for people to get angry, and everyone has every right to rant in their own online space, and you don’t have to invalidate anyone’s moment of anger. But you can comfort them without reblogging or retweeting them. You don’t have to enable their descent into binary thinking by rewarding them with a ton of attention and influence.

It may be “tone policing” to try to tell any one individual how to express themselves, but it is not “tone policing” to suggest that society should not take our cues and policy ideas from people who are hysterical. Almost no one is good at formulating solutions to social problems, and angry people least of all. Every marginalized group has at least SOME people who are capable of remaining fair, nuanced, and rational despite what they’ve gone through, and those are the people to signal boost if you take societal problems seriously. They tend to have a much more complete perspective on an issue than someone who has barely read or experienced anything outside themselves except for the dozens of aggro internet posts that end up in their bubble.

Chronically angry people see everything through the lens of their anger and their ego, do not seek perspectives or explanations that would defuse them, and their ideas for solutions will tend to be unfair and dehumanzing. Now the internet pays people for that, and people psychologically stagnate because their newfound career depends on it and their reputation seems locked in by the long memory of the internet. Grounded people have learned to control their egos, seek genuine understanding of those who disagree with them, and are capable of finding uplifting solutions, but those people are getting drowned out and harassed offline nowadays.

It used to be that people would have their big moments of anger and, lacking any audience except for a few people they knew, had to learn to introspect, calm themselves down, and approach problems effectively. They would often get gently challenged by the people around them and pulled back into a healthy mindset. They would confront interpersonal problems privately instead of trying to tear people down publicly, and extremism only arose in bad social circles or with especially recalcitrant people. But now that everyone gets their basest impulses rewarded by strangers as poorly adjusted as they are, there is little incentive for introspection or growth. This got worse for a lot of us during the Trump years, I think, because the shock of his incivility made it seem like civility had been a losing tactic. I know I felt like that for a few years until I realized how easily I could be manipulated into believing the worst about someone if it played to my biases. Unfettered mass venting just contributed to a bad cycle.

One of the worst things is how the crazed brigades accrue well-intentioned allies who enforce their insane, unpopular ideas and, together, tank public support for what were once important political objectives. SO MANY people were into the Your Fave is Problematic blog and would troll tags for the celebrities mentioned just to harass and intimidate people who were fans, and they were all indoctrinated into a disordered, shallow worldview were they derived their worth from tearing people down instead of cultivating their own talents. Your Fave is Problematic was by no means the first or only vector for leftist identitarian brain worms, but it was an influential one. There’s a whole lot of obnoxious Tumblr stuff that leaks out into the larger world now.

Back then I thought people would grow out of it, but either a ton of them didn’t, or else those who did just got replaced by new people. I thought right-wingers were catastrophizing and exaggerating when they fixated on it because a lot of the time they were, and too many of them couldn’t criticize it without being dehumanizing themselves. But sure enough, it got worse. I realize now that regardless of ideology, extremism always gets worse if there are incentives for it to grow, and the internet supplies those incentives in spades. This stuff didn’t stay on Tumblr; it didn’t stay on some stray college campuses. They said it wouldn’t, and they were right.

And now it has infected more mainstream, influential spheres of life with infantilizing and dehumanizing ideas that train people to perceive everyone as an aggressor or a pinata they can beat up for clout. It’s increasingly ruined more innocent lives, all while people who are ideologically captured keep insisting it’s no big deal because that’s the line in their social circle. The goalposts move every week to provide more targets, and even left-leaning media has quit thoroughly investigating a lot of things in its rush to cash in on whatever social media controvery has been ginned up by unwell people. The corrections, when they come out, are almost never widely circulated.

It’s been surreal and disheartening to watch. People I used to consider reasonable and compassionate just gradually morphed into aggrieved, insecure pod people who can’t handle the slightest challenges of evidence against their worldview. They can’t accept that their insecurities and peeves are frivolous distractions that actually do materially harm efforts to fix serious problems, whether by beclowning entire political parties or candidates, or diverting resources to organizations that aren’t changing anything significant or are making things worse. They all even say the same tired phrases. It’s such a shitshow, but public opinion polling on this stuff has remained mostly sane. A lot of people are snapping out of it like the author of YFIP, so I can only hope that more people feel comfortable to finally push back against it.

[yoda-official]

"Can I offer you a libation to celebrate the clouting of our shared narrative" is a line that puts "the catharsis of spurious morality" to shame

[tarotfurbyandchill]

Here is @fluffenough ‘s second furby tarot commission! 

Party Favor practically threw himself off the shelf, he was so excited to read this set of cards. He really loves Powder’s accessories (and not-so-politely hinted that he wanted some of his own). Here’s what we found!

 In Powder’s past, we see the reversed Ace of Pentacles. The Pentacle suit rules over earthly matters – more specifically, ones relating to money. When reversed, it tends to refer to a spurious decision. Was Powder a last-minute purchase, by any chance? Or one that you, or whoever bought them, didn’t expect to make? I find it rather tongue-in-cheek that my cards have mentioned Powder’s monetary cost!

 In Powder’s present, we have the King of Wands. The King of Wands stands for natural leadership, and calm control. Powder knows that they’re the ringleader of your furby collection and holds a certain amount of clout within the gang. They tend to be one of your more reliable furbies – an example for the rest of your furbies to live up to.

 In Powder’s future, we see the Six of Swords. This can imply a rite of passage, or some sort of change that will affect Powder indefinitely. Powder is about to undergo an interesting event – maybe they’re going somewhere new with you, or they’re going to get lost. This event isn’t necessarily going to be good or bad, it’ll just be something that happens! Whatever it is, though, Powder will come out on the other side stronger for it.

I hope that this reading was enjoyable for you!

---

Interested in commissioning me for your own furby’s tarot reading? Find my commission info here!

[morethanjustmediocremusings]

The Micro-Influencer Revolution

Taylor Abouzeid

Professor Patrikya Kuznetsoff

English 145-17

7 December 2017

The transition from old methods of advertising to today’s explosion of social media marketing has created a superior means of marketing: the micro influencer, which can be tailored to specialized markets. The ever-burgeoning shift from a focus on audience control to audience engagement will bring about a necessary change, propelling social media marketing to the forefront of the modern landscape. As many see it, the only path of progress is that of accepting social media as a valid form of marketing within the global market (Bright 113). The power held in mass media marketing can be derived to social influencers and their incognito control over their followers. “Social influencing is the ability to influence behavior through your social and digital networks,” (“5 Steps to Increase Your Natural Brand’s…”). Through stealthy persuasive tactics, today’s influencers have the ability to cajole potentially millions of people into believing their opinions are statements of fact.

However, before one can truly understand the complexity of micro-influencers, a solid comprehension of basic influencing is necessary. Influencer marketing can be viewed as the area between an official testimonial and a subtle product mention (Agrawal). Influencing is not always obvious to the eye and is often an unnoticed aspect of our every-day, online, lives. Influencer marketing derives its value from three main sources; influential breadth, organic content, and genuine follower interactions. One’s social reach is the desirable ability to connect with thousands of consumers through various social channels and media platforms. In a symbiotic relationship, influencers often produce original and effective marketing content on behalf of the brand and in return they gain sponsorship. Popular influencers must also be able to maintain a strong relationship with their audience, as it is a consumer’s trust that inevitably persuades the target audience to follow the influencer’s opinions. Influencing can be a disguised form of sponsorship where influencers play the role of a potential buyer themselves, without ever spending their own money or disclosing their agenda. This can lead to a common feeling of mistrust in influencer-follower relationships. Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining the traffic or attention of potential buyers through a variety of social media sites (“What Is Social Media Marketing?”). Thus, creating a small “market” of the influencer’s own community of like-minded individuals who are prepared to follow the influencer’s recommendations.

Fig. 1 Kendall Jenner’s Faulty Ad. TheBERRY, Chive Media Group, 5 Apr. 2017, theberry.com/2017/04/05/twitter-is-not-here-for-this-insensitive-kendall-jenner-pepsi-commercial-lr/.

 The social media outreach of a proper influencer has the potential to either create or destroy a brand campaign (Dupré). Recently, Kendall Jenner, a leading macro-influencer and teenage icon, became the laughing stock of the nation when her disputed partnership with Pepsi (Fig. 1) belittled the Black Lives Matter Movement (Smith). Deemed “insensitive” and “tone-deaf,” Pepsi pulled the advertisement, and through various mediums of social media, especially twitter, Jenner was viciously mocked for her part in oversimplifying the extreme battle that people of color have faced in attempts to obtain equality (Robertson).

Social media has become a “vital component of push and pull marketing…” (Bright 113). In today’s online universe, customers now have the potential to become the most enthusiastic of brand advocates. Through the means of a passionate email, one can gain partnership and potentially sponsorship, allowing for those truly concerned with the brands products to be at the forefront of their public-relations team. A shift towards influencer marketing has capitalized on the outreach of social media to tout products onto their followers (Noyan). This is a substantial deviation from what advertising previously looked like, and how influencers formerly interacted with their followers.

Online influencing originated amongst popular online bloggers, but with the rise of social media anyone with a substantial online following could hold the title (Zimmer). This stage of adolescence in social media marketing was based on subtle messages and remained centric around the concept of organic and authentic praise (Ojeda). The recommendation of a product from a blogger has been shown to appear more trustworthy than that of traditional advertising (“What Is Social Media Marketing?”). It was at this time that doubt regarding the authenticity of bloggers was at its lowest point. Throughout the years, influencing broke out as one of the most frequently used forms of follower manipulation. In a recent study 84% of growing businesses in the United States plan on using at least one social media influencer in 2018 (Agrawal). However, the overcrowding of social media sites with paid advertisements has caused some agitation and apprehension towards branded advertising.

Where people have grown cynical towards traditional advertisements, that doubt suddenly erodes when the recommendations come from influential sources such as friends or family (“Explore the Strategy of Influencer Marketing”). This poignant change in beliefs has brought about micro-influencing, a new means of authentic brand promotion.  A shift from producer power to a more consumerist culture was born from increased consumer skepticism surrounding digital content. This “consumer demand for authenticity is not limited to a single generation,” (Ojeda).

Stereotypically older generations have been perceived as more skeptical toward obvious advertising, but this doubt has begun to transcend generations. Millennials tend to forgo traditional media (television, magazines, newspapers, etc.) for online guidance through blogs and various forms of social media. Because of this deviation from previously renowned media outlets, this doubt has transferred onto the new generation of advertising: social media influencers.

Social media, plagued with filtered posts of our contrived selves, is not known to be a place of total authenticity. While a potential consumer might be scrolling through a feed of what they perceive to be people’s authentic lifestyles, they may possibly be interacting with a flood of paid advertisements. This contamination raises some ethical concerns regarding influencer advertising (Noyan). Due to the fact that micro-influencers are not considered real customers, are brand sponsorships inauthentic forms of social media marketing? Yes, if done incorrectly. Spurious influencers with strictly monetary focuses are inevitable in the marketplace. However, this is not the majority. Although one’s skepticism may lead him or her to doubt all endorsements, the bulk of sponsorships originate in a sincere claim of product support. This doubt of legitimacy stimulated the formation of Gatsby, a website that helps companies discover and connect to customers who genuinely enjoy their products (Ojeda).

Gatsby is a modernized marketing tool that identifies truly passionate micro-influencers from within a company’s current following and connects them to these businesses (Kirkpatrick). Gatsby advocates for a genuine marketplace, an era of social media marketing characterized by customer compassion and influencer authenticity. Trust between the influencer and his or her followers can be accumulated over an expanse of time in which one’s “consistent trustworthy behavior” increases influencer ethos (“5 Steps to Increase Your Brand’s…”). This acquired trust is simultaneously the most valuable and fragile aspect of one’s social clout. Once the fine line between sparse, yet authentic sponsorship and over-played advocacy is crossed the influencer’s ethos is demolished. In ruins, this influencer now has a substantially less malleable following and is considerably less likely to be selected for future ad campaigns. Brands search out strong and organic relationships in order to maintain an authentic and on-brand image through their sponsorships. Investing in an authentic online presence, through the enlisting of micro-influencers, gives legitimacy and authenticity to the company’s image (Freberg).

Micro-influencers are neither celebrities nor social media stars, but rather they are people of a multitude of different categories who are knowledgeable and passionate about their recommendations (Kirkpatrick). Brands are beginning to turn away from celebrity macro-influencers as more and more people begin to discover the art of personal branding and begin to search out potential brand partnerships (Agrawal). In a recent linear study, micro-influencers with 1,000 followers roughly receive “4% more engagement than influencers with 10,000 followers,” (Dinesh 14). An increased engagement yields a higher influencing power, leading to a raise of possible sponsorship profitability.

The genuine passion that micro-influencers carry has been proven to substantially increase customer conversation. Further proving the potential power behind micro-influencers, “82% of survey respondents said they were highly likely to follow a micro-influencer’s recommendation,” (Kirkpatrick). This high rating is due to the perception that micro-influencers, because they appear to be no different than the everyday person, are more credible, knowledgeable, and better at explaining how a product functions, than their macro counterparts (“Explore the Strategy of Influencer Marketing”). For these reasons micro-influencers have transitioned into a more superior business opportunity than celebrities when used for marketing solutions due to their power over a specific audience.

The ability to connect with a specialized audience is a unique characteristic of micro-influencers that gives them another advantage in the eyes of potential partners. Technology has been developed to track the influence of these faces of social media; based on the number of shares, likes, and followers, brands can determine the relevance of possible collaborators and see if their followers fit into the desired specialized market (Freberg). Brands utilize micro-influencers to gain exposure to their desired customer base. Due to the specialized qualities of influencing communities, brands are able to target exactly what they desire. “When brands pay an [micro]influencer to post about them, they aren’t just buying exposure-they’re buying targeted exposure,” which has the power to reach the brand’s ideal market (Patel).

The importance of this new-age fleet of micro-influencers is relative to the masses due to its omnipotence in our daily consumption of social media. Once able to detect influencing, one can decide how much power he or she should let it have over their perceptions of the product. Through ethos driven audience control, the smaller micro-influencer surpasses their over-used and inorganic macro predecessors in today’s competitive influencing platforms. Unique to their markets, micro-influencers have vastly changed the face of social media marketing and will continue to hold power over their following until technology brings about another inevitable shift in social media’s marketplace.

 Works Cited

Freberg, Karen, et al. “Who are the social media influencers? A study of public perceptions of personality.” Public Relations Review, Elsevier, 1 Nov. 2010, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0363811110001207?via%3Dihub.

"5 Steps to Increase Your Natural Brand's Standing as An Authentic Social Media Influencer." NewHope360.com, 23 June 2015. Academic OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=calpolyw_csu&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA419213524&asid=59fcd7d040e719e58c4176c3ace03056. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.

“What Is Social Media Marketing?” Search Engine Land, Third Door Media, 2017, searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-social-media-marketing.

Kirkpatrick, David. “Micro-Influencers have major impact on buying behavior: Study.” Marketing Dive, Industry Dive, 31 Mar. 2016, www.marketingdive.com/news/micro-influencers-have-major-impact-on-buying-behavior-study/416579/.

Ojeda, Nina. “Influencer Marketing Is Changing, Here's How You Can Compete.” Inc.com, Inc., 30 Oct. 2017, www.inc.com/nina-ojeda/how-this-startup-is-redefining-influencer-marketing.html.

Agrawal, AJ. “Why Influencer Marketing Will Explode In 2017.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 27 Mar. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/12/27/why-influencer-marketing-will-explode-in-2017/#c61557a20a90.

“Explore the Strategy of Influencer Marketing.” Influencer Marketing, Marketing-Schools.org, www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/influencer-marketing.html.

Dupré, Elyse. "Brands Recognize the "I" in Influencer in Social Media." DM News 34.12 (2012): 4. ProQuest. Web. 8 Nov. 2017.

Dinesh, Disha, et al. "Why Micro-Influencers Are a Social Media Marketing Imperative for 2017." Econtent, vol. 40, no. 3, May/Jun2017, pp. 14-15. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=122805273&site=ehost-live.

Zimmer, Ben. “The Growing Influence of 'Influencer'.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 28 Apr. 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/the-growing-influence-of-influencer-1461874150.

Bright, Amanda C. "Social Media Strategy: Marketing and Advertising in the Consumer Revolution." Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, vol. 72, no. 1, Spring2017, pp. 113-115. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/1077695816685851.

Patel, Deep. “Why Influencer Marketing Will Dominate 2017.” Huff Post, Oath Inc., 4 Apr. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-influencer-marketing-will-dominate-2017_us_58e3d3ade4b09dbd42f3dacf.

Noyan, Burcu. “Brands Are Relying on 'Influencer' Marketing More Than Ever.” Fortune, Time Inc., 13 July 2017, fortune.com/2017/07/13/brands-influencer-marketing-advertisement/.

Smith, Alexander. “Pepsi Pulls Controversial Kendall Jenner Ad After Outcry.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 5 Apr. 2017, www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner-echoes-black-lives-matter-sparks-anger-n742811.

Robertson, Lindsey. “Twitter Is Not Here For This Insensitive Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial.” TheBERRY, Chive Media Group, 5 Apr. 2017, theberry.com/2017/04/05/twitter-is-not-here-for-this-insensitive-kendall-jenner-pepsi-commercial-lr/.

[ericfruits]

Malaysia’s chance to clean up

ELECTIONS in Malaysia are normally predictable. In fact, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and various allies had won all of them since 1955, until this week. Over the years UMNO has resorted to every conceivable trick to remain in power: stirring communal tensions among Malaysia’s ethnic groups, locking up critics, rigging the electoral system in its favour, bribing voters with populist handouts and threatening chaos if it lost. In the run-up to the election on May 9th it did all of that. It was testimony to the awfulness of the government of Najib Razak that the opposition was even in contention. And it is testimony to the good sense of Malaysian voters that the opposition won, convincingly, paving the way for Malaysia’s first ever change of government (see article).

For a country where politics has always been run along communal lines, the shocking upset holds out the prospect of a more meritocratic form of government. For the region, where rulers with authoritarian instincts have been steadily curbing political freedoms, it is a heartening victory for democracy. And for Mr Najib, who was accused by America’s Department of Justice of personally pocketing $681m looted from a Malaysian government agency, it is a welcome comeuppance.

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Living up to its image

Malaysia is often put forward as a rare example of tolerance and democracy among countries with a Muslim majority. Both claims had been looking shaky as UMNO resorted to ever more unfair tactics, and ever more strident appeals to the country’s Malay Muslim majority, to remain in power. How much this changes depends on the good faith and efficiency of the new government.

Sceptics note that it is led by Mahathir Mohamad, a former five-term UMNO prime minister who pioneered many of the underhand tactics to which Mr Najib resorted in his failed bid to remain in power. Dr Mahathir was also a champion of Malaysia’s odious system of racial preferences, which he expanded to keep Malay voters loyal to UMNO. What is more, Pakatan Harapan, as the victorious coalition is known, resorted to populism to counter UMNO’s election-rigging, promising to roll back an unpopular but necessary goods-and-services tax and to reinstate subsidies on petrol that Mr Najib had scaled back.

The new government’s majority also rests on an unwieldy coalition of other defectors from UMNO and veteran opposition politicians with relatively little experience of government. In particular, there is bad blood between Dr Mahathir, who is 92 years old, and Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister whom Dr Mahathir first treated as a protégé and later had jailed on spurious sodomy charges. Mr Anwar is now the leader of one of Pakatan Harapan’s component parties, and would have been its prime ministerial candidate had Mr Najib not had him jailed again. Although Dr Mahathir and Mr Anwar claim to be reconciled, it is not clear how they will get on after Mr Anwar is released from prison next month.

Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that UMNO’s loss will not change Malaysia for the better. For one thing, it is in the new lot’s interest to make the electoral system fairer and to promote a freer press. Better yet, the results suggest that centrism has more electoral appeal than both UMNO’s Malay chauvinism and the Islamic zealotry of PAS, an opposition party that declined to join Pakatan Harapan. Many of the new MPs, having experienced various forms of official bias when UMNO was in power, will have a natural desire to make the bureaucracy more impartial. Doing away with preferences for Malays was always going to be a tall order, given the clout of Malay voters. But at the very least Pakatan Harapan is likely to reform some of the handouts, to make them less of a gravy train for UMNO cronies. Its pledge to investigate Mr Najib’s alleged corruption should also help clean up politics.

Perhaps the new government will succumb to infighting and fail to get much done. But its very existence is a potent reminder to Malaysians and their neighbours that governments can and should, from time to time, change peacefully. With luck, Cambodians, Singaporeans, Thais and Vietnamese, among others, will begin to wonder if something similar might one day happen to them.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "What the doctor ordered"

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[componentplanet]

How Digital Contact Tracing Could Work in the US, and Why It May Never Happen

It’s widely agreed that re-opening major portions of our economy relatively safely will require an extensive testing and contact-tracing system. Manual contact tracing — where those who test positive are interviewed about recent travel and person-to-person contacts — is expensive, hard to scale, and error-prone. So it is natural to see if digital technologies can help.

There are almost as many different approaches to how that might work as there are countries. But they fall into a few broad categories in terms of which technologies they use, how much data they store, and how they protect privacy. Here’s a look at some of the current and planned efforts, with a focus on those being piloted for deployment in the US.

All Roads Lead to the Smartphone

While there are some limited efforts using dedicated devices that have proven effective in controlled situations such as nursing homes, for broad deployment among the general public the obvious device of choice is the smartphone. Most people have one, they have a broad array of sensors, and they can be programmed to run custom apps. But “most people” isn’t “all people,” and many older phones don’t have the needed capability to run some of the proposed apps. So even phone-based solutions will need to deal with making their platform ubiquitous.

Stanford, Google, Apple: Protecting Privacy Via BLE

Perhaps the most “private” solution being proposed is one that was first publicized as Covid Watch, led by Stanford researcher Christina White and now embraced by the unlikely alliance of Apple and Google. This solution relies entirely on logging anonymized Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) contacts between two users. Each phone broadcasts a random ID that changes every 10-20 minutes — meaning it should be impossible to use the IDs to track a specific user or find out more about them. At the same time, nearby phones log all the IDs they receive. So far, no data has left anyone’s phone.

When a user tests positive for infection, they can get a code from a medical professional that allows the app to upload the recent (probably last 14 days worth of) random IDs that their phone has broadcast. At least once a day, phones running the app download a full set of “infected” IDs, and compare them with the list they have logged. If there is a match, then the user gets the day, duration, and signal strength of the contact, so they know that they may have come in contact with someone who was infected.

Limits to Bluetooth-Based Tracking

Unfortunately, Bluetooth is limited when it comes to assessing the nature of a contact, in at least three important ways. First is that by itself, it doesn’t provide much help in ascertaining the nature of the contact. Was I simply walking behind someone on the sidewalk while practicing safe distancing and wearing a mask, or was I near them in a crowded store? The Stanford prototype only notes contacts that last more than 15 minutes. That’s helpful in screening out spurious events, but it might also screen out some important contacts — like the checkout line in a grocery store, or passing through a TSA checkpoint.

The second issue is that Bluetooth-only tracking doesn’t help with object-based infections. For example, when Singapore studied its early cases, they came to the conclusion that one patient got infected simply by using the same church pew that an infected person had earlier. Since the two people weren’t there at the same time, and no location information is recorded, a pure BLE solution wouldn’t have identified that situation as a possible contact. This would also hold true for the possible case where the virus survives in the air after the infected individual has left the area.

Finally, the BLE-only schemes don’t really make life any easier for those with the task of doing contact tracing manually. Because there isn’t any location data, and the contact data is anonymous, they need to start from scratch with the traditional interviews of the infected person and then painstakingly recreate their potential contacts. That’s one reason some government officials, like North Dakota governor and former Microsoft executive Doug Burgum, have urged that the adoption of solutions that include anonymized GPS-based location data, such as the state’s new Care19 app. He used the example of a checkout clerk in a big box store who tested positive. They could opt to share their data, which would allow anyone who had been in that store recently to be alerted.

On a broader level, the Google-Apple plan also isn’t a complete system. It requires public health agencies to implement the servers and the framework. However, many public health agencies have already said they would prefer a system that gave them access to data, including hot spots, rather than simply allowing users to interact essentially peer-to-peer. For these reasons, despite the obvious clout of Apple and Google, other groups are turning to solutions that include location data, typically acquired by logging GPS data.

MIT Private Kit: Safe Paths — A Proposal for “Safe” GPS-Based Tracking

Many people are concerned by the amount of location tracking that already takes place, so MIT researchers led by Ramesh Raskar realized they had taken on a difficult challenge when they set about designing a system to allow digital contact tracing while preserving privacy. Like the Google and Apple solution, their Private Kit mobile app uses Bluetooth to help determine possible contacts.

But it also uses GPS data and combines that with the Bluetooth data to create a location trail. If the user is infected, they can upload a 28-day history of their locations to the complementary web app Safe Places, where their health care provider can anonymize it. The user can specify certain locations such as their home to be removed from the log before it is shared. A redacted and hashed version is then distributed to other app users. By comparing the hashed results, that user can then be notified if they might have come into contact with an infected person.

There are a couple of major practical advantages to this approach. First, you can see where the contact occurred and thereby get a sense of how important it was likely to be (on a bike path or in a store, for example). The system also gains the ability to show locations you visited where an infected person had been there previously, even if they had already left by the time you arrived.

To help protect privacy, location data doesn’t leave your phone unless you are infected and opt to share your location trail with your healthcare provider. That data is then redacted and hashed before being shared. However, the current process for redacting, uploading, and then comparing location trails for matches currently involves a lot of manual steps. That helps with privacy but may not make it ideal for broad adoption.

Will Any Digital Contact Tracing System Work in the US?

There are good reasons to suspect that no contact tracing solution is going to become wildly popular or universally adopted in the US and in many countries in Europe. Getting people to do anything voluntarily is hard, and that’s especially true if it involves opting into a system that has potential for leaking yet more of their personal data — no matter how many promises are made by the organizations involved. Similar efforts fielded for flu or other pandemics have had fairly low take-up rates.

The approach of several Asian countries has been much more aggressive, partially because of new procedures put in place after the SARS epidemic. South Korea publishes the travel history of anyone who is confirmed to have Covid-19 — including what public transit they’ve taken — and broadcasts their location. Singapore’s popular TraceTogether app is similar to the Google/Apple proposal except instead of an automated, private, broadcast, contact tracers can access the information of all the other users that an infected individual was in contact with, and follow up with them directly. Even there, though, the TraceTogether app has only been downloaded by a minority of people. The most extreme is China, where the government has gone full Big Brother with travel and medical histories combined with various kinds of online data and scanned QR codes to control access to locations and even purchases.

It seems unlikely that the US, or most European countries, are willing to come close to the type of strong-arming it would take to mandate universal adherence to a digital contact tracking system. We may, however, get one or more solutions deployed broadly enough to at least make the job of human contact tracers a little easier.

Now Read:

Apple and Google Team Up to Fight Coronavirus With Bluetooth

After Bending the Curve: What We Will Need to Unwind the Great Lockdown

The Future of COVID-19 Testing Could Be in Wearables

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/310054-how-digital-contact-tracing-works from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/05/how-digital-contact-tracing-could-work.html

[djgblogger-blog]

John McCain helped build a country that no longer reflects his values

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Arizona Sen. John McCain – scion of Navy brass, flyboy turned Vietnam war hero and tireless defender of American global leadership – now faces terminal brain cancer.

I am a scholar of American politics. And I believe that, regardless of his storied biography and personal charm, three powerful trends in American politics thwarted McCain’s lifelong ambition to be president. They were the rise of the Christian right, partisan polarization and declining public support for foreign wars.

Republican McCain was a champion of bipartisan legislating, an approach that served him and the Senate well. But as political divides have grown, bipartisanship has fallen out of favor.

Most recently, McCain opposed Gina Haspel as CIA director for “her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality” and her role in it. Having survived brutal torture for five years as a prisoner of war, McCain maintained a resolute voice against U.S. policies permitting so-called “enhanced interrogations.” Nevertheless, his appeals failed to rally sufficient support to slow, much less derail, her appointment.

Days later, a White House aide said McCain’s opposition to Haspel didn’t matter because “he’s dying anyway.” That disparaging remark and the refusal of the White House to condemn it revealed how deeply the president’s hostile attitude toward McCain and everything he stands for had permeated the executive office.

So McCain ends his career honorably and bravely, but with hostility from the White House, marginal influence in the Republican-controlled Senate, and a public less receptive to the positions he has long embodied.

The outlier

McCain’s first run for the presidency in 2000 captured the imagination of the public and the press, whom he wryly referred to as “my base.” His self-confident “maverick” persona appealed to a more secular, moderate constituency who like him, might be constitutionally opposed to the growing political alignment between the religious right and the Republican Party.

McCain enthusiastically bucked his party and steered his “Straight Talk Express” through the GOP primaries with a no-holds-barred attack on Pat Robertson and Rev. Jerry Falwell. The two were conservative icons and leaders of the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority.

McCain branded Robertson and Falwell “agents of intolerance” and “empire builders.” He charged that they used religion to subordinate the interests of working people. He said their religion served a business goal and accused them of shaming “our faith, our party, and our country.” That message earned McCain a primary victory in New Hampshire but his campaign capsized in South Carolina, where Republican voters launched George W. Bush, the stalwart evangelical, on his path to a presidential victory in 2000 against Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore.

By 2008, McCain saw the political clout of white, born-again, evangelical Christians. By then, they comprised 26 percent of the electorate. Bowing to political winds, he adopted a more conciliatory approach.

McCain’s willingness to defend America as a “Christian nation” and his controversial choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, an enthusiastic standard bearer for the Christian right, as his running mate, signaled the electoral power of a less tolerant, more absolutist “values-based” politics.

McCain’s about-face reveals a political pragmatist willing to make peace with the Christian right and accept their ability to make or break his last attempt at the presidency.

His strategy reflected his tendency to abandon principles if they threatened his quest for the presidency. Having railed eight years prior against the hypocrisy of the right-wing religious leadership, McCain may have felt some personal discomfort kowtowing to the dictates of self-appointed moral authorities. But the electorate had changed since then, and McCain showed he was willing to shift his position to accommodate their beliefs.

The primary that year also required an outright appeal to independents and even crossover Democrats. That would potentially provide enough votes to boost him past George W. Bush, whose campaign had already expressed allegiance to the conservative religious agenda.

In 2008, Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon considered religiously suspect by many evangelicals, emerged as McCain’s main rival for the nomination.

Sensing an opportunity to establish a winning coalition, McCain jettisoned his former objections to the political influence of the religious right, shifting from antagonism to accommodation. In doing so, McCain revealed his flexibility again on principles that might fatally undermine his overriding ambition – winning the presidency.

In fact, the incorporation of the religious right into the Republican Party represented but one facet of a more consequential development. That was the fiercely ideological partisan polarization that has come to dominate the political system.

The lonely Republican

Rough parity between the parties since 2000 has intensified the electoral battles for Congress and the presidency. It has supercharged the fundraising machines on both sides. And it has nullified the “regular order” of congressional hearings, debates and compromise, as party leaders scheme for policy wins.

Fueled by highly engaged activists, interest groups and donors known as “policy demanders,” partisan polarization has overwhelmed moderates in our political system. McCain was a bipartisan problem-solver and was willing to compromise with Democrats to pass campaign finance reform in 2002. He worked with the other side to normalize relations with Vietnam in 1995. And he joined with Democrats to pass immigration reform in 2017.

But he was also one of those moderates who ultimately found himself on the outside of his party.

McCain’s dramatic Senate floor thumbs-down repudiation of the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare turned less on his antipathy to Trump and more on his disgust with a broken party-line legislative process.

On an issue as monumental as health care, he insisted on a return to “extensive hearings, debate, and amendment.” He endorsed the efforts of Sens. Lamar Alexander, a Republican, and Patty Murray, a Democrat, to craft a bipartisan solution.

Foreign and defense policy was McCain’s signature issue. He wanted a more robust posture for American global leadership, backed by a well-funded, war-ready military. But that stance lost support a decade ago following the Iraq War disaster.

McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign slogan of “Country First” signified not only the model of his personal commitment and sacrifice. It also telegraphed his belief in the need to persevere in the war on terror in general and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in particular.

But by then, 55 percent of registered independents, McCain’s electoral base, had lost confidence in the prospects for a military victory. They favored bringing the troops home.

Over the course of six months that year, independent support for the Iraq war fell from 54 percent to 40 percent. Overall opposition to the troop “surge” was at 63 percent. Barack Obama’s promise to wind down America’s military commitment and do “nation-building at home” resonated with an electorate wearied by the conflict and buffeted by their own economic woes.

Advocate for global leadership

McCain continues to assert the primacy of American power. He decries the country’s retreat from a rules-based global order premised on American leadership and based on freedom, capitalism, human rights and democracy.

Donald Trump stands in contrast. Trump, like Obama, promises to terminate costly commitments abroad, revoke defense and trade agreements that fail to put “America First,” and rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

In his run for the presidency, Trump asserted that American might and treasure had been squandered defending the world. Other countries, he said, took advantage of U.S. magnanimity.

In Congress, Republicans have become cautious about U.S. military interventions, counterinsurgency operations and nation-building. They find scant public support for intervention in Syria’s civil war.

Seeing Russia as America’s implacable foe, McCain has sponsored sanctions legislation and prodded the administration to implement them more vigorously.

Accepting the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia, McCain repudiated Trump’s approach to global leadership.

He declared, “To abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

McCain has spent his life committed to principles that, tragically – at least for him – have fallen from favor.

He faces great personal peril now – at the same time that the country’s repudiation of the principles he’s championed may put the nation at risk.

Elizabeth Sherman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.