What makes something go viral?
(
https://www.ted.com/talks/dao_nguyen_what_makes_so…
)
Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media
Why do we watch TV? | Uses and Gratification theory explained
1
CMNS 2180 – Read Think Engage Package
Week 2 – Defining Corporate Communication
Hi there. Welcome to your first Read Think Engage Package for the course. My goal is to provide you
with this single document as a tool to guide your learning and activity each week. In these packages, I’ll
give some summary of what we are learning, instruct you to read certain things, and ask you to
complete certain tasks. Just follow along!
Journals
A note about the weekly journals. In the packages, you will find Journal Tasks. These tasks must be
submitted each week on Thursday evenings.
To make these submissions, I recommend that you create a Journal_WeekX document for each week
and collect your responses to the Journal tasks in that document. Some weeks there might be one larger
task and some weeks a couple of smaller ones. Formatting is not important here – these are journals
and notes. I just want to see your ideas and engagement – although I do appreciate nice grammar as I
was an English major many year ago. Please submit 1 Word Document that collects your Journal work
for that week.
If you don’t have Word, please consider taking advantage of TRU’s access to Office 365 for all students.
The link is on Moodle. Or, I will take PDF as a last resort if there is a technical emergency.
Ok, let’s get started.
Part A – Putting the Social into Social Media Communication
In this opening segment, we’ll identify some of the key social, cultural and political issues that surround
our use of social media communication. These, along with the theoretical questions explored in Part B,
will form a foundation for our study of particular contexts and topics.
Read/Listen
1. Watch the video “Building Blocks of Social Media.” This will introduce some of the key issues
we will explore.
2. Now go ahead and read Ch. 1 of your textbook.
3. Listen to my Podcast a – The Social of Social Media Communication. You can watch along with
the slides if you want to.
Engage. For you, to help you learn. Not for submission.
As prompted in the podcast, spend some time reflecting on your own use and engagement with social
media. We’ll do this a lot through the term. At this point, though, I want you specifically to think
about two things:
1. Where you get your information from? How authoritative and diverse is this information? Do
you trust it? Why?
2. How do you use social media communication for identity construction and community
building?
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PART B – Communication theory and social media communication
Read/Listen
1. Watch the video “Uses and Gratification.” This video briefly but succinctly outlines how we
can use theory to begin to explain our patterns of engagement with social media
communication.
2. Now, to apply what you saw in the first video, Watch the short video “What makes something
go viral?.” Here the producer from Buzzfeed talks about cultural cartography; we need to
really start understanding how and why we use social media communication – what do we
get from this.
3. Time to read Ch. 2 from your textbook.
4. Now listen to my Podcast b – Theory and social media communication. You can follow along
with the slides if you like.
Journal – Submit.
You have two tasks this week for your Journal, related to the short videos you’ve been watching.
The idea here is to use principles from the videos to get you thinking about your own engagement
with social media!
1. Rewatch the Building Blocks of Social Media video and the Uses and Gratification Video.
2. As you watch, fill in the table I’ve pasted below.
3. Submit the completed table to the Journal assignment by Thursday night.
Building Blocks of Social Media.
In the video, they identify 7 “building blocks” shaping engagement through social media
communication. For each one listed, consider briefly how important this function is in your own
social media use and why; does it vary depending on your personal vs professional use of social
media?
Identity. How much disclosure/sharing. How much
personal information/Privacy?
Conversation. How much engagement?
Sharing. How users exchange information?
Presence. How you can track/see others’
accessibility. Status/location/availability. Needed?
Relationships. How users are connected? Nurturing
or making new connections? How important is
relationship-building?
Reputation. How are brands/people viewed? How
3
is this measured? Endorsements, reviews etc.
Groups. How do individuals manage their social
relationships/contacts? Categories? How to
manage groups?
Video – Uses and Gratification.
This theory assumes audience is active participant in choices around use and consumption of media,
to fulfill 4 primary needs.
For each one, provide an example of how you use social media to fulfill this need and reflect on
whether you think it does a good job at this!
• Surveillance – seeking information. How do
you do this? What do you look for? What
curiosities does it satisfy?
•
Sense of Personal Identity. Reinforce your
own values and beliefs. Help us discover
who we are. How do you do this?
•
Personal Relationships. At times we get
lonely – use media to connect/engage.
Through media, we can make bonds with
media figures/characters (even in mass
media), but now sense of
interaction/engagement. How do you do
this?
•
Diversion. We need something to pass
time, distract, escape etc. What do you do
for distraction?
Congratulations! You’ve finished this week.
A reminder:
•
Have you submitted your Journal?
Exploring the ‘social’ in
Social Media
The Plan
• Introduce key
issues/debates/anxieties that
surround the use of social media
communication
• Place these in the context of your
own media diet
• Posit a couple of arguments about
what is ‘new’
In the next decade, will public discourse
online become more or less shaped by
bad actors, harassment, trolls, and an
overall tone of griping, distrust, and
disgust?– Pew Research Center
(@pewinternet, 2019)
I think anyone on the internet with
eyeballs at this time and place is a
bargain. Because it’s so new, no one really
knows what they’re worth.– Logan Paul
(@LoganPaul, 2016)
We live in a time where brands are people
and people are brands.– Brian Solis
(@briansolis, 2013)
Key Issues and Debates
•
Trust. Traditional vs. Social news outlets and other forms of “official” information and content
•
Amplification. Impact with of course both accurate and inaccurate information. How/why s/t goes viral.
•
Collective Intelligence. Growth of knowledge through crowd but also “mob justice”
•
Role of Media Gatekeeping vs Raw content. Representation of diverse voices, mis/information.
•
Political and Cultural contexts. Social media boundaries/politics despite apparently borderless reach
•
Media Literacy. Can we accurately and effectively interpret the content and media?
•
Addiction models of social media. Social and economic implications
•
Surveillance and data collection. User vs. Product.
•
Identify Formation. Self-identification and community alignment through social communication.
Reflect on your media diet …
•
Think carefully about how you consume information – specifically hot information like politics, health,
social issues. What sources do you rely on? Is there a range of sources?
•
To what extend do you rely on social media feeds to shape and/or confirm your knowledge and
opinions?
•
How active are you in seeking out a range of different viewpoints on issues? How do you do it?
Experiment with your social media feeds – consciously look for information on an issue that you may
not agree with. How did that go?
•
How salient is social media communication in performing and developing your sense of self and
community identification?
Mechanics of Social Media communication
Blah …
Blah …
“networked individuals
engaging in interpersonal, yet
mediated, communication.”
Storytelling as social media communication?
• Personal and professional shifts in how we tell stories
• How do we construct our self narratives?
• How do we construct our brands?
• What does a narrative look like?
• Rethink the nature of agenda-setting function of narrative
• TRUST
• “The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals
that despite a strong global economy and
near full employment, none of the four societal
institutions that the study measures –
government, business, NGOs and media – is
trusted.
• The cause of this paradox can be found in
people’s fears about the future and their role
in it, which are a wake-up call for our
institutions to embrace a new way of
effectively building trust: balancing
competence with ethical behaviour”
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
Social networking sites (SNS)
• web-based services that allow individuals to
• (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a
bounded system,
• (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they
share a connection, and
Self-construction
Self –presentation through connection
• (3) view and traverse their list of connections and
those made by others within the system. The nature Distribution
and nomenclature of these connections may vary
from site to site.
•
• (boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 211)
of identity through community
• While personal branding has become popular, the new mobilesocial media may be best reflected by singer Taylor Swift as an
“UnBrand” – “a symbol or emblem to a group of people” that
begins as “blank space, allowing various groups of fans to
identify with her and project their ideal self” (Honjo, 2016,
para. 6).
Relational
Expectations
“When it comes to social media communication, individuals
present themselves online, and use a constructed identity
for impression management in relationships. “Social
networking sites, such as Facebook, are particularly
interesting to communication researchers because they are
dedicated specifically to forming and managing impressions,
as well as engaging in relational maintenance and
relationship-seeking behaviors” (Rosenberg & Egbert, 2011,
p. 2).”
• Existing inter-personal connections can move into online
spaces
• New connections based in interest (games, fan groups,
politics) can be made in online spaces
• New ambiguity in self-disclosure – not a question of
anonymity, but that identity can be altered – versions of
self – in amplified ways
• Fluidity and instability of identity opens up potential for
unbounded social interaction but also amplifies trust
issues
Identityconstruction
Identity through act
of Disclosure
• Acts of disclosure (relative control) key to degrees of
relationship formation
• Online presence created through acts of disclosure that
are continuous and ongoing and expected
• Consider distinctions between sharing and disclosure –
the former does not always indicate the latter
• We seek interpersonal connections and to explain
ourselves and to understand others
• This need to interactivity is the internal logic of social
media communication
• How does it meet/exploit our desire for connection?
Interactivity
Community/
Community
construction
• Unprecedented potential for community construction and
engagement
• Potential for opportunities for new stories, new acts of
cultural production and change
• Need to better understand role of platforms, but also the
relationships between online community engagement and
material change
• How communities self-identify through group building,
through cultural production, inclusion/exclusion, etc.
• Potter world having a tough time with this right now as an
example).
• Social interaction theory looks at links between popular or
positive traits and judgements of sincerity (trust) – links to
influence/leadership online
• Blurred boundaries of cultural consumption and cultural
production as forms of communication. Reshapes how we
understand roles of identity construction and
representation.
Behavior and social
settings
• Examine relationships in and between social networks for
culture-level examinations of behaviours, trends, attitudes
• IE – do members of political network suggest relational
connection to other social issues?
Relational Patterns
Influence and
Leadership
• What is needed to secure and amplify influence within
networked environment?
• Examine relationship between need to ground influence or
momentum within virtual communities to live material
events
• Performative vs. substantial activism using social media
communication?
Memes are thought to compete for
attention through imitation and
iteration:
Memes (more next week!)
• Memes are “understood as
cultural information that passes
along from person to person, yet
gradually scales into a shared
social phenomenon.”
• They “reproduce by various
means of imitation.”
• They are interesting because of
“their diffusion through
competition and selection.”