It’s All Good, Even With the Bad and the Ugly

As Strategic Communications 6630, Emerging Media comes to a close this term, I reflect on a blog post a few weeks ago that I entitled “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” Just today while watching the news on television, I am reminded of many trends that we have covered in this class. One story featured a threat to a local high school that transpired and was communicated to us through various media.  First of all, someone had gotten into the high school’s Google account and posted something threatening, leading students, parents and some personnel to think that something dangerous might happen at the school.  The school system committed to crisis control by alerting stakeholders via Facebook to explain what had happened and reassured everyone that steps are being taken to protect the campus.  Technology was used to cause chaos and technology was used for crisis communication. 

A positive story that I read today featured a little boy traveling with his family who lost his beloved stuffed rabbit.  A family found the toy and started a Facebook account to try to find its owner.  The social media post spread wide enough that it finally reached the little boy’s family who lived several states from where it was lost, and he was joyously reunited with his stuffed rabbit. 

Daily, whether through television, YouTube or social media, emerging media trends are responsible for so many experiences that weren’t possible years ago.  Of course, years ago, the person who posed the threat to the high school would not have had access to the Google account to make a threat that spread so rapidly.  Dangers to institutions like this were not exposed as quickly and crisis communication was not handled as quickly and widespread before the advent of real-time media that we have today.  The little boy who was reunited with his favorite toy probably would not have seen it again because years ago, communication was not shared so fast and globally as it is today. 

People will use things for good and bad.  With the enormous wealth of emerging media and all of the good that it does for the world, it is unfortunate that some will misuse it for bad causes.  We have learned how emerging media is helping to teach underprivileged children in remote areas.  New technology is helping us to detect and cure diseases.  New media is allowing us to crowdsource for medicine, business, education, crime-solving, and yes, communication among many other things.  Emerging media is allowing us to connect with new friends and associates all over the world in an instant. It is a great time to be a communicator, and of course a strategic communication professional. I’m just glad that the positive gains far outweigh the negative and look forward to the awesome possibilities that will be at hand with the amazing emerging media discoveries that are taking place every day.    

A Child’s Curiosity, the Wonders and Possibilities

When a seven-year-old asks you out of the blue if Santa Claus really exists, what do you say? I think I managed to answer that question by saying that to some people he exists and to some people he doesn’t.  My seven-year-old niece apparently wasn’t satisfied with that answer.  Little did I know that while she was playing with my phone when she asked me about Santa Claus, she googled an answer.  She never said a word but did her own research and found a satisfactory answer to the question that a lot of children have.  This week in Strategic Communication 6630 we are looking at children, technology and learning.  It is a fascinating topic and considering that I spend time with many young children personally and professionally, much of the information I’ve learned this week has proven to be significantly important to me in several capacities. Technology increasingly creates learning possibilities for children all over the world, but there are risks involved. We as strategic communications professionals and caregivers must remain vigilant about developing strategies that will help our children to grow with technology and be harmed less by it.   

Days later when I was searching for some information on my phone, I saw that my niece had typed in the question “Is Santa Claus real?” At first I laughed and then I was amazed at her resourcefulness.  Unlike her, I wasn’t raised with technology, but I have worked with it for a long time.  Yet there are times when I have a question or need information and forget that I have a world of information in the palm of my hand.  It blew me away that a seven-year-old intuitively googled the question that I didn’t answer to her satisfaction.  This is just one example of the amazing ways that children adapt to and utilize technology today in a good way.  I think that even though she is only seven, technology is teaching her to be creative when she is using it to color, listen to songs, watch certain content, learn school subjects, and, oh, yes, research Santa Claus and other topics that adults can’t seem to adequately help her with.  On the other hand there are harmful effects.  Our reading and video features this week gave us important information on the positive and negative aspects of children’s increasing use of technology.

Experiments by educational researcher Sugata Mitra throughout India proved that no matter what language they spoke, when children were presented with technology they adapted and learned to use it easily even if its instructions were not in their native language.  Children learn so intuitively to use computers that they learned to use them to translate its instructions in order to understand how to better use the devices.  It was fascinating to see how technology touched children’s curiosity and also helped them to learn even when they had no formal teachers and no instructions in their native language.  It was also amazing to see the children come together to teach each other.  Mitra’s TED Talks video entitled “Kids Can Teach Themselves” detailed the promising possibilities of using technology to help teach underserved populations throughout the world.

Daily I see children solve tasks and easily learn to use devices that take me forever to learn.  Therefore, technology is an excellent tool to help children learn and this is tremendously beneficial to children everywhere.  Over the past few years, the schools here in this rural area where I live have invested in more learning technology such as tablets, smartboards, personal computers and distance education equipment for the classrooms.  Just this week, I visited a classroom where the teacher had just received a huge 72-inch touchscreen interactive smartboard.  She said that it was amazing how she could use the technology to interface with different educational sites and the Internet.  She added that the devices hold the attention of her technology-raised students and that when she can’t figure out things about operating the smartboard that her students can figure out solutions much easier than she can.  With technology advancing so quickly and children’s ability to learn so easily, educating children in the future is filled with amazing possibilities.   

 Yet as with most things, there is the good and bad when it comes to children and technology.  Two studies by Sonia Livingstone about social media literacy in children that we read this week pointed out that social media technology provides different tools to children at different stages of life. Younger children are inquisitive and explore information through social media technology like my niece does. Teenagers seek relationships and acceptance online and help to find their identity through social media. Children have different motivations for social media at different ages but all ages seek to communicate, find out about the world and themselves, and express themselves increasingly more through social media technology.  Yet the risks involved with increased social media usage include bullying, stalking, and harassment that have in some publicized cases lead to suicide. 

Some say that heavy technology use harms a child’s development.  This is true according to pediatric occupational therapist Cris Rowan. On May 29, 2013 Rowan wrote in a Huffpost blog entitled “The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child” that technology has caused children to drastically reduce physical play time that is important to creativity, imagination, and mental and physical development. Children are inside and sedentary so much using technology that sensory, motor and attachment skills are becoming underdeveloped.  She also said that obesity, diabetes, coordination, and other physical and psychological disorders have increased. We are seeing children becoming less social outside of online activities and more unhealthy.  These are discouraging consequences of tools that are so encouraging to a child’s learning capabilities. 

There are solutions. Technology when used, managed and monitored properly is a useful tool that helps children to learn, communicate and develop.  Careful management by parents and caregivers can also help to shelter children from pitfalls such as bullying, harassment and cyber-crimes.  We can also limit children’s technology usage and require physical interaction and activities in order for them to have a balance in life that will help them to still enjoy the benefits of technology and develop healthfully.  As with most things in life, it takes time, effort and planning.  The children in my family still enjoy technology but they also like the outdoors.  We require that they spend time outdoors playing and engaging with others daily.  They love their technology and they also love physical and social activities.  I guess this is why my niece continues to be a healthy, social, inquisitive, smart and progressive seven-year-old.  There is a balance in her life between the technology that she craves and needs and the physical and social activities that she also craves and needs in order to develop healthfully.  I think that the positive aspects and the risks of the saturation of technology upon our youth can be managed because it adds so much to a child’s learning. I can only imagine how different my life would have been if I’d had the backup of a computer to research things like Santa Claus and facts of life questions when I was a little girl when my parents’ answers, or non-answers, left me scratching my head. 

The Importance of Your Brand

This week in Strategic Communication 6630, our focus is on branding and online reputation. We have had literature and videos about corporate and organizational branding, which is always important for strategic communication professionals.  We also looked at personal branding. In past classes I have learned the importance of corporations putting forth great internal communication, campaigning and customer service in order to have a good name.  As we live in an age of real-time communication where one negative online post can happen so quickly and potentially cause problems, branding today is a never-ending 24-7 job.  In this world of emerging media, there are many facets to successful branding. A major thought that stands out to me is from Tim Leberecht’s TED Talks video entitled “Three Ways to (Usefully) Lose Control of Your Brand.” He said, “Your brand is what others say about you when you’re not in the room.” Successful strategic communication professionals should be well-equipped to establish a good reputation and maintain it during the good times and the bad. 

Peter Economy wrote “7 Things Great Brands Always Do” in an Inc.com article from May 5, 2015.  He stated strategies that are highly important to branding such as having a successful internal culture, committing to and staying committed your brand, ignoring trends and sweating the small stuff.  If you work to create a great in-house organization, it is easier to project your brand to the public and in doing so your product or service should be great and you never have to compromise in order to follow trends.  If an organization is successful to its target audience, then they do not have to sell products; products will sell themselves.  If a brand is this successful, then the corporation does not even have to gain attention through giving back.  A great brand works to create a culture that has shared value for everyone involved internally and externally.   

Cheryl Conner wrote about how important your online reputation is on March 4, 2014 in a Forbes.com article entitled “Top Online Reputation Management Tips for Brand Marketers” stating the importance of Google search engine results. In the fast growing world of mobile and online communication, a major focus of communication professionals is crisis communication. Putting out a good product or service and managing great internal relations are not the only components of great branding.  Corporations must be proactive at maintaining their reputation by constantly monitoring their name online.  If something negative does pop up, then hopefully your track record will be enough to safeguard your reputations.  If not, then procedures need to be in place to negate any bad press that may happen as quickly as possible. 

There are several names that come to mind when I think of successful branding and online reputations.  Target is one that has a successfully managed reputation.  They continue to satisfy internally and externally and give back to their communities.  Whole Foods is another.  These two companies continue to work their magic, and their reputations continue to shine.  Yes, both have hit some minor bumps in the road, but their reputations before these negative occurrences helped them to bounce back and maintain even through controversy.  This is the result of successful branding, monitoring and maintenance.   

Leberecht also said about branding, “What’s true about you is you.” This was proven to me when I looked at another brand this week.  Oddly enough, I took a look at Playboy.  I am not one to agree with the nature behind Playboy, but since Hugh Hefner died this week, his Playboy empire was all over the news.  Playboy was a great brand to its target audience!  After six decades of production, Playboy continues to lead men’s magazine in sales with over two million monthly in the U.S. alone. The publication successfully lead its market, even with the growing popularity of online pornography, so its success over the decades is definitely about much more than nude women.  In 2016 the magazine stopped featuring nudity, and its sales climbed by 28%.  Therefore, much of the magazine’s success has to be its articles. I was surprised to learn that the corporation gives back by supporting women’s rights, abortion rights, birth control access, the Equal Rights Amendment and helps fund rape crisis centers.  The magazine has had female support as well as male support in these six decades because they successfully managed their brand and satisfied its target audience.  There was controversy from the beginning and throughout, but successful branding has kept the magazine afloat.  Playboy has been true to its mission and gives back along the way.  A lot of negative has been said about the company, but apparently their brand and online reputation has been and continues to be successful to its target audience over the years.   

One other topic I would like to mention this week is personal branding.  The January 22, 2012 Business Insider blog post entitled “Fundamentals of Personal Branding” gave me some tips to follow and goals to pursue. The personal branding blog pointed out the importance of knowing who you are and your goals and meeting the needs of your target audience.  So far I haven’t thought much about the importance of My Brand moving forward.  As I think about it, personal branding should be an important topic as I try to wrap up my master’s in Strategic Communication and pursue other business interests.  The Business Insider blog states that the things that are important to a personal brand include skills, experience, expertise, travels, hobbies, education and work experiences, among others. I am optimistic that my brand should be off to a good start.  My brand already includes skills, experiences, education and even hobbies that should attract my target audience when I pursue future endeavors. 

This week’s topic, as well as most others in this class, gives me much to think about when it comes to my future.  Again I have learned something that is important not only to my current professional life, but also to my personal life which I one day would love to combine in order to create a successful business opportunity using My Brand.  After all, what’s true about me is me and I am continuing to grow. There is work and branding to be done.