Social Media Campaign - Objectives 6 & 7

Creating this Facebook page and keeping up with it has been a challenge. But after getting the hang of it, I've enjoyed it and plan on keeping my Facebook page after this class to further promote my work. But, sadly, I would have like to reach a lot more people than I did. I had a total of 49 likes, and I'll admit that most are family and friends. My plan was to reach an audience consisting of those who attend Dixie State University and those interested in journalism. To reach this audience, even though I could have done better, was cross promotion with my personal Facebook account and my professional Twitter account.

I noticed cross promotion gained me quite a few followers. I also noticed that the amount of people I reached with my posts was dependent on what type of post. Some of my posts did a lot better than other ones.

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Recognizing default responses

Growing up, I've always felt grateful because I was blessed with very open-minded parents who taught me to be respectful of others' opinions. But after reading through my On The Media posts, I recognized that I too have my own default responses that I lean toward. I think some of those responses come from the community I grew up in and the people I surround myself with.
For example, I've realized that during this semester, especially with the presidential election, I've had a prejudice toward Donald Trump and his supporters that I allowed myself to not hear any information or point-of-view from his side of things. Now that he's our President-elect, I'm realizing how dangerous that was for me to have that default response. Now I find myself going back and trying to make myself listen to those who support him to learn exactly why they support him. No matter how much my parents taught me to be open-minded in my thinking, I have learned my own set of rules and default responses for how I think. I've noticed that what I wrote about in my On the Media posts mostly leaned toward my more liberal views. I didn't really address the other side of issues, which I find to be important. But when you have your own bias on issues, you don't really notice when it's written down.

On the Media- "Checking In" on Standing Rock

I was quite surprised when I logged onto my Facebook about a week ago and saw my friends posting check in statuses as Standing Rock. And then I caught onto the trend that took the nation by surprise. This segment from On the Media discusses how these statuses brought more attention to what the indigenous people are going through.

It's been reported that police were using Facebook as a tool to track down protesters at Standing Rock. So to overwhelm and confuse police, over 1.5 million Facebook users began checking in to Standing Rock. Looking at it when it was happening, I thought this was an awesome way to I guess be a "rebel" in some way. But now I think it's smart because Standing Rock was finally getting the media recognition it deserves.

If you think about psychological context, all of these Facebook users impacted Standing Rock in someway because they contributed to bringing awareness to this issue. With social context, I'm sure not every Facebook user who checked in at Standing Rock was aware of all of the issues surrounding it, but they felt the need to engage in it because their fellow Facebook users were doing the same. It's fascinating how quick social media can become a tool to bring awareness to an issue that's otherwise been overlooked.

On the Media- The Power of "Rigged"

The idea of this year's election being rigged is an idea that's been thrown around quite often, especially with Trump. This podcast discusses the word rigged itself and how different politicians have used it. An interesting part of this podcast is when the speaker talked about how democracy and equity are not the same; equity meaning something is fair and impartial. To me, I feel as if people often don't differentiate the two, saying a democracy should be fair and impartial, but that's simply not the case.

To have a fair and impartial democracy would mean our politicians wouldn't use the word "rigged" at all. This podcast mentions the different interpretations of rigged. When it comes to Trump, he believes the election is rigged because of voter fraud and media collaboration with the Clinton Administration. Trump has also mentioned that minority groups only vote for democrats, so he believes there's the power of rigged there as well. For Clinton, the speaker in the podcast discusses that she believes political power goes to the rich and powerful. No matter whether I think either is true, I think the word rigged can be applied to almost every aspect of politics, but I don't necessarily believe everything in politics is rigged.

Well Informed: Syria and Immigration 

Syria and immigration seems to be a tough topic to discuss because it's been a huge highlight in the presidential race with Trump and Hillary. It's also hard for me, personally, to take a side on this issue. Society within the U.S. is wary of letting in Syrian refugees because of the issue of terrorism and national security.

National security should always be a top priority, but that doesn't mean kindness should dwindle. The U.S. has been well-known to let in refugees and provide aid to foreign countries over the years. An article in The Atlantic caught my attention when the writer talked about this same issue and tried to answer the question: Can ISIS terrorists really infiltrate the Syrian refugee program?

The writer states the following:

As U.S. officials and refugee advocates point out, that has never happened in modern history. Not when the U.S. took in tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s. Not when 125,000 Cuban “Marielitos” arrived by boat in 1980. And not in the desperate aftermath of more recent wars in Bosnia, Somalia, or Rwanda. “Those fears have proven unfounded,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE who previously served as a top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security.

I understand letting too many refugees in may pose a threat, but I also think it's important to look at the history of the U.S. and whether or not we've been successful in helping other countries. I think the U.S. will always carry a fear of helping out foreign countries too much, especially after 911.