Friday 25 November 2011


Think of everyone in the world as an item on a store shelf. With over 7 Billion products to choose from how are you going to make yourself stand out for any potential “shoppers”?  Well in this day and age the best way to do that is through social networking.

Lindsey Fair is the Social Media Queen; a title given to her by one of my teachers Frank Armstrong. And it’s one that she definitely deserves. She is a prime example of why it’s important to have a great, far-reaching social network. To tell you all the many things she gained by building her social presence would take far to much time, so here is an example of how social media helped her students make some big connections.

This year Lindsey took some of her third year students to the Pivot Conference in New York to listen to leading business professionals talk about the business world. After the conference Lindsey wanted her students to thank the pivot con team for giving them the chance to attend and for such a reduced price. The students hadn’t meet the Pivot team personally so how were they to thank people they never meet? Social media answered that question. Take a look.



That video was played at the pivot teams board meeting and now those students will always be in their minds. This is how social media can help you in the future. The big thing to remember is that you must always look for ways to expand you network and be original. Don’t do or say what everyone else is saying or doing or else your just another item on the shelf that gets pushed to the back. 

Thursday 17 November 2011

The Power of Facebook

Whatever happened to the good old days when a person could do and say what ever they want and it would have little effect on them in the future? A drunken night out on the town when you were in college or an old picture of you being less then discreet with an ex-girlfriend would fade out of peoples memories and soon be forgotten.

But in this day and age, the almighty Facebook has made privacy a thing of the past. People are constantly posting pictures and comments that thousands of people see and then share with others and soon millions of people know every thing about you. Whether it be a simple picture of you with a friend or a picture of you partying hard, everyone can see it and it may come back to haunt you years later.

One such example of how things posted on Facebook has affected someone is in the case of Ray Lam, an NDP candidate form Vancouver, B.C, had his political career destroyed after some “inappropriate” pictures on his private Facebook Wall were leaked to the press. Another is of a young British soldier was not allowed to be part of royal wedding protection detail because of comments he had posted on Facebook about royal to be Kate Middleton.

CBC’s Doc Zone did a one-hour documentary on the powers of Facebook called “Facebook Follies". You can watch it by clicking below.

  
Whether they effect you days later or years later, the things we post on Facebook and other social media sites will follows us all throughout our lives and could have serious effects on them. So, the next time you go to hit the “post” button, think. Is what you are posting really something you want the whole world to see? 

Friday 11 November 2011

Some People's Children

Welcome to yet another session of Lets Talk IMC. This week in my Media and Culture class I was giving a presentation on what makes a story “Newsworthy” and I realized that the information is of the likes that would be both interesting and useful to the public at large. So, in this weeks post I bring to you the factors for a newsworthy story.

So what does newsworthy mean? Well, according to dictionary.com it is something sufficiently interesting to be reported in the news. So back to what makes a story newsworthy. Well, there are 12 factors:

¤ Timeliness
¤ Proximity
¤ Exceptional quality
¤ Possible future impact

¤ Prominence

¤ Conflict
¤ Number of people involved or affected
¤ Consequence

¤ Human interest
¤ Pathos

¤ Shock value
¤ Titillation component

For a full description of what each one click here.

One of the most common factors that you see all the time in news stories is exceptional quality. It’s a story that has some element that is so out of the ordinary or weird or amazing, that the news has to report it. This usually goes hand and hand with shock value (how shocking a story is).

For example of a story with the previously mentioned factors, this past Halloween in Aiken, South Carolina a woman was walking down the street when she saw two boys she recognized. When she approached the boys she jokingly said she was going to steel their candy. Check out the video to see what happened.





Well that wraps up another week of Lets Talk IMC. Thanks to all our soldiers who fight for us so we can live our everyday lives in freedom. Thank you

Thursday 3 November 2011

Alien's attack New Jersey... Wait, What.


Welcome back all to another session of Lets Talk IMC. This week I bring you a lesson from Tom Brennen, talking about the role the news plays in our lives and how willing we are to believe.  

Back in the 1930s the only form of news was from your radio. You didn’t have video and could only rely on what the reporter told you. People put all their trust in to reporters and believed what they where being told by the reporters cause if it was on the radio it had to be true. Because of the people faith in radio something as small as five-minute time delay could cause a major incident.

On October 30th, 1938, a dramatized news radio broadcast sent thousands of Americans in to mass hysteria when they “reported” that aliens had landed on earth and were here to invade us. The hour before the broadcast their was a ventriloquist (a funny thing to have on radio) preforming and his broadcast ran five minuets over, causing all who were listening to miss the disclaimer at the beginning of the fake news cast.

For the full story you can read it at Transparency Now or listen to the actual broadcast on Youtube.

This shows how important it is for people to show some common sense when it comes to the things that reporters tell us. A five-minute delay cause mass hysteria and even people to commit suicide instead of facing the “aliens”.

In today’s media, we are a lot more cynical in what we believe and it is harder to misunderstand thanks video. Now we can see what’s going instead of relying solely on what we are told. While there are still ways for information to be distorted and misunderstood, it is easier for us as viewers find out the truth and not sink deep into mass panic.


Thanks again everyone and I hope you come back next week to learn a little more about IMC.