Russians use of Social Media

Have you ever wondered how Russia is always involved in some type of “Hacking”? Recent studies have shown that, most of these hackers use several social media platforms for these tasks. Sara Fischer, wrote an article on “How the Russians operated under our radar”. As citizens of our country we have heard a lot about Russia meddling with our last election, which resulted in Donald Trump becoming our President. How well do we know if this was true?

According to the Sara, it would take a lot of reporting and investigation to get to learn more about how Russian disinformation caused them to meddle with the United States election. It caused a good amount of division but now there is a good chance to understanding how they were able to get this done. Spammers used traffic through ads to sell to some news outlets. They were able to automated platforms and advertising to target micro political groups.

One of the most talked about things they did was to use fake social media accounts and pages to trick people to believe what they were doing. They knew they could gain more information using these fake profiles to reach the masses. Other sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google just to mention a few had also sold ads to some of these Russians and they used that as well as a target for these activities.

With all these accesses the Russians have, it can affect the future of communications, the reason being. Social media came about as a way of people being able to communicate and interact. Facebook for example started as a social networking site that helped people to connect with old family and friends and it has stayed to that, but having these recent fake accounts that are being used to lure people for their money and even to the point that others lose their lives. At this point I think the government should be able to regulate each social media platform. This way it could help in monitoring how things work on there. The government would also be able to track down any illegal activities that goes on there, including other foreign countries trying to have access to confidential documents. We have all heard how the Russians were able to leak Hillary Clinton’s emails last year before the elections. If the government has strict regulations it would not only protect the people, but it would protect the government as well.

 

• Below are some charts that shows how Russians use of social media has been detailed on different social media platforms.

 

 

 

 

Future of Communication – “What I’ve learned first semester of Graduate school”

First and foremost, I did not know what to expect from my first semester in grad school, I had mixed feelings about starting my first semester. One of the classes I took was introduction to Digital communication, which was a broad topic to learn. After my first couple of weeks in the class taught by Professor Hedges I was overwhelmed with at that point. I had the opportunity to learn about the Media convergence, which simply means the ability to view same multimedia content from different types of devices and digitization of content (pictures, movies, music and voice). Furthermore, I learned about culture and evolution of mass communication through the years. Communication has also come through eras such as Oral, Print, Electronic, Written and Digital. Through that we also had three main media that emerged. Which are Telecommunications, Cable television and computers. As some who loves reality television I also I have always thought reality television was always be on the top list when it came to television shows, but unfortunately, it’s not, I got to understand the difference between Low media and High media as one of the Skyscraper models. After that I continued to learn about the elevation of digital media technologies which were Emails, Phone calls and Text, which took me to the difference between web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. web 1.0 was static with web pages, 2.0 was when internet use became personalized and 3.0 generated content. Further down during the semester I also learned the impact of digital culture. Also looking forward to the future of communication I learned about Telepathy. “Telepathy is about communicating mind-to-mind, getting someone to feel or think or ‘hear’ something from far away, without the use of sounds or symbols or anything else but bare thought. There are several types of telepathic activity. Telepathic impression (planting a message, image, or word into someone else’s mind), mind reading (copying or sensing, but not interfering with, what’s going on in someone else’s mind), mental communication (a smartphone of the mind, but without the bills), mind control (commanding or compelling the thoughts, and thus the actions, of another person through telepathy).” Fast-forward this semester has been an amazing one, it was a lot to learn and even though I felt overwhelmed it was an amazing experience for me personally,

Airbnb launches platform to help recent global refugee crisis.

 

 

Airbnb one of the largest sites that helps people find easy accommodation when they travel is offering a new and exciting deal to help refugees. This new feature is supposed to help those who have been affected by war, natural disaster and hurricane just to mention a few. These victims now have a chance to stay with any of Airbnb’s host for free without any cost. It all started in New York when one host wanted to offer help to people who had been affected by a hurricane and it got approved by Airbnb. Now people in other parts of the world where Airbnb is can enjoy this new opportunity to have somewhere to stay for free. Its purpose is to help with the global refugee crisis. In these modern times, it’s hard to find safe and sound accommodation for people going through such challenges and Airbnb has found a way to make it easier for these victims.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/airbnb-refugee-platform-1.4149958

 

• Why did it succeed?

This succeed because Airbnb is known for being one of the best places to find nice and affordable housing especially during vacation, and since this is free for refugees they are getting more attention for that.

 

• What was the outcome?

The outcome was to help people who have nowhere to stay especially refugees.

• How does it compare with other PR wins?

This wins because Airbnb expanded their kindness to people who are facing difficulties in times like this and the fact that it’s for free makes it more interesting and appealing to people.

Rating Journalism in the Wake of Trump’s election

In 2016 the United States became the topic in every international news, because it was an election year and the most talked about in years. The media was on top of all the campaigns and everything else that was involved in the elections. Personally, I would rate Journalism for an A and the reason being is they were on top on everything dealing with Clinton’s emails being hacked and Trump having the dirty talk in the van years ago. Everything that had happened in their past had come out because it was about who had a clean path and was going to be a great candidate for the presidency. The media played a very vital part in all because they were digging and bringing up all the information about both candidates, the public got to know more about most of their secret endeavors. For me I would definitely rate the media for an A because they stayed on top of everything and we as a country decided who wanted for a president.

Case Study – Minority and Female Media Ownership and Why it matters

It has been assumed that minorities and women are always at the bottom when it comes to media ownership. In the case study, it gives more details to about this topic. In 1996 the telecommunications act paved way for big media companies to consolidate, minorities and female media ownership declined. By the year 2014 the racial and ethnic minorities owned only 3% of full power broadcast commercial television in the United States.

Majority ownership of full power commercial television stations (By Gender)  

• Joint Male/Female – 1.7%
• Male – 72.5%
• No majority Interest – 19.6%
• Female – 6.3%

 

 

Majority ownership of full power commercial television stations (By Race)  

• No Majority interest – 19.4%
• White – 77.2%
• Asian – 1.4%
• Black – 0.6%
• Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander – 0.1%
• American Indian or Alaska Native
• Two or More races – 0.1%

 

 

Majority ownership of Commercial FM Radio stations (By Gender)  

• Joint Male/Female – 2.5%
• No Majority Interest – 16.8%
• Female – 6.7%
• Male – 74.0%

 

 

Majority ownership of Commercial Radio stations (By Race)  

• White – 80.0%
• No Majority – 17.1%
• Asian – 0.7%
• Black – 1.3%
• Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander – 5%
• American Indian or Alaska Native – 0.4%
• Two or more races – 0.1%

 

The breakdown above explains in detail on how ownership consists between both genders and race. In our country women consists of 50% of the population, blacks are 13% and Hispanics and Latinos are 17% of the population in television and radio broadcasting ownership. Diversity and women ownership has been on one the main topic of discussion in media and hopefully as the world gets into more of the digital space things would change for the future.

Review on Yelp

I would like to sign off on Yelp, it is a very great app that helps with finding restaurants and reviews about. It helps people find restaurants and the reviews they have. It is a good app that helps tourist a lot on finding places to go and eat. I have also used Yelp a couple of times and it has been great so far.

Advantages and Disadvantages of being Digital.

During our last class session, we discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of being digital. My course mates talked about how digital convergence has shaped how we deal with media these days. Below you would find some of the things we discussed and believe me we had an interest discussion, because everyone was involved.

Advantages

– Can replicate it quickly, easily

– Cheaper to buy ad space

– Need less space

– Reach a much wider audience – no limitations of geography

– Accessibility – apple products especially

– Interactive – engagement

Disadvantages

– Privacy

– Alienates the older demo

– Easy access/overly connected

– Lack of the work/life balance

– Dehumanizing – decreased human interaction

– In the moment

 

“Martin Kabutey Adjovu” #DigCommSU