Social Media, Public Relations, and Viral Videos

Social media has become a defining factor in many forms of media. Social media has been used to connect groups, individuals, share news, and promote a variety of information and media. For many younger people the use of social media isn’t a small part of their lives they are in constant connection with their peers. This has allowed social media networks to flourish and change how people receive information. One of the primary forms of media that is spread on social media is video. Video has become a universal alternative to conveying meaning and a message to different groups of people.

Due to social media being a construct that allows for anybody to share and spread video it can be very advantageous for public relations practitioners. As of 2013, 64% of adults in America use social media (Holcomb, Gottfried, Mitchel, 2013 p. 1). Since then the number of people using social media has only increased. For people working in public relations using social media to advertise video and other content can be an excellent tool.  Today anybody online can take promoted content and share it with their friends, family, and coworkers. This allows people to reach even more than their original audience. This type of activity can help people working in public relations spread their message. When people take content and make it viral they are able to access more and more people.

On top of this, social video allows true connection with an audience. The extra effort and time put into creating a video for one’s target audience will not only engage them but be more likely to help a message stick. Everyone can remember seeing a video online that just gave them chills, made their day, or created inspiration for a goal or idea. Social media can help not only promote videos to their audience but reach even higher levels through their audience’s activity. This allows content creators to be able to actively engage people in real time as well. Not all social video has to be big production with days or shooting or editing. It can be as simple as making a short recording in response to people’s questions and concerns.

Finally, social media allows for people to be in constant connection with their audiences. When you look at many younger people, who are the primary demographic for social media use, many of them are often checking their social media outlets not once but a multiple of times daily. Some range from just checking a few times here and their social media to almost every fifteen minutes. This constant involvement of users are a primary reason to social media’s success for public relations practitioners. Along with this social video allows people to share, comment and like content. This capability allows people to create additional dialogue that integrates other users were not going to see the media placed out unless somebody had commented or shred. So then getting ones audience to engage one another allows people further promote their social media freely, gaining more and more impressions. This ability of social media is important to anybody working within the public relations field, not just those working within video.

REFRENCES

Charest, F., Bouffard, J., & Zajmovic, E. (2016). Public relations and social media: Deliberate or creative strategic planning. Public Relations Review, 42(4), 530-538. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2016.03.008

Holcomb, J., Gottfried, J., & Mitchell, A. (2013). News Use Across Social Media Platforms. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/14/news-use-across-social-media-platforms/

Uganec, C. (2016, April 06). A Guide to Social Video, and Where it Fits in Your Marketing Plan. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-social-video-for-marketing/

Propaganda and Visual Media

Due to the timelessness of this blog post I figured it would be interesting to discuss the United States election. I know at this point many people are tired and sick of hearing political banter and positions. So to combat that, I intend to discuss not the election itself but more so political internet and television commercials. This post will be more focused in terms of what kinds of conventions and editing styles are used in these videos, because often they use the exact same ideas and styles to convey their meaning.  Especially within this year’s election with two very unpopular candidates there are not many varieties of propaganda.

To continue the discussion there have always been a variety of tactics groups use when presenting propaganda. These range from styles such as guilt by association, celebrity testimonials, scare tactics and more (Turner p. 1).  Today there has been an overwhelming amount of scare tactics to present their opposing candidate in false light or to highlight some of their wrong doings.  Over the course of the election it has been apparent that neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton are completely innocent.  In this sense both campaigns have been able to successfully use scare tactics against one another. For example, many of Trump’s commercials have focused on Clinton’s FBI allegations. While Clinton’s have focused on Trump’s racial other various remarks.

I would like to take a closer look as to how these videos are made, and the way they are edited. Within film editing there are various ways to present an idea as well as pursued an audience.  For much of the propaganda during this year’s election they use completely similar conventions in film. Both sides will often present the other candidate in an off tone color, at a tilted angle, and have wavy video footage. To further explain, using an off color video of somebody will create uneasiness to an audience. When color is used in video it can help enhance and express a message, in this case they want to make the opposing candidate appear off-putting. Next when displaying something on angle in video, it will create a sense of uneasiness to an audience. This is done to distance people from the candidate being shown. Lastly, the wavy video will make the video appear off-putting and rugged. What this does is make an audience feel that something is wrong about the candidate because the video of them has errors.  These editing conventions are often used in political video and have been over used this year.

Video is a great resource that can impact any campaign, weather it is for political, advertising, or public relations it can greatly impact and spread massages amongst a target audience. However there are often times when certain styles, components, and conventions become cliché. That is what’s becoming of election propaganda.  It is becoming so often that these commercials are intended to mud sling and smear another candidate. This makes me wish for some form of variety. It is often within the video field that those who find new ways to demonstrate and express their message to an audience are much more effective. This makes me hope for future elections campaign managers are able to find new ways to represent their candidates and their opposition in new and creative ways to engage their audiences.

References:

Albertiet al., “An audio indexing system for election video material,”2009 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Taipei, 2009, pp.4873-4876. doi: 10.1109/ICASSP.2009.4960723(2008).

How Propaganda Works. Retrieved November 09, 2016, from http://people.howstuffworks.com/propaganda1.htm

Propaganda Techniques for Elections | The Classroom | Synonym. (n.d.). Retrieved November09, 2016, from http://classroom.synonym.com/propaganda-techniques-elections-9133.html