OTM #3 - 1957 Fidel Castro & Cuba

There were several rumors about Fidel Castro being dead for a long time. To be honest, I don't know a whole lot about this subject other than what I heard on the On the Media audio recording the week of Nov, 23rd. But what I did find was that the press censored a lot of papers including information about what was actually happening in Cuba, and we were wrong about a lot of things that we thought. What they revealed in this segment was that many important and key factor specifics from these stories were actually clipped right out of articles before they were sent out to the US and other places. A lot of effort was put into the hiding of these secrets. The thing that never ceases to surprise me about these things though, is how surprised other people are at the skewed stories that we get from newspapers, politicians, television, and more. Money runs the world. And without money, companies fail. That being said, stories are given that will keep audiences reading. Whether they are completely true, or skewed is not as of an importance as just if it will keep people reading and interested. If people aren't intrigued to read or watch stories, they won't keep reading or watching. If this happens, advertisements won't be seen, funding will go down, and companies will fail. This is what leads to agenda setting, that we talk about in The Agenda Setting Theory. This is the theory that media sets the agenda for us, and we kind of just take whatever they give us. This is a big problem because the places we are relying on for our information, are not always accurate. For example, everyone that led us to believe that Castro was dead. Well the thing is, that most of those stories and news providers may have not even known that they were giving out false information, because it was already skewed and things had been removed from information before it even got to the producers! There's a lot of problems that can be caused by this, but one thing we can do to help that is to just become more aware of what is happening and become knowledgeable about the Agenda Setting Theory.

Facebook Ad - Extra Credit

Facebook & Google Campaigns

This semester, I focused in on a campaign for the company I work for, which is Red Rock Property Management. Our primary focuses were Google and Facebook, but mostly Google. A very large portion of our clients find us on Google, and we rely heavily on those Google reviews to send those clients our way. Throughout the course of this semester, I was able to increase our google reviews as well as our Facebook presence, likes, and reviews. My mission was to increase the amount of leads generated from our Facebook page, and I was really pleased that we actually did do this! We got several tenant leads and a couple of owner leads that I was able to convert to clients. 

My campaign plan consisted of three major steps. First, I started posting more to our page, and tried doing one post a day, but some weeks I only got a few posts in per week. This increased our Facebook page exposure and did allow more people to find us. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to track the clicks from our Facebook page to our website right now, and so I don't know exactly how many leads came from Facebook. But I do know that we got more messages over direct message in Facebook, so that worked out well. 

The next step of my campaign was to get our page verified. Unfortunately, we bought a new office space right before Halloween and ended up moving and having to change our address. This made things a lot more difficult in getting our page verified, because the change for Facebook was taking forever! It is still a work in progress, but we are getting closer. 

The last step of my campaign was to run a reviews campaign to increase our Facebook and Google reviews amount. This campaign was a little different than the previous campaigns that we've run, where we typically have a gift card giveaway after drawing a name from all of those that left us reviews. For this campaign, our team just changed the way that we respond to reviews. When we get positive feedback, we now encourage people to share their experience with us on Facebook or Google, and it has really helped us to get more reviews just in this last quarter. 

Overall, it was a successful campaign! I was satisfied with the outcome and where we are at today. We hope to just keep pushing forward to gain even more exposure within the community and continue building a positive reputation based on exceptional customer service.  

OTM #2 - The Mistrial of Michael Slager

This week's On the Media focused in on the Black Lives Matter movement and contains portions of several interviews after several killings of police officers across the nation
They discussed that in Los Angeles, over 52% of the community's budget goes to law enforcement. They then went into the fact that they have one of the highest homeless percentages, and that more funding should be going into this, providing better foods for lower income families, better education, and so on. This frustrates a lot of people because they feel that many people in these black communities don't have a way to get out. Claiming that the schools in these communities just funnel citizens to prisons.
I'm not against the Black Lives Matter movement, and I do understand that most of the people behind this movement have good intentions. However, I would just be interested to hear more of what exactly they would like to see. I have heard a lot of conversations like this where it is suggested that we remove some of the funding from law enforcement and put it in other places. But I'm not sure I understand what exactly they are suggesting or wanting to see. I have heard that we are focusing too much on keeping police officers in these lower income communities, but I'm not sure if I agree that that will fix anything. I don't know why it is that more homes are robbed in lower income communities, and more drugs are used, but based on my personal experiences, I have seen this to be true, and I just have a hard time seeing how this is a solution. I am however, interested to hear other options and specifics of what people's plans are and what they would like to see and put money into, instead of just where we should remove it from.

Well informed 2.0 - Syria & Immigration

We had the opportunity to watch a really interesting video in our class and it was extremely eye opening to me. To be honest, I really haven’t ever thought too much about all the refugees and the lives that they have been living, so this video hit me really hard. As unbelievable as it all seems to me, at the same time it all just became real. That people are actually living lives like this! The life that the family with these two girls lives is truly just so shocking to me. I can’t imagine a life like that, living in the middle of a war, hiding out in abandoned cities and buildings, and having your dad just go out every day to fight off the enemy as his day job, and never knowing if he's going to come home or not. Learning to become so familiar with this whole scene that you can actually tell the difference between different guns and missiles. Watching this has gotten me a whole lot more interested in getting these people over to safer grounds, and made me realize how much I appreciate and love the life I live right now! I want more people to be able to experience this kind of living.

Recognizing Automatic Attitudinal Responses

How much time do we actually spend thinking about why we think the way that we do? It seems like we spend every day of our lives giving opinions and expressing our thoughts, but little time thinking about where it all comes from. When we find something we have strong feelings about, we could stand on our soapbox forever. But one thing I think that professors have been trying to nail into our minds through the last three and a half years is not just to really think about things, but to think about why we think the way we do, and open our mind to other people's thoughts and why they think the way that they do.
The way each person thinks all revolves around their implicit biases, whether they like it or not. Their brain functions by gaining knowledge, and knowledge can only be gained through experience. That being said, we all learn things differently and have different experiences throughout our lives. These experiences influence the way that we continue to learn and think. Regardless of how much we try to keep an open mind, we are always going to have a biased view. Is this a problem? I don't think the differing perspectives themselves are. These are the things that make people unique and life what it is. But the potential for problems comes when we don't keep this in mind and we get caught up focusing too much on our own perspectives. This is something that almost everyone struggles with, and we will likely work on for the rest of our lives.
In my first On the Media posting, I talked about the Chicago University letter that went out to its students about trigger warnings, coddling, and safe spaces. I have grown up experiencing life to be a lot easier in general, than it was for people 100 and 200 years ago. I know that I have been catered to and looked out for by people I don't even know, all of my life. Sometimes I feel that too much effort might be put into catering to people. Companies and organizations seem to spend a lot of time seeking ways to prevent offending people. I have grown up seeing a lot of people look for ways to be offended, and those people get upset when their every need or preference is not catered to. Because of these experiences, I have a bias that affected the way that I looked at this On the Media assignment, and it led me to share that I feel we are often a little too spoiled and easily offended. I have just grown up seeing a lot of this, so when I see people raging out about a company not catering to every single person, I can understand the frustration that the company must have. It's nearly impossible to create an advertisement or post a message that doesn't have the potential to offend at least someone.
These are just my thoughts, and my response. This response is all based on my biases, and I know that I would have different biases if I would have grown up with different experiences. Different biases create different perspectives, and that's okay! We just have to recognize where these different perspectives come from and most of all, respect them and each other.

Well Informed: Security and Privacy

It has been really interesting to see the issue of privacy and security arise in the past year. Although I can completely see where the concern is coming from, I've been surprised to see so many people get upset about this whole thing when they haven't even done their own research. Most of these people that I hear every day freaking out about their information being shared, are people that don't even read over the full agreements and policies that they agree to by signing when they buy a new phone, set up a new computer software, sign up for internet service, or sign a cell phone contract.
The sad thing is, that in all of our loss of privacy, we are doing a lot of this to ourselves. We are constantly giving up our privacy and information just to receive instant gratification. We want to use our cell phone, we want to connect with our friends, we want to connect to the internet, and we are not going to take the time to consider how this choice might affect us in 2 years or even in the next 5 minutes. We are not going to take the time to read through every single term and condition. That's completely understandable, but that is still our choice. Nothing forces us to use cell phones, internet, or technology at all. Although it would be ridiculously inconvenient, we could live a life with no technology. That sounds absolutely ridiculous, but we could do that. Nobody is forcing us to sign these contracts or agree to the terms and conditions on the 50 apps we download on our phones. So the amount of people that are so surprised that companies are tracking their information and text messages kind of surprises me. I'm sitting there like, "Really? What did you think clicking 'yes, agree to allow Snapchat access to the microphone,' meant? What do you think was in all those pages of terms and conditions that you agreed to?"
I'm not saying that I agree with the lack of privacy that is offered by the internet, search engines, applications, our phones and so much more. But, I understand contracts. And unfortunately, every contract I sign is a risk if I haven't read through it thoroughly. And I get that. I take risks every day that I probably shouldn't. But I know that if I signed the contract, or I clicked yes, that I have read and agree to everything, then that really can't be argued. Anything beyond that, that I didn't agree to, no, it is not right. But I think when we are all ready to attack these companies that use our information, we should just first look into what we've agreed to. That's all I am saying. From there, we can argue and fight against companies all we want for the things they are doing that we did not agree to.

Political Debate

I had the opportunity to watch the political debate last week and found it to be a lot different than I was expecting. I knew a little bit about each candidate going into this and was somewhat familiar with their characters, but I was kind of surprised at both of them in this debate. For one, I was a bit surprised at how like-able Hilary seemed to be.
I'm not in favor of Hilary and I guess if it really came down to it, I would choose Trump over her, but I really found some of her arguments and statements to be reasonable. She really did sound good I thought, and I guess I was a bit surprised by that. To be honest, I don't know a whole lot about the issues that they debated, and so if I didn't even know who Trump and Hilary were in walking into this, I probably could have been swayed either way. But the interesting thing to me was that it was so difficult to think that Trump was really doing a good job in this debate at all. Just the way that he presented his ideas and the claims that he made, he didn't really do in his favor.
Due to the above reasons, it was really interesting to see social media explode during and after this debate. It was kind of difficult to find many people that even favored one of these candidates. Someone would post something against Trump, and right after that they would post something bashing Hilary. The funny thing was, a lot of the posts and pictures that I saw in social media weren't even in regard to the topics and issues being discussed. A lot of it was in regard to their appearances, the way they talk, and their backgrounds.
Unfortunately, I don't feel like many of our culture are really accurately informed about the concerns and issues at hand, but the thing is that it is SO hard to find accurate information! Everything is skewed in some way or another. And so because of that, a lot of people aren't even talking about the real issues, just talking about what the radio had to say this morning, or what Trump's hairpiece looks like on the front of a magazine. Media is full of skewed information and opinions that are constantly misinterpreted as facts.  I feel like this is one of the contributing factors to this whole election being such a mess.

Well Informed: Learning and Thinking

The topic for this discussion is something that I have put a lot of thought into this week. I already have thought in the past throughout my grade school years, that our education system was not ideal. This week’s posts and videos have just reinforced my thoughts on this more so. However, I'm not ready to just kick anyone involved with our education system to the curb. Yes, I agree that everyone learns differently, that testing is not an accurate measure of intelligence or how well someone will be able to do their future job, and that often times a high school diploma or even a bachelor’s degree is overrated by employers, and not a true measure of a person's potential and ability. I agree with all of that. My question is, what’s the solution?

This question made me really enjoy the video we watched in class today, because I was able to see different technology that allows for students to learn in a way that is more unique and personalized to them and their own learning styles. It will be really interesting to see what comes of all these new ideas, and I just hope that it is all effective and we don’t get too caught up in throwing out the current education system. I don’t think it’s all bad, and I honestly don’t have a better idea of how to run it than it is already being ran. I don’t know different methods that work for different people. I don’t know of a way other than SAT and ACT scores for colleges to filter through millions of applicants each year, or something other than degrees for employers to use to filter through hundreds of applicants for a job. I do know that with colleges and jobs the way that they are right now, testing scores and certifications/degrees are a quick way to filter out a lot of people that may not know how to work hard, or just don’t care. I am not saying that everyone that has low testing scores, no certifications or degrees doesn’t know how to work hard or isn’t smart. I know that’s not true because I personally know of a lot of extremely successful, mind-blowingly intelligent, and hardworking people that fall into that category. I’m just saying that if I was a college or an employer, I wouldn’t know how else to filter through people without having a one on one interview with each person for an hour. No college or employer has the time for that. 

Race Baiting - Well Informed 2.0

As I watched the video, “Race Baiting 101” it really made me wonder why we ever started dividing ourselves into these categories, or any categories at all. There are so many different categories and groups that we put ourselves into. Why we don’t think more often that we can fit into more groups than one? Does it really have to be blue lives versus black lives? Republican versus democrat? Pro-life versus pro-choice? Us versus them? Each person is unique and it’s okay for them to have their own opinions and beliefs. That’s what our country was built on, wasn’t it? People don’t have to fit into a group that all has the exact same beliefs and hates. I really dislike titles and groups for this reason. If we didn't get so caught up in our own group and throwing our beliefs and feelings into each other’s faces, I think we’d be a lot more successful in our relationships. We so easily get caught up in the title of whatever group we belong to, that we aren’t even listening to each other, or considering all sides of every issue.

I feel that race baiting is just this. It's a way for people caught up in their own titles and groups, to provoke disagreements and anger in individuals. Race baiting usually uses race as bait. A simple physical characteristic of people, to bait individuals into certain feelings and ideas. The thing is though, each side is doing a great job at making the other look terrible. If you went into this race baiting war with no previous biases, and tried to determine who was right, you probably couldn't!

I can watch “pro-black lives matter” videos all day long about the mistreatment of black people by white people, and it’s going to pull my heart strings and make me feel terrible about the bad things that white people have done to black people. And the thing is, who wouldn’t?! Almost any sincere person with a heart is going to look at that and feel bad for bad treatment of black people in our history. Most anyone would agree that yes, black people deserve equal treatment and rights, and shouldn’t be treated differently. Well we can go right to the other side of that and watch a “pro-police” video about how a white cop’s story wasn’t rightfully portrayed by media, he actually did nothing wrong, but still was a victim of violence from a “black lives matter group”. Anyone will feel bad for him and view that as wrong. We’re just pointing out the negative in each group and just throwing fuel on this fire so that these groups just keep hating each other. It’s possible to think that the lives of black people matter, and also that the lives of police officers matter. Blue lives matter and black lives matter are not the opposite. One belief or opinion doesn’t make us the opposite. This is applicable in every group argument. People with republican beliefs don’t have to be anti-democrats. Pro-choice is not anti-life, and pro-life is not anti-choice.

What we really need to do is get out of our groups and not assume that one situation explains all. All white cops are not the same as one white cop that stepped out of line. All black lives matter group members aren’t the same as one that violently hurt a white cop's family member. And not all arrested black people are innocent like the one wrongfully handcuffed or shot on the news. And for heaven’s sake, we are human and we make mistakes! And we are going to keep making them as long as we exist. If we stepped back and thought about these things before we acted, and really considered why everyone is feeling the way they are feeling, we might not have so many problems in the world like race baiting.

OTM #1 -

OTM #1:

This week’s On the Media discussion was especially an interesting and thought provoking discussion. It talked in large part about trigger warnings, coddling, and “safe spaces” on college campuses. This discussion starts out in talking about a welcome letter that the University of Chicago sent out to new students stating that they do not support . It’s interesting to hear that they did not support trigger warnings, and they do not condone safe spaces, just because I feel like so much of the rest of the world is trying so hard to not offend anyone. It’s kind of refreshing, really.

Sometimes I really feel like a lot of people have just set out on each day to try and be offended. It’s something that comes so easily to us. Whether someone has a certain opinion, belief, or looks at us a certain way, we choose to be offended. My question is, why should we ever take offense just because someone’s beliefs or opinions don’t align with our own? Are we all supposed to have the same beliefs and opinions? That would make for a pretty boring world.

It’s sad to see that so many in our generation rarely take the blame for anything. We are constantly seeking to blame something or someone else for our problems and our feelings. But the funny thing is, we’re in charge of ourselves and our own emotions. Only we can choose the way we are going to feel and if we are going to let other people’s actions and thoughts affect the way we feel and carry ourselves. Toughen up and shake it off, people!

I understand that our great grandparents were not as catered to, and were probably expected to suck up their feelings a lot more than we are today. But on that note, our world has changed a lot since their time too. Sensitive topics like drugs, sex, race, and abortion were mostly avoided in conversation, and spoken about rarely in more private conversations if talked about at all. So with that, I can understand that there is definitely more potentially offensive conversation nowadays, and why coddling and trigger warnings have become so common.

The explanation further into the discussion of what the University of Chicago’s letter was supposed to mean, seemed like they were completely going back on what they had said. It just goes to show that even when we make statements, it’s almost like there is an unwritten rule in our society that you need to take it back if you have offended someone and they’ve made a big fuss. The professor later in the discussion simply said, “Well the letter was basically meant to suggest…” and then he goes on to say something entirely different than what the letter said… I guess that guilt maybe played a part in this and the dean of students felt bad for what he had said, but even then, I don’t think that response makes much sense.  I don’t have a problem with the letter itself, but I don’t feel that the University’s response to the outrage was done very well. I think they would have done better to simply stand by their word and further explain the reasoning, instead of going back on what they said to say something different. If they had meant to say something else, I think they would have said something else in the first place.

Facebook Campaign - Red Rock Property Management

My Page: Red Rock Property Management

Link: https://www.facebook.com/RedRockPropertyManagement/

My Mission: To increase the amount of leads generated from Red Rock Property Management's Facebook Page.

Personas:

1.       Potential clients seeking any monthly cash flow investments

2.       Real estate owners seeking property management services

3.       Potential tenants seeking housing

Plan:

First, I will make posts to the Red Rock Property Management page more often to allow them to show up in their client’s Facebook feeds. Through my Social Media Communication class, I will gain new knowledge of Facebook analytics that I can implement into these posts to make Red Rock Property Management’s Facebook advertising more effective.

Secondly, I will get Red Rock Property Management's Facebook page "verified", so that they will appear higher in search results.

Thirdly, I will organize a reviews campaign for existing Red Rock Property Management clients in order to receive more reviews and likes on our Facebook page. This campaign will cross-promote with Red Rock Property Management's Google places page to get more Google reviews as well.

This three step plan will help Red Rock Property Management’s Facebook page to produce more leads, resulting in more clients.