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As a mature adult with no experience of social media, I hope to use the knowledge I gain each week in the module "Digilife" as a springboard, to explore the online world to its fullest and develop an online presence.

I am going to record a diary of my learning experience in this padlet.
If you would like to follow my journey through the unknown territory of Social Media, watch this space.

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I created a jamboard of social media platforms that could be used to promote a political candidate online

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Metacognition is an awareness of how we think and learn.
Thinking about thinking.

We can analyse the different strategies we use,
planning, critical evaluation, annotation, illustration, visual maps,  summarisation, memorisation,  reflection etc.

One way of ascertaining if we really understand and know something is to be able to teach it to someone else as in order to teach a concept we must be able to explain the process in clear, logical steps.

Metacognition is a skill that promotes advanced deeper learning.

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6 Memory Techniques to Boost Learning | Speed Reading Lounge

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6 Memory Techniques to Boost Learning | Speed Reading Lounge

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6 Memory Techniques to Boost Learning | Speed Reading Lounge

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6 Memory Techniques to Boost Learning | Speed Reading Lounge

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Recall what you read! We explain 6 memory techniques and share 17 tips to improve your memorization, recall and reading performance.

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Pocket was previously known as "Read It Later".
It was developed by the Mozilla Corporation and released in 2007.
Pocket allows you to find content that is  personalized to your interests. You can save, manage and store these articles and then access them from a variety of different devices to read at a later date.

Pocket can be arranged like a folder with articles on different topics.

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This is your profile!

Once you recommend an item it will appear here. Your followers will also see it in their Recommended feed.

Here's where you'll find the stories you recommend to your followers.

Note: Your list is private. No one can see what you save to Pocket. Only what you choose to recommend will be visible to others.

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See what Lorraine Browne is reading and watching on Pocket.

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We looked at the importance of critically evaluating information we find online.

We were introduced to the "S.M.E.L.L." test, a tool we can use to decide if the information we have discovered is reliable and valid.
Source
Motive
Evidence
Logic
Left out

Five criteria to evaluate sources
Authority
Accuracy
Content
Currency
Objectivity

Who wrote the piece?
Is the author an authority on the subject matter?
Is the material well researched, peer reviewed?
When was the information last updated?
Are the links updated?
Are references and bookmarks included?
Check for bias, opinion, political, religious, sponsorship or monetary gains.

UCD Library - One Search
An important source of information

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What is an Influencer? - Social Media Influencers Defined [Updated 2021] (influencermarketinghub.com)

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If you hunt around this website, you will find an ever-increasing number of articles related to Influencer Marketing. This includes our take on The Beginner's Guide to Influencer Marketing . But there is an even more fundamental question you need to consider before you think about participating in influencer marketing.

What is an Influencer? - Social Media Influencers Defined:

What is an influencer?

An influencer is someone who has:

the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience.

a following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.

It is important to note that these individuals are not merely marketing tools, but rather social relationship assets with which brands can collaborate to achieve their marketing objectives.

What Are Social Media Influencers?

Over the last decade, we have seen social media grow rapidly in importance. According to the most recent statistics, the projected number of global social media users in 2023 is 4.89 billion, indicating a 6.5% rise from the previous year

Inevitably these people look up to influencers in social media to guide them with their decision making.

Influencers in social media are people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a specific topic. They make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels and generate large followings of enthusiastic, engaged people who pay close attention to their views. Brands love social media influencers because they can create trends and encourage their followers to buy products they promote.

Types of Influencers

You can separate different types of influencers in multiple ways. Some of the most common methods are by follower numbers, by types of content, and by the level of influence. You can also group influencers by the niche in which they operate. This means that influencers who may appear in a low category by one measure may seem more influential when looked at in another way. For example, many mega-influencers are also celebrities. Yet both these groups often have less real influence on their audience because they lack expertise in a dedicated narrow niche. Some micro and even nano-influencers can have a tremendous impact on followers in their specialist niche. They may be of significant benefit to a firm selling a product targeting that sector.

By Follower Numbers

Mega influencers are the people with a vast number of followers on their social networks. Although there are no fixed rules on the boundaries between the different types of followers, a common view is that mega-influencers have more than 1 million followers on at least one social platform.

Many mega-influencers are celebrities who have gained their fame offline - movie stars, sportspeople, musicians, and even reality television stars. Some mega-influencers have gained their vast followings through their online and social activities, however.
Only major brands should approach mega-influencers for influencer marketing, however. Their services will be costly, up to $1 million per post, and they will most likely be extremely fussy about with whom they choose to partner. In virtually every case, mega-influencers will have agents working on their behalf to make any marketing deals.

Macro-influencers are one step down from the mega-influencers, and maybe more accessible as influencer marketers. You would consider people with followers in the range between 500,000 and 1 million followers on a social network to be macro-influencers.
This group tends to consists of two types of people. They are either B-grade celebrities, who haven't yet made it to the big time. Or they are successful online experts, who have built up more significant followings than the typical micro-influencers. The latter type of macro-influencer is likely to be more useful for firms engaging in influencer marketing.
Macro-influencers generally have a high profile and can be excellent at raising awareness. There are more macro-influencers than mega-influencers, so it should be easier for a brand to find a macro-influencer willing to work with them. They are also more likely to be used to working with brands than micro-influencers, making communication easier.
However, you do need to be careful with this level of influencer. This is the category most likely to engage in influencer fraud - some have only reached their position thanks to the followers they have purchased.

Micro-influencers are ordinary everyday people who have become known for their knowledge about some specialist niche. As such, they have usually gained a sizable social media following amongst devotees of that niche. Of course, it is not just the number of followers that indicates a level of influence; it is the relationship and interaction that a micro-influencer has with his or her followers.

Although views differ, you could consider micro-influencers as having between 10,000 and 50,000 followers on a single social platform.
A micro-influencer may not be aware of the existence of a company before that company tries to reach out to him or her. If that is the case, the company will have first to convince the influencer of its worth. Micro-influencers have built up specialist followings, and they will not want to harm their relationship with their fans if they are seen to promote a lemon. This requirement for the relationship between micro-influencers and brands to align with target audiences means that influencers are often picky about with whom they work. Some micro-influencers are happy to promote a brand for free. Others will expect some form of payment. Regardless of the price, any influencer is unlikely to want involvement with an "inappropriate" brand for their audience.

The nature of influence is changing. Micro-influencers are becoming more common and more famous. Some have risen from virtual obscurity to being nearly as well known as traditional celebrities. This is particularly the case for Generation Z, who spend more time on the internet than watching television or going to sports or movies.

Over 35% of influencers have been building an audience for over four years and 21% earn over $50k annually. However, the majority of creators identifying themselves on the internet today fall into the nano or micro tier. The majority of campaign power comes not from mega influencers with huge audiences, but actually the influencers with a smaller following, higher engagement, and developed relationships with their audience.

In all reality, micro-influencers are the influencers of the future. The internet has led to the fragmentation of the media into many small niche topics. Even if you are into something relatively obscure, you are likely to find a Facebook group or Pinterest board devoted to it. And it is in these niche groups and boards that micro-influencers establish themselves as genuine influencers.

The newest influencer-type to gain recognition is the nano-influencer. These people only have a small number of followers, but they tend to be experts in an obscure or highly specialized field. You can think of nano-influencers as being the proverbial big fish in a small pond. In many cases, they have fewer than 1,000 followers - but they will be keen and interested followers, willing to engage with the nano-influencer, and listen to his/her opinions.
While many brands would consider nano-influencers as being inconsequential, they can be of extreme importance to firms who make highly specialized and niche products.
For most firms, however, nano-influencers probably lack sufficient influence to be of much use. They may be cheap and carry tremendous sway with a small number of people, but in most niches, you would need to work with hundreds of nano-influencers to reach a broad audience.

By Types of Content

The bulk of influencer marketing today occurs in social media, predominantly with micro-influencers, and blogging. With an increased interest in video, YouTubers are rapidly becoming more important too.

Bloggers and influencers in social media (predominantly micro-bloggers) have the most authentic and active relationships with their fans. Brands are now recognizing and encouraging this.
Blogging has been connected to influencer marketing for some time now. There are many highly influential blogs on the internet. If a popular blogger positively mentions your product in a post, it can lead to the blogger's supporters wanting to try out your product.

Many bloggers have built up sizeable followings in specific sectors. For instance, there are highly influential blogs about personal development, finance, health, childrearing, music, and many other topics, including blogging itself. The critical thing successful blogs have in common is the respect of their readers.

A variation on having a blogger write something that recommends your product is to participate in guest posting. If you can grab a guest posting spot on a large blog, you can control the content, and you will typically be allowed to place a link to your own site in your author bio.

If a blog is large and influential enough, you may be able to buy a sponsored post on their site. This allows you to either write a post yourself or heavily influence the blogger to write a post on your behalf. Unlike a casual mention in a blogger's post or a guest post you have written, you will have to pay for a sponsored post (and it is likely to be labeled as such). However, this hasn't harmed the results for many firms that have sponsored posts on blogs. Generation Z, in particular, seems to be immune to the Sponsored Post tag, and as long as the product aligns with the blog's core audience, there shouldn't be a problem.

Of course, a blog is not the only type of popular content on the internet. Another favorite type of content is video. In this case, rather than each video maker having their own site, most create a channel on YouTube. Brands often align with popular YouTube content creators.

Podcasting is a relatively recent form of online content that is growing in popularity. It has made quite a few household names now, possibly best epitomized by John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneurs on Fire. If you haven't yet had the opportunity to enjoy podcasts, Neal Schaffer has put together a comprehensive list of the Best Digital Marketing Podcasts to listen in 2023.

Of course, bloggers, podcasters, and YouTubers rarely rely solely on their existing audiences to just turn up to their site, hoping there is new material. They usually promote new posts or videos heavily on social media - which makes most of these bloggers and content creators micro-influencers as well.
In fact, the vast majority of influencers now make their name on social media. While you will find influencers on all the leading social channels, the standout network in recent years has been Instagram, where many influencers craft their posts around a stunning image.

By Level of Influence

Celebrities were the original influencers, and they still have a role to play, although their importance as influencers is waning.

Influencer marketing grew out of celebrity endorsement. Businesses have found for many years that their sales usually rise when a celebrity promotes or endorses their product. There are still many cases of companies, particularly high-end brands, using celebrities as influencers.

The problem for most brands is that there are only so many traditional celebrities willing to participate in this kind of influencer campaign, and they are unlikely to come cheaply. The exception will if a firm makes a product that a celebrity already likes and uses. In that situation, the celebrity may well be prepared to use his or her influence to say how good he/she believes the product to be. I am sure many musical instrument producers benefit from musicians playing their instruments by choice.

One problem with using celebrities as influencers is if they may lack credibility with a product's target audience. Justin Bieber may be highly influential if he recommended a type of acne cream, but would have little chance of influencing the buying patterns of those looking for a retirement village.

Celebrities may have many fans and gigantic social media followings. However, it is debatable exactly how much real influence they hold over those who follow them.

Industry experts and thought leaders such as journalists can also be considered influencers and hold an important position for brands.

Industry leaders and thought leaders gain respect because of their qualifications, position, or experience about their topic of expertise. Often, this respect is earned more because of the reputation of where they work. For instance, a journalist at a major newspaper is probably no expert on the subjects he writes a news report on, but he is respected for being a good enough writer to work as such a prestigious publication.

These experts include:

Journalists

Academics

Industry experts

Professional advisors

If you can gain the attention of a journalist in a national newspaper, who in turn talks positively about your company in an article, then you are using him or her as an influencer in much the same way as you would a blogger or a social media influencer. There is a bonus in this situation in that the journalist will most probably write his/her report for free.

Bloggers and content creators often work with industry leaders and thought leaders, and it is not uncommon to see them quoted in blog posts and even used in social media campaigns. The line between traditional media and social media is blurring.

One thing to be aware of when working with key opinion leaders is that many have built up their reputation in an offline setting and may not have a large or active social following.

People with Above Average Influence on Their Audience

In many ways, the best influencers have built their reputation online for being an expert in some particular niche. They are similar to key opinion leaders but usually have gained their reputation more informally through their online activity. And they have created that reputation through the quality of the social posts they make, the blog posts they write, the podcasts they speak, and the videos they craft and post on their YouTube channels.

Although nobody has yet created a generic term for these people, the British agency, PMYB, has come up with their trade-marked name - Chromo-Influencers. These are the agency's highest-performing influencers, based on 46 crucial factors that impact consumer behavior.

These influencers have the best communication skills and engagement with their audience. They have enticed their followers and become recognized as experts in their field.

Their follower numbers very much depend on their subject of expertise. However, you will find that these people have incredibly high followings in comparison to others in their niche.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is an Influencer? - Social Media Influencers Defined [Updated 2023]

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What is an Influencer? An influencer is an individual who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience. Micro influencers are normal everyday people who have become known for their knowledge about some specialist niche.

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Influencer marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry. Influencers can have a large impact on consumer choice. The endorsement of a brand or product by an influencer can lead to large financial gains for a company.

Influencers tend to have a certain following which companies can target directly with their products. It allows for effective and successful advertising.

Followers often aspire to the lifestyle of the influencer and as such will be influenced by the choice of product or brand the influencer personally uses. This means financial gain for the company but also for the influencer as companies offer incentives and lucrative deals to influencers to promote their products.

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Top Instagram Influencers for 2021 I NeoReach Blog I Influencer Marketing

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NeoReach | Influencer Marketing Platform

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With the end of 2020 fast approaching (thank goodness) it's important to start planning ahead, especially in the marketing industry! With this in mind, and more advertisers turning to influencer marketing, NeoReach has compiled a list of the top Instagram influencers to follow for the upcoming year 2021.

Sitting at the number one spot on our list of top Instagram influencers is one of the world's most notorious soccer players. Ronaldo is breaking records in the social media world on top of his sports fame. Ronaldo is the most followed person on Instagram (behind Instagram's own official account) making him the perfect influencer to work with in the upcoming year.

With the release of Ariana Grande's new album this past week, she has been a hot topic in the media. With numerous hardships endured in the past few years, Grande has proved that she is worthy of just about anything that comes her way.

Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, is the third most followed Instagram user. Gaining fame from his success in the entertainment industry, The Rock is sure to attract attention no matter what he is up to. Not only is The Rock famous for his TV presence, but also his impact on the fitness community making him a great fit for our top Instagram influencer list.

The name speaks for itself. The Kardashian/Jenner clan turns heads and makes headlines with everything they do. This young and highly prominent influencer is sure to connect with a vast audience in younger generations, too, something that most other influencers can't achieve.

Long time Disney Channel star, Selena Gomez, is another famous singer that has the power to bring attention to any brand that she endorses. Using her platform wisely, Gomez connects with audiences of all ages, and speaks publicly about various topics, ranging from civil rights to self-care to music and even cooking.

Looking to run an epic influencer marketing campaign on Instagram? NeoReach has the best experience in creating viral campaigns that convert on social media. Sign up here!

Kim Kardashian West has been the topic of discussion for the past decade, which is something that makes this woman unstoppable. We as viewers have seen her change, start a family, endure hardships, and much more. Kim Kardashian West is only growing her empire and working her way up our list of top Instagram influencers.

Here we have our second soccer player making our list of top Instagram influencers. Messi has become a world-renowned, household name over the years. Free of controversy and a soccer legend, Leo Messi is a great top influencer to follow in the coming year.

After breaking the internet in 2017 and a consistent outstanding musical impact, Beyconé became a permanent member of our top Instagram influencers list. Married to the notorious rapper, Jay Z, Beyonce's list of achievements grows longer and longer by the year.

Justin Bieber has one of the biggest fan bases of all time, shown by his massive Instagram following. Long time singer and songwriter, he has grown up in the spotlight, and has since overcome unhealthy aspects of fame exacerbated by tabloids and news outlets. Justin Bieber's talent alone is enough to get him onto this list of top Instagram influencers, but the consistent engagement he receives on his posts drives it home.

Taking the last spot on our list, Neymar, a famous Brazilian soccer player, is another notable person to watch for the upcoming year. Not only does he have the skill it takes to be one of the best players in the world, but he also knows how to navigate social media with this huge following.

This article was written by Jake Steel

Want to work with great influencers like these? Get started with us today!

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Top Instagram Influencers for 2021 I NeoReach Blog I Influencer Marketing

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With the end of 2020 fast approaching (thank goodness) it's important to start planning ahead, especially in the marketing industry! With this in mind, and more advertisers turning to influencer marketing, NeoReach has compiled a list of the top Instagram influencers to follow for the upcoming year 2021.

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Under the Influence: Social Media Influencers’ Impact on Response to Corporate Reputation Advertising

Eunjin (Anna) Kim,
Margaret Duffy &
Esther Thorson 2015

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Social media influencers can also impact society in a negative way. They can create a world of perfection online which is impossible to attain, both in lifestyle and appearance. This can lead to low self esteem, depression and other psychological problems for those who are vulnerable in a population.

We also have the danger of virtual influencers, who are in fact digital creations. They can target a certain group to sell a product but we can also see how easily they could maintain anonymity and use their created influence to pursue a hidden agenda.

Social media influencers can also incite violence. Pro Trump supporters stormed the capitol building in America on 6 January 2021. The hatred and violence of his supporters had been building online during the previous weeks. They were making plans, displaying firearms online.

January 6th was to be a day of reckoning. A day to "save America"

Trump was later banned from a number of online platforms. as he had incited the violence online.

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‘Be There. Will Be Wild!’: Trump All but Circled the Date - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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Inside Trump supporters' online echo chambers, the chaos of Jan. 6 could be seen coming. People posted their plans to come to Washington - and showed the weapons they would carry.

"We will never concede," President Trump said at a rally on Wednesday. Credit... Pete Marovich for The New York Times

For weeks, President Trump and his supporters had been proclaiming Jan. 6, 2021, as a day of reckoning. A day to gather in Washington to "save America" and "stop the steal" of the election he had decisively lost, but which he still maintained - often through a toxic brew of conspiracy theories - that he had won by a landslide.

And when that day came, the president rallied thousands of his supporters with an incendiary speech. Then a large mob of those supporters, many waving Trump flags and wearing Trump regalia, violently stormed the Capitol to take over the halls of government and send elected officials into hiding, fearing for their safety.

But if the chaos in the Capitol shocked the country, one of the most disturbing aspects of this most disturbing day was that it could be seen coming. The president himself had all but circled it on the nation's calendar.

"Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," Mr. Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, just one of several of his tweets promoting the day. "Be there, will be wild!"

And his supporters took the president at his word.

"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism," a member of the Red-State Secession group on Facebook posted on Tuesday, the eve of the appointed day, Jan. 6.

Beneath it, dozens of people posted comments that included photographs of the weaponry - including assault rifles - that they said they planned to bring to the rally. There were also comments referring to "occupying" the Capitol and forcing Congress to overturn the November election that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won - and Mr. Trump had lost.

Renée DiResta, a researcher who studies online movements at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said that the violent disruption at the Capitol on Wednesday was the result of online movements operating in closed social media networks where claims of voter fraud and a stolen election found oxygen.

"This is a demonstration of the very real-world impact of echo chambers," Ms. DiResta said.

The roots of one of the darkest moments in American democracy reached at least as far back as Nov. 4, the day after the presidential election that Mr. Trump would decisively lose to Mr. Biden. On that day, the first Stop the Steal group was formed on Facebook - and it quickly took off, realizing at one point 100 new members every 10 seconds. The group swelled to 320,000 followers before Facebook shut it down.

As hundreds of new Stop the Steal groups continued to pop up, Facebook became more aggressive in shutting them down, prompting some far-right supporters of Mr. Trump - including some involved in militias and conspiracy groups - to move to new, less-restrictive social media sites, including Parler and Gab. And it was on these sites that a movement to organize a pro-Trump protest rally in Washington gathered momentum.

Several right-wing activists, including Ali Alexander, a Republican operative who was previously known as Ali Akbar, began to emerge as leaders of Stop the Steal. Their conspiracy theories and fact-free claims of electoral fraud closely mirrored the same baseless charges being leveled by Mr. Trump.

By mid-December, dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump supporters had failed, often miserably. Then, on Dec. 14, Mr. Biden secured enough votes in the Electoral College to affirm his victory. The last formality before his inauguration on Jan. 20 was the official count by Congress of electoral votes, a pro forma ceremony of paperwork, to be overseen by Vice President Mike Pence.

On Jan. 6.

Mr. Alexander and others seized on the date, urging Trump supporters everywhere to converge onto the Capitol as Congress tended to what historically has been a glorified shuffling of papers - if sometimes infused with grace, as when Vice President Al Gore announced the names of the winner, George W. Bush, and the loser: Al Gore.

The moment has traditionally been seen as another reassurance of the transfer of power in the Republic. But Mr. Trump and his supporters were publicly framing this year's formality as criminal, fraudulent - even treasonous.

As his aides and supporters did what they could to forestall the inevitable - a lawsuit by the Texas congressman Louie Gohmert, a 36-page report alleging election fraud by the Trump adviser Peter Navarro - Mr. Trump continued tweeting.

Dec. 27: "See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don't miss it. Information to follow."

Dec. 30: "JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!"

Jan. 1: "The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C. will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!"

That same day, a supporter misspelled the word "cavalry" in tweeting that "The calvary is coming, Mr. President!"

Mr. Trump responded: "A great honor!"

The next day, Jan. 2, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and 11 other Republican senators joined another Republican, Josh Hawley of Missouri - as well as more than 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives - in vowing to object to the certification of Mr. Biden's election.

By now, the extreme fringes of Trump supporters - including the Proud Boys and other groups known to incite violence, as well as conspiracy groups like QAnon - were exploring what they might do on Jan. 6 in Washington. On dedicated chats in Gab they discussed logistics of where to gather and what streets they would take to the Capitol. The Red-State Secession Facebook page even encouraged its 8,000 followers to share the addresses of "enemies," including those for federal judges, members of Congress and well-known progressives.

A sense of the percolating trouble came with a widely circulated video of a Trump supporter confronting Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican and a frequent Trump critic, at Salt Lake International Airport as he awaited a flight Tuesday to Washington. When the supporter asked why he hadn't supported the president's claims of electoral fraud, Mr. Romney said that he would follow the Constitution.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't even voted in legally," the person said as she followed the senator to the gate. "You're a joke, absolute joke, it's a disgusting shame."

Meanwhile, members of the Red-State Secession Facebook page were conversing in the language of insurrection.

Then dawned Jan. 6, the day of reckoning. Thousands gathered in downtown Washington, forming rivers of Trump red that commingled the Trump and American flags. The crowd included between 2,000 and 2,500 members of the Proud Boys, according to Enrique Tarrio, the group's chairman.

Any hope that Mr. Pence would block the congressional confirmation of Mr. Biden's election - thereby acquiescing to immense pressure being applied by Mr. Trump - was dashed before noon. Mr. Pence said in a letter that the vice president did not have such power.

"The presidency belongs to the American people, and to them alone," he wrote.

Then, at noon, Mr. Trump began to deliver a speech to his excited followers.

In the afternoon hours to come, Mr. Trump would excoriate his vice president for not having "the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution." In the hours to come, his supporters, carrying flags and wearing clothes that bore his name, would rush the Capitol in a terrifying swirl of chaos that would force a lockdown and leave one woman shot dead.

Among those who swarmed into the Capitol would be well-known QAnon characters and white supremacists. Jake Angeli, a QAnon supporter known for his painted face and horned hat, roamed the Senate floor. Tim Gionet, a neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist known as "Baked Alaska," would take over a Senate office.

But first came the remarks of the president, delivered on the Ellipse, just south of the White House.

"We will never give up," he said. "We will never concede. It will never happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore."

Mr. Trump concluded his 70-minute exhortation by encouraging everyone to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to give Republicans at the Capitol "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country." Then the president of the United States returned to the White House, at a safe distance from the mayhem that was to unfold.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett and Jack Begg contributed research.

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'Be There. Will Be Wild!': Trump All but Circled the Date

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Inside Trump supporters' online echo chambers, the chaos of Jan. 6 could be seen coming. People posted their plans to come to Washington - and showed the weapons they would carry. For weeks, President Trump and his supporters had been proclaiming Jan. 6, 2021, as a day of reckoning.

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The regulation of Social Media Influencers

by
Goanta, Catalina;
Ranchordás, Sofia

Elgar law, technology and society., 2020

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Fake online influencers a danger to children, say campaigners

Booth, Robert.The Guardian (Online), London (UK): Guardian News & Media Limited. Nov 4, 2019.

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What is Wikipedia?
Why is Wikipedia frowned on as a source of information in university?
How can we use Wikipedia to our advantage?
What do we need to consider to ensure information is accurate?
Why should we consider bias when using Wikipedia?

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and is now available in 300 languages and has more than 58 million articles. It is a collaborative, fluid, growing encyclopedia of knowledge in which information is not limited by the time constraints of a printed publication.

Lecturers generally prefer academic sources such as peer reviewed articles where information has been verified by experts in the field. Wikipedia is directed at the general public. It generally gives an overview of a topic rather than an in depth, scholarly review.

We can use Wikipedia to explore and find information but it is important to find the sources and ensure that the information is correct. The links, sources and references contained in an article can lead to further areas of interest. We can then use this knowledge to research academic papers and verify information.

Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, add, share and edit articles. As a result, the content develops and becomes more in depth and verifiable over time. The majority of content creators in Wikipedia are scholars and leaders in their fields. The accuracy of the information contained in Wikipedia was compared to that of Encyclopedia Britannica and was found to be of a similar standard- The Journal Nature 2005.

However we do need to be aware that not all information is correct and without bias.
There are areas of concern.
Content is not subject to peer review before publication.
Anyone can contribute.
Wikipedia is publicly funded.
The majority of editors are white men.
The content may not be current.
Where internet is not easily accessible, people are not represented as they cannot contribute.

Wikipedia can be used as an excellent source of ideas and a launchpad for further in depth research but nothing should be taken at face value. All information should be thoroughly researched and verified.

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Wikipedia strongly discourages self promotion and as such other social media platforms would better suit building a political following online.
Wikipedia could however be used to display knowledge on a particular topic of interest once there was no reason for bias or personal gain.

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Setting up Your Political Campaign Social Media Accounts - SpeakEasy Political

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Setting up Your Political Campaign Social Media Accounts

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We have some how-to’s and tips for setting up, maintaining, and making best use of top-notch political campaign social media accounts.

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Pinterest was founded in March 2010 by Ben Silbermann.
It was one of the fastest growing platforms in history. Pinterest reached 10 million users faster than both Facebook and twitter or any other site tracked by Comscore.
It had over 478 million global monthly active users as of March 2021.

Pinterest is an internet photo sharing website which can  include videos and animated gifs.

It allows users to pin images onto online bulletin boards. Popular boards include recipes, weddings, beauty, fashion, health, home decor, DIY and travel.

On Pinterest you can provide a link to other websites and platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter, however other platforms try to lengthen the time users spend on their specific site.

Pinterest is predominantly a female platform[1].

[Social Media use in 2021 Pew Research Centre April 7 2021, Brooke, Auxier and Monica Anderson]

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Discover recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

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Social Media Use in 2021 | Pew Research Center

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A majority of Americans say they use YouTube and Facebook, while use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok is especially common among adults under 30.

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Pinterest - Promoting A Political Candidate

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Pinterest - Promoting A Political Candidate

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Pinterest would appear to be more suited to a female audience.
Initially one might question if Pinterest is a good platform to promote a male political candidate. However females are more likely to vote than men [1] so it would seem that interacting with a female audience could be beneficial.

Barack Obama shared that he was joining Pinterest on his twitter feed March 27 2012. The page was run by "Obama For America", President Obamas 2012 campaign.
"Organisers, Infographics, murals and cake-now pinning all of the above for #Obama2012"

Obamas team posted pictures, slogans, quotes and policies which promoted his goals. The pins portrayed him as a family man, with ideals and hopes for a better future.
His manifesto slogan was "Forward".

Barack Obama had won the 2008 election on the back of a huge internet and social media campaign which connected with young voters. His move to join Pinterest was seen as a sign that he was set to use the same winning strategy in the 2012 campaign.

Michelle Obama was also a Pinterest user sharing family photos, memories, recipes and reasons to vote. Every opportunity was taken to bring the Obama name to the forefront of voters minds and it would seem to have been a form of promotion by association.

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Pinterest: Politicians’ Newest Frontier? – The New Media Experiment (wordpress.com)

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The importance of political social media strategy - Mediatoolkit

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In the last decade or so, a good political social media strategy became more and more instrumental to campaigns.

Nowadays, no campaign manager will overlook or ignore social media. Instead, they'll use every single opportunity to utilize a candidate's social media in the most effective way.

In this blog, we'll explain the role of social media in politics and how political campaigns can use social media to achieve their goals.

Why is political social media strategy important?

One of the most important features of social media is the participatory role.

Social media platforms allow politicians to directly communicate with their constituents and vice versa. Constituents can easily participate in political discourse, influence political decisions and make their voices heard, while politicians can share their policy proposals, post ads and fundraising campaigns, and so on.

Some people rely solely on social media platforms for news about politics, but shows that these people are often less knowledgeable about current events.

Social media was especially important for political campaigns during the pandemic. Since all in-person events were (mostly) cancelled, political campaigns turned to social media. In order to reach their audience and recruit more votes, they were organizing live streams and online Q&As, filming short social media videos and all kinds of content. In 2020, political spending on digital advertising tripled in comparison to 2016.

Social media strategy is only one of many aspects of digital PR that should work seamlessly together.

Suggested read: Digital PR Explained: Best Strategies and Tools for 2021

How are politicians using social media?

1. Communicating & Informing

Communication and providing important information should are the centre of every political social media strategy. Make sure you're regularly updating your followers on your campaign movements, speeches, rallies, successes, changes, and answer their questions while at it.

Also, make sure your responses are personalized and well thought out.

2. Fundraising

Candidates and their campaigns are regularly asking for campaign contributions on social media.

When it comes to fundraising, shows that up and coming politicians who didn't previously hold office get a boost in contributions, especially after joining Twitter. The same scenario doesn't apply to experienced candidates, though.

3. Advertising

Political ads on social media became one of the most controversial topics in politics, particularly due to the lack of a legal framework. 54% of Americans are saying that political ads should be banned from social media.

Nevertheless, candidates and campaigns throw large sums of money to advertise on social media. It's been reported that ads from politicians and campaigns accounted for at least 3% of Facebook's estimated third-quarter U.S. revenue.

Advertising on social media provides campaigns to target specific groups of voters with tailored content which is not possible on other media such as TV or radio.

Political social media strategy - do's & don'ts

Preparing political social media strategy is no different than preparing social media strategies for various brands. You still ought to be well informed about the brand (candidate), what it represents, and what message you want to send out to your target audience (voters).

For candidates, especially those less known, social selling might be a great first introduction to voters. Marketing and salespeople often use social selling tactics to build relationships with potential leads. This type of approach will help you establish connections with your voters by presenting them with your plans, and what benefits they'll have in their communities. It's definitely one of the things you should add to your political campaign management toolkit.

Do's

Communicate

Remember that the biggest strength of social media is being able to reach a lot of people at once. But, reaching the voters is not enough. You have to interact with them and respond to their questions, comments, suggestions, etc. You can do that by doing live videos or recording Q&As with questions from social media, replying to posts, creating content such as blogs based on FAQs...

Learn from previous mistakes

As we mentioned before, social media has been around in political campaigns for over a decade now. Since then, many mistakes have been made, and you should definitely learn from them. Each election cycle brings some new trends and you should try and follow them. Whether it's new popular apps, social media platforms, or communicating styles, see what fits your candidate and message the best and use it to your advantage.

Speaking of new apps and social media platforms...

Diversify

So far, Facebook and Twitter have been at the forefront of political campaigns. But, in 2020 TikTok was especially popular among young people and many of them were first-time voters who got their news exclusively from the app. Diversify your content as well. People respond better to photos, videos and infographics than plain text.

Update

Give people reason to come back! Regularly update your information and post the most recent news. Since your social media platforms and website are practically the only information source you can control, use them to update your voters on a regular basis with the most important news.

Use media monitoring

By implementing media monitoring into your political campaign management, you'll get valuable insights in real-time that will help you make informed decisions. With media monitoring tools, you'll be able to track online mentions about everything connected to your campaign and create reports that will help you shape your social media strategy in the weeks to come. Also, you'll be able to understand what type of content your voters prefer or not.

With such tools, you'll get valuable campaign analytics that will help you reach your political goals.

Suggested read: Improve your political campaign with media monitoring

Don'ts

Ignoring social media

Ignoring or poorly managing your social media strategy can be will be the death of your campaign. It's simply impossible to run a successful political campaign without social media nowadays.

That's why many are wondering whether Trump will run again, and how will he reach his voters since his Twitter ban. Twitter even confirmed that they won't restore his account even if he's elected president again in 2024.

Being rude

Commentators on social media can be ruthless. But, you shouldn't give them more oxygen by replying to each and every negative comment out there. Moreover, you shouldn't stoop to their level and be rude. That will not look good in the eyes of other voters that are following the situation.

If you notice that a specific comment is rude and false, but is gaining attention, respond politely and correct the falsehoods.

Forgetting to fact-check

Mistakes happen, but if you repeat the same mistake over and over you'll lose credibility among the voters. Provide your voters with truthful and accurate information, otherwise, they'll turn to other sources and campaigns for information.

To sum up

In the grand scheme of things, social media strategy is a small, but very important part of political campaign management. You want to make sure that your strategy is attracting voters, keeping them informed and eager to vote for your candidate.

With the ever-changing social media scenery, make sure you're up-to-date with the latest trends and tactics that will help you gain attention and lead your candidate to victory.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial, and start collecting valuable political campaign data and analytics!

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The importance of political social media strategy - Mediatoolkit

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What makes a good political social media strategy, and why is it even important? Find out more about the topic in the blog.

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How Social Media Is Shaping Political Campaigns - Knowledge@Wharton (upenn.edu)

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In his short-lived campaign for president, entrepreneur and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion of his own money before dropping out of the race in March. More than 70% of that budget went toward advertising.

The extraordinary spend highlights just how much cash it takes to run for public office in America and why it's so difficult for political newcomers to gain momentum at the polls without connections to influential donors (or in Bloomberg's case, his own deep pockets). The problem perpetuates through election cycles, which is why up to 90% of incumbents are reelected in what research calls "the incumbency advantage."

But social media has changed the game, allowing incumbents and newcomers alike to speak directly to constituents on everything from policy to what they had for dinner. Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to use the medium, which was still nascent during his 2008 bid, and Donald Trump takes to Twitter almost daily to express himself without the filter of traditional media.

"If you look at the way that politicians communicate today, it's very different than the way that they used to communicate five, 10 years ago," Wharton marketing professor Pinar Yildirim said. "They would speak through the official speakers or they would be on TV. They would be in print or official online newspapers. Today, they are communicating through places like Twitter. And I think that begs a question, why are they doing that? Is there any benefit to communicating on channels like Twitter?"

"This is not about the age of your constituency." - Pinar Yildirim

A new study co-authored by Yildirim offers some answers. " Social Media and Political Contributions: The Impact of New Technology on Political Competition," written with Maria Petrova and Ananya Sen, finds that political newcomers can get a substantial boost in support by using social media channels, which cost next to nothing and are easily tapped by anyone with an internet connection. The finding is important because it indicates how social media can help level the playing field in politics, where money and access to formal communication channels pose huge barriers to new entrants.

"Never have politicians been so accessible to the public," the authors wrote in an opinion piece for The Globe Post. Yildirim recently spoke about the researchers' findings during a segment of the Wharton Business Daily radio show on Sirius XM. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)
Raking in the Cash on Twitter
The study, which will be published in Management Science, measured support for a candidate based on donations from individual citizens and whether that support increased after the candidate opened a Twitter or Facebook account. Yildirim said she and her colleagues were surprised to find such a significant effect: Within the first month of using Twitter, politicians were able to raise between 1% and 3% of what they would have raised in a two-year traditional campaign. But that gain flowed almost exclusively to newcomers, not incumbents. And it was amplified when candidates included hyperlinks to more information.

Yildirim made it clear that the advantage has nothing to do with assumptions about age; there is simply more to learn about new candidates.

"This is not about the age of your constituency. This is not because the political newcomers are somewhat more technologically savvy, or their base is younger and that's where they can communicate and find those individuals on social media," she said. "We tested all of these, and these are not the drivers."

Beyond communicating their policy views, new candidates can humanize themselves through their social media accounts, and that helps voters feel more connected to them. For example, former Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg introduced his shelter dogs to his 2 million Twitter followers, while U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren used her Instagram account to chat live with supporters who made small contributions to her presidential campaign.

Those small contributions - often between $5 to $100 - seem unlikely to move the needle in a multimillion-dollar political campaign. But the researchers said they are an important part of the voting process because they represent hope.

"There's this idea that if there are many of us just donating in small amounts, eventually that will turn into a sea of donations, and that could help this person to get elected down the road," Yildirim said. "So, donations are very meaningful in a number of ways."

"You don't have to have the big money, big bucks, big fundraisers, big supporters to be able to communicate on Twitter with your constituency." - Pinar Yildirim

In Politics, All Communication Counts
If video killed the radio star, as the 1980 pop song declared, will Facebook kill nationally televised debates or news interviews that are the hallmark of old-school political campaigns? Probably not. As Yildirim pointed out, organic coverage from newspapers or television stations is free and reaches a wide audience. And while costly, paid advertising allows candidates to target a specific message to a specific audience. However, so does social media. It cannot be discounted as a low-cost, powerful tool in political competition.

"You don't have to have the big money, big bucks, big fundraisers, big supporters to be able to communicate on Twitter with your constituency and tell them about what your ideas are for the future," Yildirim noted. "You can tell them about who you are, what your values are, and this is typically what we see politicians do. They talk about themselves. They talk about their dog, they talk about their favorite sports team, they talk about their favorite place to go in the neighborhood. Of course, you can always talk about your policies and what you hope to achieve if you were elected into an office. And you can do this way before you officially declare running for an office."

The scholars believe the intersection of social media and politics is ripe for more research, and their paper makes a notable contribution in the field. The finding suggests that, with enough strategy, social media could erase the incumbency advantage and bring American politics back to its grass roots.

"As political campaigns are becoming increasingly more expensive and the need to reach out to constituencies is becoming more vital, social media will undoubtedly play a more important role in determining electoral outcomes as it gives young politicians a platform," they said in the op-ed.

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How Social Media Is Shaping Political Campaigns

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In his short-lived campaign for president, entrepreneur and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion of his own money before dropping out of the race in March. More than 70% of that budget went toward advertising.

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Twitter  is a microblogging and social networking service. It was founded in 2006 in San Francisco. Users post and interact with messages known as "Tweets"

Registered users can post, like and retweet tweets.
Unregistered users can only read tweets available to the public.

There is a mandatory character limit of 280 which gives space for users to say what they need to say but it ensures that the information will be concise and to the point.
An important consideration as time is a commodity in short supply for many of us today.

Twitter is a personal and rapid form of social networking. Celebrities and politicians can use twitter to build a personal connection with their followers through the use of daily tweets.

Leo, Varadkar, Trump, Katie Perry, Ellen De Generes all use twitter to engage and connect with others in the digital world of social media.

Twitter is a platform built for discussion, therefore it allows influencers to engage and build strong connections with their followers. Followers tend to be from a specific demographic, possibly of a similar age, lifestyle and culture which is of particular benefit when marketing companies want to target a specific audience to advertise and promote their brand and products.

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How Irish politicians are adapting to social media (irishexaminer.com)

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Pressing the flesh and burning through shoe leather was traditionally a surefire way to get elected, but the pandemic and greater online engagement have changed that.

Once dismissed as frivolous and unnecessary for politicians, social media played a significant part in the general election of 2020 - claims of it being a vacuous endeavour simply do not ring true.

Social media personalities, such as Simon Harris, Mary Lou McDonald, Leo Varadkar, and even Taoiseach Micheál Martin, can reach well over 100,000 people with each tweet they send out. However, online platforms can also significantly raise the profile of backbench TDs, senators and councillors who would usually face an uphill battle to get any media attention.

With the exception of perhaps Sinn Féin, political parties have adopted a mainly ad hoc approach, leaving individual politicians to forge out an online constituency of their own.

"We're in a bit of a transition period where social media is evolving from something that was a bit more of an optional extra at the start but now it's becoming a key part of public relations and campaigning," says Dr Kirsty Parks of DCU's Institute of Future Media, Democracy and Society.

She says there has been an increasing professionalisation of social media by our politicians but we are "not fully there yet."

Just last week, Fianna Fáil members were sent out a 'let's get social!' email, encouraging them to follow all of the party's social media channels and to become an "online canvasser."

Members were told to "like, share and comment on our posts as much as possible. Your contribution online is invaluable.

"By liking a single post, it will appear on many other newsfeeds and help us grow our audience. Maybe you could invite a few online contacts to like the Fianna Fáil page? Any support will be most appreciated."

As part of new social media guidelines issued to members last October, the Labour Party stated that online platforms "create new opportunities for personal expression" but also "create new responsibilities".

"Please remember that the internet never forgets. This means everything you publish will be visible to the world for a very, very long time. Commonsense is a huge factor here. If you are about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, review," the Labour Party guidelines states.

In 2016, then Taoiseach Enda Kenny raised a few eyebrows around Leinster House when he took to Twitter to announce the date of the General Election. It was dubbed a snub to those both in his own government and in the opposition not to make this announcement in the Dáil.

Of course, this was considered a minor faux-pas and some even agreed with Mr Kenny's approach, others, including Sinn Féin's Brian Stanley, have sparked far greater fury online.

Mr Stanley was forced into making a Dáil statement as a result of his tweets regarding the IRA and Leo Varadkar.

Fine Gael TD Joe Carey also had to apologise when he 'liked' a tweet that described Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns as an "ignorant little girl."

Those who play the online game well can gain a celebrity-like status, with massive followings on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more recently TikTok.

However, just as social media influencers aim to present themselves and their life through a specific lens, Dr Parks says politicians are undoubtedly cultivating the 'best version' of themselves as well.

"Successful branding on social media often looks like an individual who is very authentic and relatable, it doesn't look like somebody who's reading from a script because that's not actually what people link to or find appealing on social media.

"So, even if we look at somebody like Simon Harris you could ask is he posting the way that he is because that's just who he is and that's how he likes to share? Or does he have some media-savvy advisors who are shaping his social media brand?

"That's something that you don't really know, you can't get that just by looking at it."

Showing a side of the person that the general public might not usually see can massively increase an individual's popularity online - pre-Covid, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe often spoke about gigs he attended, former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams famously included his rubber ducky in posts, while Taoiseach Micheál Martin more recently posted a selfie while out on a cliff walk in Ballycotton, Co Cork.

Mr Varadkar has recently taken to providing 'behind the scenes' clips of his daily work from Government Buildings or Dublin Castle through live streams or video clips.

He famously posted a picture of him filling a dishwasher in the office when he was Taoiseach with the caption: "No-one gets away without packing the dishwasher around here."

However, it seems practice does make perfect when it comes to social media.

Dr Kevin Cunningham, lecturer in Politics at TU Dublin, points to research from the University of Amsterdam which found that when a politician or candidate is active on social media they are more likely to be asked onto traditional media such as television and radio.

Coverage in traditional media tends to lead to an increase in activity on social media, thus increasing the person's profile in a circular manner.

We're just over a decade into the application of social media in political campaigns and the question persists: Does it matter? The academic evidence presents a nuanced picture.

Social media has proven to be effective for increasing the visibility of potential political leaders. The emergence of Barack Obama as a candidate in the 2008 US Democratic primaries through the medium of Facebook was the first and most obvious example.

More recently, research from the University of Amsterdam highlighted the role of social media in increasing the visibility of candidates.

It showed the reciprocity between the traditional news agenda and the social media agenda.

Increased activity of a given candidate on social media tends to lead to a significant increase in coverage in traditional media and vice-versa.

A notable aside is that this effect is even greater for candidates located at the extremes of political discourse.

However, there is still little evidence of any strong relationship between social media activity and electoral outcomes.

The problem with social media is that it does not (and probably never will) offer a stable, unbiased, representative picture of the electorate.

Those who use sites such as Twitter are a distortion of the general public: Notable studies in the UK show that Twitter users lean towards Remain over Leave.

Content producers are an even greater distortion. The vast majority of the content one sees on Twitter comes via users with a large following.

Polling conducted in July 2020 by Ireland Thinks revealed supporters of small left-wing parties (Labour, Green, Social Democrat and Solidarity-PBP) accounted for 42% of users with more than 500 followers - vastly exceeding the 15% of the general public that supports these parties. On the other hand, Sinn Féin supporters accounted for just 6% of those with over 500 followers, while polling 30% nationally.

However, this isn't the biggest issue. When it comes to a general election, the focus is on the undecided voter, who is interested just enough to vote, but not enough to have any strong allegiances.

The problem with social media for a political campaign is that the most intense users of social media are politically aligned and, therefore, extremely unlikely to change their views. To this end, many campaigns view social media as merely a mechanism through which to recruit volunteers to help them to contact the undecided voters on the doorstep.

However, to dismiss social media in this way makes the mistake of dismissing the media more generally.

All media has its own distortions, but nobody would dismiss the press or broadcast in terms of getting the message out or setting the agenda.

Indeed, one would never presume that merely the more articles written about a politician, the better that politician was likely to do in an election.

While social media may not be particularly useful in the constituency-by-constituency battle, it is fundamentally a core part of any party's attempts to set the political agenda. Furthermore, it is a core part of the ambitions of future leaders.

Kevin Cunningham is a lecturer in politics at TU Dublin.

John Halligan

Former Independent TD for Waterford John Halligan has said he fears a future TD may be driven to take their own lives if something is not done to protect politicians from online abuse.

Mr Halligan said that because of their position in the public eye, there was a perception that politicians were somehow not subject to the same sensitivities as anyone else.

"There's a perception that you don't feel pain or hurt, that you don't go to a quiet place and say, 'Jesus, why am I getting this abuse?'," he said.

Drawing on his own experiences, Mr Halligan said he had once received online messages from someone warning him that they had tampered with his car.

He said the issue had got worse since he left politics.

If nothing was done, he said, a vulnerable politician might consider hurting themselves.

"If you look at the abuse, and people might not like me saying this, but you look at what online abuse has done to some people, it has led to some people committing suicide," he told Brendan O'Connor on RTÉ Radio One.

"TDs are not above ordinary people, they suffer and they have feelings and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that if something is not done, that is what might happen. That is my fear."

Mr Halligan said his daughter thought for a time about entering politics, but reconsidered after reading and seeing interviews in which female politicians described the personalised online attacks made against them.

"This will prohibit younger people and particularly young women from coming into politics if it cannot be stopped. And to be quite frank with you, I don't know how it can be stopped."

Agreeing with Mr Halligan's points, former Labour senator Lorraine Higgins spoke of the "relentless, continuous bombardment" she endured in her relatively short political career.

She said she received countless online messages threatening her with sexual violence and rape. She also received death threats.

Ms Higgins reported several incidents to gardaí, the most menacing of which ended in a suspended sentence for the perpetrator.

"I was sent videos of people shooting guns, I was told what gun they were going to shoot me with. I was told how they were going to shoot me.

"I was told they were training over a bank holiday weekend to make sure that they had their target perfected," she said.

The former Labour senator said her parents were also threatened.

Mr Halligan said what happened and continued to happen to Ms Higgins and other female politicians was "beyond belief".

"It will drive people out of politics and stop people entering politics," he said.

There was a "sinister element" whose thought process was "if we can beat down a politicians one way or another, we'll do it," he said.

Mr Halligan and Ms Higgins called for additional supports for politicians from inside and outside the Government.

From gardening videos on Tiktok to personal press conferences on Instagram and commentary on on Twitter, Simon Harris seems to have political social media sewn up.

The minister for higher education says it is "illogical and a little out of date" not to take these online platforms seriously and brushes aside claims that this type of interaction is vacuous.

"It's a space that can't be ignored because that's where an awful lot of my constituents are getting a lot of their information from. I actually like using social media, particularly Instagram, I like using it and keeping in touch with people that way," he said.

Mr Harris, who has amassed 170,000 followers on Instagram, quickly took advantage of the online platform when he moved out of the Department of Health mid-pandemic.

While the Government lectern may have been taken away from him, he has continued to provide Covid-19 updates through regular live streams on the social media site, prompting jokes that he maybe doesn't realise that there is a new minister for health.

However, he says the reaction to his Insta stories has been hugely positive: "People liked the idea, or certainly somewhat connected with the idea that I wasn't reading out a script or delivering a party political broadcast. I was just genuinely sharing my views, whether they were right or they were wrong, whether they agreed or disagreed with me, I was just genuinely giving my view of the day and what had happened. It's a chance to be authentic."

Harris, who now has
88.9k followers on TikTok after being one of the
first TDs to join the platform which allows users scroll through short, snappy
clips, knows how to
use each type of social media and to tailor his message to specific audiences.

"I do all my own tweets and I do all my own Instagram and I even do all my own TikTok now."

While he sometimes shares insights into his personal life, including pictures of his young daughter, Mr Harris is also careful not to 'overshare' and stresses that family pictures are only posted for specific reasons such as a birthday or a special occasion.

"It's not enough as a politician to just do things the way you used to do them.

"It used to be if you were on and you got on the front page of a couple of the papers you had got your message out to everybody.

"They are all still important mediums. .. but equally you have to recognise that there some people - particularly younger but not just younger people - who get their information in different ways and look for information in different ways. I find it odd not to be on that."

Mr Harris also finds it odd that being on social media would be criticised, but he hasn't given up on more traditional ways of communication any time soon.

"I am a politician that uses a lot of shoe leather as well, it's not an alternative to knocking on doors, I hold a constituency clinic every Saturday.

"So it's an addition,
as opposed to an alternative. I do radio interviews and TV interviews and newspaper interviews, it's an addition, not a substitution, it's probably an important way of getting information out and to keep in touch."

Holly Cairns is of the Bebo generation, so taking her political campaign on to social media was a natural progression.

The Social Democrat TD said: "Almost nobody walks around with a radio or newspaper in their hand all day, but everybody you find has their phone in their hand all day."

The Cork South West politician still sees merit in more traditional forms of communication and was surprised at the impact posters had during her general election campaign.

She said that there was no way of knowing how much of a part her online presence played in getting her elected or whether she would have won the Dáil seat without it.

"You can never tell what gets you votes or what engages people," she said.

However, with 31,000 followers on Twitter, 24,700 followers on Instagram, her own Inside the Chamber podcast and, of course, a Facebook page, it is clear that the backbench TD has a significant online reach.

She recently joined TikTok and has amassed thousands of followers, despite only posting two videos so far.

"I got 5,500 over the weekend without me even looking at it", said Ms Cairns, whose following on the video-sharing site has increased by another 1,000 since.

"I don't know if you can actually get that level of engagement from any other form of media.

"I don't know, but when you are putting up Instagram stories and they're getting over 10,000 views, hundreds of thousands of reactions and you can see how many engagements you have on a Facebook post, I have no idea but I suspect you reach far more people through social media."

Ms Cairns, who often appears on current affairs TV and radio shows, said there were benefits to using these traditionally trusted media online.

She doesn't go in for gimmicky posts and instead uses contributions from the Dáil, again sharing more traditional parts of the job with a new online world.

"It's great content. Content from TV programmes is effective.

"Sharing clips from, for example, or is good because people can see that it's TV, but they don't have to actually tune into RTÉ or Virgin at 10pm," Ms Cairns said.

She also believes social media helps new candidates to gain a profile and she said online campaigning was used extensively by the Social Democrat's candidates during last year's general election.

"We didn't have that on the ground campaign like other parties did, so we kind of had an air campaign - a lot of it on social media and that was really effective.

"So it's definitely a strength to have and I definitely would encourage people to use it," she said.

"It feels like an obvious platform to me. I grew up with it, so age would be an advantage in that I guess, being of a younger generation.

"But there is no replacing the newspaper and radio, it's just a nice addition," she said.

Hazel Chu has had her fair share of nasty trolls, but she still sees the positive side of social media.

"There was once upon a time I would have said 'you don't feed the trolls no matter what', but then having experienced the last couple of years that I've had, there are some you should definitely not feed, and then there are others you should just call out," she says.

"I have definitely used social media to my advantage and it has helped in a lot of ways, it has been an issue in other ways, but it definitely has helped."

The current lord mayor of Dublin and Green Party chair has been attacked over her gender and has received racial abuse online, but she has learnt to face the bullies head on.

Ms Chu says she does not block anyone, which she admits may be an "added problem" for her.

While many politicians see social media as a tool to get their message out, Ms Chu also uses online platforms as a way of gathering information herself.

For example, she said members of a Facebook page have been a massive help with a breastfeeding campaign she is working on.

"I can talk to people on that group, and find out their views and actually connect with them. Through that group I've been able to connect with a few of the more organised breastfeeding advocacy groups like Bainne Beatha and Friends of Breastfeeding.

"I find that kind of engagements really good through the likes of Facebook," the politician says.

She uses Twitter differently and sees that as a place to seek out news or ask for assistance with particular issues from her 46,200 followers.

"For Twitter, what I've noticed what works really well if you have an ask for something or if you are requesting help with something, Twitter tends to be very reactive that way."

Meanwhile, Instagram is more of a personal platform and she tends to share pictures of her family or behind-the-scenes snippets of her life in the Mansion House.

Since becoming lord mayor, she has also started up her 'Chu and chats' sessions - a lunchtime online get-together which is aimed at encouraging public interaction at a time when face-to-face meetings and visits cannot go ahead.

However, she says she is not yet brave enough to join TikTok, claiming, "I don't dance that well".

While Ms Chu still believes a person could get elected without being on social media platforms, she says being engaged with an online audience certainly makes it a lot easier.

"I think it's a crucial add-on now insofar as you can dismiss it, but you will have to work harder somewhere else if you don't use it.

"I know a lot of people go: 'Oh it's just social media, people shouldn't use it or should ignore and it's not that important', but there's a reason why the likes of Simon Harris are on it, it connects to a different group of people and it's also that instant form of communication as well."

Social media can be very fickle place, as Eoin Ó Broin learned when he prompted a very crabby response to a picture of one of his home-cooked meals.

The Sinn Féin TD put out a picture of the spider crabs he had purchased from a seafood wholesaler during the lockdown, adding that he was planning on having them with a Jerez sherry and cream sauce.

"For those that don't buy crab, it's a very cheap fish which is one of the great things about it, and I cooked a lovely stuffed crab and I put it up and I got this kind of blizzard of abuse," he said of the incident.

The Dublin Mid-West TD who has 41,900 followers on Twitter, knows the power of social media, but also isn't afraid to have fun with it and get into discussions about cooking, books he has read, and more recently Irish hip-hop music.

He also recognises that what works for social media won't necessarily translate to television, radio, or newspapers in the same way, saying elected representatives also have to take a different approach to each platform they use.

For example, the Sinn Féin spokesman on housing says Facebook is used as an online constituency office by many voters and so his content matches this.

"Those of us who would be very active on social media, we use different platforms differently.

"Facebook is increasingly a form of communication directly with your voters.

"So I would get a lot of people contacting me via Facebook, particularly through Facebook Messenger, who are constituents, particularly people in their 40s and 50s using Facebook to contact you about constituency work that they want you to get involved with. The kind of people that follow me on Facebook, in general, are more likely to be constituency."

Mr Ó Broin says broadcasting via Facebook and Instagram is a great way of communicating with voters and supporters - short and to the point is key.

On his feed, you will find the famous pictures of home-cooked meals - such as a tasty looking West Cork shrimp omelette and some sort of slow-cooked lamb dish.

However, Mr Ó Broin also uses his social media page to update his 3,130 Instagram followers on any media appearances or work he is doing as part of his role as Sinn Féin housing spokesperson.

"The challenge of Instagram is it's much more personal, and it's much more visual. So I say I'm not as proficient in terms of using that tool to engage."

When it comes to Twitter he says it's mainly used as a tool by other politicians, journalists, party members, and political analysts and anoraks.

It's also very good for news and information and keeping up with tallies and results during election counts.

"Twitter is a platform I really like. If I wasn't a TD, I probably wouldn't be on Facebook whereas I would remain on Twitter."

Thankfully, the abuse over his lavish crab dinner hasn't put him off and he has since promoted more Irish produce and cooking.

"It's not necessarily politics with a big-P, it's just I like to cook and I put it up on Twitter for a bit of craic, it hasn't done me any harm and you are promoting some local businesses." he says.

As a backbencher social media is the only way of getting noticed according to Richard Bruton who almost followed in the footsteps of Kim Kardashian in breaking the internet last summer.

The Fine Gael TD is not as devoted to his online platforms as some of his colleagues, but he likes to dabble online with entertaining cook-along videos and, of course, the now famous swimming clip.

The online video displaying his impressive abs, has been viewed almost 378,000 times since he posted it last July.

The 68-year-old says he was "amazed" at how the post, which highlighted the cultural and tourist pleasures of his north Dublin constituency, took off.

"I have been swimming and cycling for 40 years but when it went into a package like that it suddenly became a story. But it was just a bit of fun."

He adds: "What I like about it is you can show a wider dimension of your personality than you can on the television or radio."

Mr Bruton easily got media attention as a minister in the last government but he says social media for backbench TDs like himself can be the only way to raise a point.

"The only way a backbencher can be noticed is by building up some sort of a level of influence in what they have to say.

"It's very very hard and you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a backbencher puts out a conventional statement that gets coverage, unless it's reacting to some story that's happening.

"It's very hard to initiate anything in traditional media, so your only chance if you're an outsider trying to break in or an apprentice, is to initiate things of your own to get noticed. So I think it's an essential part of political life," he said.

The move to social media has been a significant departure for the TD who was first elected to Meath County Council in 1979 before becoming a senator in 1981.

"When I started in politics there were the three dailies [newspapers], and they recorded what was going on in the Dáil, there were three or four pages devoted in each of the three dailies on what happened in the Dáil, like the notion of that happening today is so far from the reality," says Mr Bruton.

He believes we have not yet fully figured out the parameters for using these platforms and more oversight will be required in the future.

"There is a huge amount of change going on and I don't think we as a community have fully caught up with it.

"It's very interesting area and I think everyone is groping along wondering how we will manage it all."

While he says the internet and social media can be a "powerful tool" these platforms will never replace more traditional methods of communication.

"I still am a big believer of knocking on doors. It's the only way of really talking to people," he says.

Some members of the upper House are getting inventive with social media, from clips of scenic walks, to dress-up, and pictures of their pets and children.

The Roscommon senator documents his daily scenic walks with puppy in tow on social media.

Senator Eugene Murphy getting in some steps before embarking on his novel fundraiser.

"I think it brings joy to people when they see nature. There is so much negativity around so I think it's important to give a bit of light and bring a feel-good factor to people," he said.

The Fianna Fáil politician is relatively new to social media, but has become hooked on creating uplifting content for his followers.

"I now actually go out in the evening time looking for nice things to post, like the sun setting on Sliabh Bawn," he said.

"If I was out of politics in the morning, I would still do it. For me, it's not about using it for political pointscoring, I hope I bring a little bit of joy and happiness."

Lots of people dress up for Halloween, but Labour senator Annie Hoey took it one step further by doing a whole month of online dress-up. The first-time senator went viral when she started posting pictures of her dress-up each day.

She went to work co-ordinating her outfits with that of famous cartoon and real-life characters, including Barney the dinosaur, Kermit the Frog, Aladdin, and Kim Kardashian.

The Fine Gael senator has used the pandemic to raise awareness around disability and to show off some stunning Co Clare beaches as part of his fitness regime.

"When the pandemic hit, I made a very conscious decision that I was not going to distribute newsletters in my constituency.

"I wasn't going to attend any events, even socially distanced events, and I wasn't going to hold clinics.

"So I had to look at the options available to me to keep in contact.

"I would have embraced social media in that perspective."

However, being visually impaired means screentime can be difficult and it puts extra strain on his eyes.

While online platforms can provide greater access to politicians, he says they are restrictive to others who may have a disability or literacy problems.

"There are a lot good elements to social media, but there are also bad elements and the trolling of people can be terrible.

"The other thing about it, it is time-consuming and the break-up of your time is very different now," he said.

The Fianna Fáil senator gave birth to twin boys just days before last year's general election campaign kicked off, and often gives an honest insight of how she juggles politics and motherhood.

She describes herself as an "Irish mammy" who "likes to use Twitter to amplify amazing women in all walks of life".

However, it is the two little men in her life who regularly steal the show on her social media pages. Her cat Piper is also a big hit.

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How Irish politicians are adapting to social media

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Pressing the flesh and burning through shoe leather was traditionally a surefire way to get elected, but the pandemic and greater online engagement have changed that. Once dismissed as frivolous and unnecessary for politicians, social media played a significant part in the general election of 2020 - claims of it being a vacuous endeavour simply do not ring true.

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What Is Twitter & How Does It Work? (lifewire.com)

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Twitter is an online news and social networking site where people communicate in short messages called tweets. Tweeting is posting short messages for anyone who follows you on Twitter, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience. Another description of Twitter and tweeting might be microblogging.

Some people use Twitter to discover interesting people and companies online, opting to follow their tweets.

Why Twitter Is So Popular

Twitter's big appeal is how scan-friendly it is. You can track hundreds of engaging Twitter users and read their content with a glance, which is ideal for our modern attention-deficit world.

Twitter employs a purposeful message size restriction to keep things scan-friendly: every microblog tweet entry is limited to 280 characters or less. This size cap promotes the focused and clever use of language, which makes tweets easy to scan, and challenging to write. This size restriction made Twitter a popular social tool.

How Twitter Works

Twitter is easy to use as either broadcaster or a receiver. You join with a free account and Twitter name. Then you send broadcasts (tweets) daily, hourly, or as frequently as you like. Go to the What's Happening box next to your profile image, type 280 or fewer characters, and click Tweet. People who follow you, and potentially others who don't, will see your tweet.

Encourage people you know to follow you and receive your tweets in their Twitter feeds. Let your friends know you are on Twitter to build up a following slowly. When people follow you, Twitter etiquette calls for you to follow them back.

To receive Twitter feeds, find someone interesting (celebrities included) and press Follow to subscribe to their tweets. If their tweets aren't as interesting as you hoped, you can always unfollow them.

Go to your account at Twitter.com day or night to read your Twitter feed, which is continually changing as people post. Check out Trending topics to see what's going on in the world.

Twitter is that simple.

Why People Tweet

People send tweets for all sorts of reasons besides sharing their thoughts: vanity, attention, shameless self-promotion of their web pages, or pure boredom. The vast majority of tweeters microblog recreationally. It's a chance to shout out to the world and revel in how many people read their tweets.

However, a growing number of Twitter users send out useful content, and that's the real value of Twitter. It provides a stream of quick updates from friends, family, scholars, news journalists, and experts. It empowers people to become amateur journalists of life, describing and sharing something that they found interesting about their day.

Twitter has a lot of drivel, but at the same time, there is a base of useful news and knowledgeable content. You'll need to decide for yourself which content is worth following there.

Twitter as a Form of Amateur News Reporting

Among other things, Twitter is a way to learn about the world through another person's eyes.

Tweets may come from people in Thailand as their cities become flooded. Your soldier cousin in Afghanistan might describe his war experiences; your traveling sister in Europe shares her daily discoveries, or a rugby friend could tweet from the Rugby World Cup. These microbloggers are all mini-journalists in their own way, and Twitter gives them a platform to send a constant stream of updates right from their laptops and smartphones.

Twitter as a Marketing Tool

Thousands of people advertise their recruiting services, consulting businesses, and retail stores by using Twitter, and it works.

The modern internet-savvy user has grown tired of television advertisements. People prefer advertising that is fast, less intrusive, and can be turned on or off at will. Twitter is precisely that; when you learn how the nuances of tweeting work, you can get good advertising results by using Twitter.

Twitter as a Social Messaging Tool

Yes, Twitter is social media, but it's more than instant messaging. Twitter is about discovering interesting people around the world. It can also be about building a following of people who are interested in you and your work or hobbies and then providing those followers with some knowledge value every day.

Twitter works well with other social tools, including Instagram, Snapchat, and Messenger. For example, if you like a tweet and want to share it on your Instagram Story, tap the tweet, then tap the Share icon and choose Instagram Stories. The tweet will appear as part of your Instagram Story. (This feature is currently supported only on iOS).

Why Celebrities Like Twitter

Twitter has become one of the most used social media platforms because it is both personal and rapid. Celebrities use Twitter to build a personal connection with their fans.

Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, and Dionne Warwick are some of the famous Twitter users. Their daily updates foster a sense of connectedness with their followers, which is powerful for advertising purposes and also compelling and motivating for the people who following the celebs.

Twitter Is Many Different Things

Twitter is a blend of instant messaging, blogging, and texting, but with concise content and a broad audience. If you fancy yourself a bit of a writer with something to say, then Twitter is a channel worth exploring. If you don't like to write but are curious about a celebrity, a particular hobby topic, or even a long-lost cousin, then Twitter is one way to connect with that person or subject.

How do I set up a Twitter account?

To create a Twitter account, go to the Twitter website or download the Twitter app, then select Sign up or Create account. Enter the requested information, and then verify your account via text or email. Twitter will walk you through setting up your profile.

How do I delete my Twitter account?

To deactivate a Twitter profile, go to More > Settings and Privacy > Your Account > Deactivate your account. You can reactivate Twitter within 30 days. After 30 days, your account is deleted.

How do I make my Twitter private?

To hide your tweets from the general public, go to More > Settings and Privacy > Your Account > Account Information > Protected Tweets > Protect My Tweets. To prevent a specific person from viewing your tweets, you can block users on Twitter.

Can I change my Twitter handle?

Yes. To change your user name on Twitter in a browser, select More > Settings and Privacy > Your Account > Account Information. Enter your password, then select Username > Change Username.

How do I download Twitter videos?

In a web browser, copy the video's URL and go to DownloadTwitterVideo.com. To download Twitter videos on iOS or Android, use a third-party app like MyMedia (iOS) or +Download (Android).

Twitter is a publicly traded company run by a board of shareholders. The CEO and majority shareholder is Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter in 2006.

Thanks for letting us know!

Other Not enough details Hard to understand

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Twitter is an online news and social networking site where people communicate in short messages called tweets. Tweeting is posting short messages for anyone who follows you on Twitter, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience. Another description of Twitter and tweeting might be microblogging.

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Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets | Twitter | The Guardian

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Twitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources.

The social media platform examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries - the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed.

The study compared Twitter's "Home" timeline - the default way its 200 million users are served tweets, in which an algorithm tailors what users see - with the traditional chronological timeline where the most recent tweets are ranked first.

The research found that in six out of seven countries, apart from Germany, tweets from rightwing politicians received more amplification from the algorithm than those from the left; right-leaning news organisations were more amplified than those on the left; and generally politicians' tweets were more amplified by an algorithmic timeline than by the chronological timeline.

According to a 27-page research document, Twitter found a "statistically significant difference favouring the political right wing" in all the countries except Germany. Under the research, a value of 0% meant tweets reached the same number of users on the algorithm-tailored timeline as on its chronological counterpart, whereas a value of 100% meant tweets achieved double the reach. On this basis, the most powerful discrepancy between right and left was in Canada (Liberals 43%; Conservatives 167%), followed by the UK (Labour 112%; Conservatives 176%). Even excluding top government officials, the results were similar, the document said.

Twitter said it wasn't clear why its Home timeline produced these results and indicated that it may now need to change its algorithm. A blog post by Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter's director of software engineering, and Luca Belli, a Twitter researcher, said the findings could be "problematic" and that more study needed to be done. The post acknowledged that it was concerning if certain tweets received preferential treatment not as a result of the way in which users interacted, but because of the inbuilt way the algorithm works.

"Algorithmic amplification is problematic if there is preferential treatment as a function of how the algorithm is constructed versus the interactions people have with it. Further root cause analysis is required in order to determine what, if any, changes are required to reduce adverse impacts by our Home timeline algorithm," the post said.

Twitter said it would make its research available to outsiders such as academics and it is preparing to let third parties have wider access to its data, in a move likely to put further pressure on Facebook to do the same. Facebook is being urged by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to distribute its research to third parties after tens of thousands of internal documents - which included revelations that the company knew its Instagram app damaged teenage mental health - were leaked by the whistleblower Frances Haugen.

The Twitter study compared the two ways in which a user can view their timeline: the first uses an algorithm to provide a tailored view of tweets that the user might be interested in based on the accounts they interact with most and other factors; the other is the more traditional timeline in which the user reads the most recent posts in reverse chronological order.

The study compared the two types of timeline by considering whether some politicians, political parties or news outlets were more amplified than others. The study analysed millions of tweets from elected officials between 1 April and 15 August 2020 and hundreds of millions of tweets from news organisations, largely in the US, over the same period.

Twitter said it would make its research available to third parties but said privacy concerns prevented it from making available the "raw data". The post said: "We are making aggregated datasets available for third party researchers who wish to reproduce our main findings and validate our methodology, upon request."

Twitter added that it was preparing to make internal data available to external sources on a regular basis. The company said its machine-learning ethics, transparency and accountability team was finalising plans in a way that would protect user privacy.

"This approach is new and hasn't been used at this scale, but we are optimistic that it will address the privacy-vs-accountability tradeoffs that can hinder algorithmic transparency," said Twitter. "We're excited about the opportunities this work may unlock for future collaboration with external researchers looking to reproduce, validate and extend our internal research."

This article was amended on 25 October 2021. The blog post by Rumman Chowdhury and Luca Belli indicated that it was problematic if certain tweets received preferential treatment because of how the Twitter algorithm was constructed, rather than on how users interacted with it. However, an earlier version of the article had this the other way around. This has now been corrected.

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Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets

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Home feed promotes rightwing tweets over those from the left, internal research finds

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All politics is social: How Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have taken the fight online (irishtimes.com)

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All politics is social: How Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have taken the fight online

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Social Media has a wide reach and each platform appeals to a different demographic.
Sinn Fein is harnessing the power of social media and engaging with a wide audience . In particular they seem to have accessed the younger demographic through the use of social media. This strategy would appear to be contributing to their success.

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January 2022 Irish Political Party Social Media Stats – TheCork.ie (News & Entertainment)

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11 January 2022
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie

A social media analysis by Cork-based Mulley Communications of the social media accounts of political parties has shown that Sinn Féin has the biggest following across all social media networks while Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media.

Sinn Féin has the biggest Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube numbers. Sinn Féin also has the most YouTube views with 18.7M views. However, Leo Varadkar has more Facebook, Twitter and Instagram followers than all the political parties in Ireland and would be number one if he was his own party (make of that what you will)

Damien Mulley from Mulley Communications commented

"There has not been any major shifts in followers of the political parties since the last general election. However during the pandemic the Twitter followers of Leo Varadkar rose by almost 200,000 and since becoming Taoiseach Micheal Martin has seen an increase in his followers on social media.""As more people move to Instagram and TikTok, this has not been reflected in increasing numbers on these platforms by political parties, apart from strong growth on TikTok by Sinn Féin and Simon Harris"
Irish Political Party Social Media
** Labour and Fine Gael have not shown subscriber numbers for YouTube
Party Leaders
Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media with over 720,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Mary Lou McDonald has the next highest number of followers with 370,000 followers and Micheál Martin has 179k followers.

Mary Lou McDonald has the greatest amount of Facebook followers. To note: Facebook has the oldest demographic where almost the majority of people are 40 or over. Instagram and TikTok have much younger demographics.
Party Leader Social Media Micheal Martin saw a large bump in Twitter followers and a slight increase in Facebook followers since his election to Taoiseach: The Fianna Fáil party didn't see the same bump though
While Mulley Communications couldn't find TikTok accounts for any party leader, Simon Harris is King of TikTok with 89k followers https://www.tiktok.com/@simon_harristd and has more followers than the political parties.

An analysis by Mulley Communications from last week showed the breakdown of social media use in Ireland:

2.6M users on Instagram
2.7M users on Facebook
Facebook's demographic is growing older
Instagram soon to be bigger than Facebook in Ireland
2.1M users on TikTok

Party Breakdown by Social network Facebook Numbers Twitter Numbers Instagram Numbers TikTok Numbers

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January 2022 Irish Political Party Social Media Stats

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11 January 2022 By Elaine Murphy elaine@TheCork.ie A social media analysis by Cork-based Mulley Communications of the social media accounts of political parties has shown that Sinn Féin has the biggest following across all social media networks while Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media.

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Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by Meta Platforms.

It was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow students and room mates in Harvard, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew Mc Callum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students.

Facebook is now available in 112 languages worldwide. Users can create a profile, post text, photos or videos and share with others who have agreed to be their friend or share content publicly if they choose.

Users can connect with each other directly through Facebook messenger, join groups and receive notifications from those whose pages they follow.

Facebook is part of the rebranded tech giant Meta. It is still the biggest social networking app in the Irish market.
63% of Irish people have a facebook account.

Facebook usage in Ireland is however falling and the average age of Facebook users is getting older. Young people are now more likely to use Tik Tok or Instagram.

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Facebook usage drops in Ireland as TikTok’s popularity surges (irishtimes.com)

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Facebook usage drops in Ireland as TikTok's popularity surges

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How do politicians use Facebook? An applied Social Observatory - Simon Caton, Margeret Hall, Christof Weinhardt, 2015 (sagepub.com)

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Nice guys finish last: personality and political success | SpringerLink

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Abstract

Is there a link between personality and the electoral and in-office success of politicians? Using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, we examine whether the Five-Factor Model personality traits are correlated with political success among Belgian elected officials. We look at three different measures of political success, corresponding to different stages of the political career-electoral success, years in office, and access to an elite political position-and find lower levels of agreeableness are systematically correlated with greater success. These results are in line with those found among American and European CEO's (Boudreau et al. in J Vocat Behav 58(1):53-81, 2001). This study offers a unique insight in the type of personality voters and party leadership look for and reward among politicians.

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Notes

1. Preference vote = individual number of preference votes/total votes of the party in that district * 100.

2. It is worth noting that both our sample generally, and our sample of elites versus non-elites, are not biased in terms of political ideology. For instance, using the most recent Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) data (Bakker et al. 2015; Polk et al. 2017), we observe that the average ideological left-right position for elites is 5.4 and 5.6 for non-elites-0 corresponds to the most left and 10 to the most right wing party. The CHES data include local expert assessments on the ideological left (0)-right (10) position for each political party in a given country.

3. Since 2002, electoral lists at the federal and regional levels are required to present an equal number of men and women.

4. We also tested for interaction effects between personality and the covariates. We tested this by running models in which each personality trait was interacted (separately) with either sex or age (in the models that control for demographics). In no instance was the interaction statistically significant.

References

Feist, J., and G.J. Feist (eds.). 2009. Theories of personality, 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Judge, T.A., and J.D. Kammeyer-Mueller. 2007. Personality and career success. In Handbook of career studies, ed. H.P. Gunz and M. Peiperl. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

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Levy, J.S. 2013. Psychology and foreign policy decision-making. In The Oxford handbook of political psychology, eds. H. Leonie, O.S. David, and S.L. Jack, 314-316. New York: OUP.

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McCrae, R.R., and P.T. Costa. 2005. Personality in adulthood: A Five- Factor theory perspective, vol. 2, 2nd edn. New York: The Guilford Press. https://www.guilford.com/books/Personality-in-Adulthood/McCrae-Costa/9781593852603.

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Author information

Affiliations

1. Department of Political Science, Ghent University, Universiteitstraat 8, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

Jeroen Joly

2. Department of Communication Studies and the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 105 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Stuart Soroka

3. Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, 14 Queen's Park Cres. West, Toronto, ON, M5S 3K9, Canada

Peter Loewen

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeroen Joly.

Appendix: Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI)

Appendix: Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI)

The next battery of questions is designed to assess certain aspects of your personality. These questions have been used extensively in a wide variety of international studies. We would like to ask you to score a number of these traits for which there is, of course no right or wrong answer. They may seem contradictory, but this is how the battery has been used successfully in prior research. This is important for us, as we would like to know if, for example, extravert representatives have different information processing styles or other views on how to represent citizens. It is important to note that your answers are anonymous and will never be used in a way that can identify you. We list a number of personality traits that may or may not apply to you. Can you indicate to which extent you agree or disagree with each statement. You should rate the extent to which a pair of traits applies to you, even if one characteristic applies more strongly than the other. I see myself as:

Disagree strongly

Disagree moderately

Disagree a little

Neither agree nor disagree

Agree a little

Agree moderately

Agree strongly

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1. 1. Extraverted, enthusiastic

2. 2. Critical, quarrelsome

3. 3. Dependable, self-disciplined

4. 4. Anxious, easily upset

5. 5. Open to new experiences, complex

6. 6. Reserved, quiet

7. 7. Sympathetic, warm

8. 8. Disorganized, careless

9. 9. Calm, emotionally stable

10. 10. Conventional, uncreative

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Joly, J., Soroka, S. & Loewen, P. Nice guys finish last: personality and political success. Acta Polit 54, 667-683 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-018-0095-z
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Keywords

Elites

Political careers

Personality

Elections

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Nice guys finish last: personality and political success - Acta Politica

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Is there a link between personality and the electoral and in-office success of politicians? Using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory, we examine whether the Five-Factor Model personality traits are correlated with political success among Belgian elected officials.

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The Top 10 Social Media Sites & Platforms 2021 (searchenginejournal.com)

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All social media networks are not created equally.

While Instagram might be a powerhouse for one brand, it'll do nothing for another - and while one business might have tons of engagement on Facebook, another business will gain more traction on LinkedIn.

With that in mind, how do you choose where to invest your time (and potentially ad spend)?

The best move is to have at least a presence on each of the major platforms, and from there, strategically choose which ones to double down on.

We're going to take a look at each of the seven major social media platforms in our social media guide: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Reddit.

You'll also gain insights into what content succeeds on each platform and get actionable tips to take your own social media marketing to the next level.

Before we dive in, let's take a look at each of these networks at a glance.

1. Facebook

This OG social media network is tried and true, and no matter your industry, there's a space for you on Facebook.

Some of the leading industries on Facebook include financial services, ecommerce, retail, gaming, entertainment, media, telecom, technology, consumer goods, and automotive businesses.

While the News Feed increasingly suppresses business posts, there are still ways to bolster engagement without investing in ads.

Consider joining (or creating) groups, using a Facebook Messenger chatbot, or using live video to up your engagement.

2. Twitter

Fast and sometimes furious, certain businesses really thrive on Twitter.

If your business is related to entertainment, sports, politics, or marketing, you stand to earn tremendous engagement on Twitter.

On Twitter, brands have an opportunity to craft and hone their voice - there's room to be clever and personable in addition to informative and helpful.

Jump into threads, provide value, share your own content as well as others, and join the nonstop conversation.

3. LinkedIn

Within its massive network of professionals, you'll find more than 61 million users in senior positions on LinkedIn.

If you're looking for decision makers who have the power to hire your company, stock your product, or partner with you, LinkedIn is the place to be.

Did you know that 44% of LinkedIn users have an income above the national median? Or that more than 50% of Americans with a college degree use LinkedIn?

It might not be the flashiest social media network, but there's unlimited potential for connecting with an elite group of professionals who can make a difference for your business.

4. Instagram

Instagram is a smorgasbord of eye-catching visuals and inspiring creativity.

It's also a social network where product-based businesses, influencers, and coaches can thrive.

Since introducing shoppable posts in 2018, the potential ROI for product-based businesses is higher than ever - not only can B2B's connect with a massive audience, they can link the product information and sales straight from the 'gram.

If your target demographic is under 35, Instagram is a gold mine: 63% of users are between the ages of 18 to 34, with virtually even split between male and female users.

5. Snapchat

If your target demographic is young, you definitely want to get in on Snapchat.

The most active users are Snapchat are 13-year-olds, and they're spending upwards of 30 minutes a day on the app.

Snapchat is a haven for user-generated content, behind-the-scenes videos, exclusive offers, and influencer takeovers.

6. Pinterest

Some of the most popular content on Pinterest includes fashion, food, decor, wedding, workout and DIY-related pins.

In addition, anything with rich visual can thrive on Pinterest.

Notably, 81% of Pinterest users are female - if you have a predominantly female audience, that's a compelling reason to invest time in social media marketing on Pinterest.

That's not to say that men aren't on Pinterest.

In fact, 40% of new Pinterest signups are male.

7. Reddit

Reddit heralds itself as "the front page of the internet."

According to Alexa rankings, Reddit is one of the top 20 most-visited sites.

Reddit has a unique blend of content and community, with more than 150,000 communities dedicated to every topic imaginable.

With so many niches, there's a place for every brand and business - it's a matter of finding the niches where your potential customers are active and diving in.

Get Our Guide to Social Media Marketing

We've only just scratched the surface. Ready to go much deeper?

Search Engine Journal's guide, How to Dominate Social Media: A Complete Strategy Guide, will tell you everything you need to know about social media marketing, offering valuable insights, proven strategies, and actionable takeaways that you can start using right now.

If you're bootstrapping your social media efforts yourself, this guide will help you every step of the way, from creating and optimizing your profiles to driving engagement and creating relationships with customers.

Or, if you're looking to outsource your social media to an agency or hire someone to work for your brand in-house, you can use this guide to as a resource for knowing what to look for as you interview candidates.

And if you're simply curious about social media marketing and haven't decided whether you want to invest time and money into it, this guide will showcase exactly why social media matters and give you insights into the significant potential for growth and revenue you can earn through successful social media strategy.

You'll learn how to set goals and objectives on each of these platforms, and what ROI to expect.

You'll also learn how to get more followers and engagement, with tips and tools specific to each network.

Finally, we'll look into the future and dive into emerging social media networks that are on our radar.
Featured Image Credit: Paulo Bobita

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The 7 Biggest Social Media Sites in 2020

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All social media networks are not created equally. While Instagram might be a powerhouse for one brand, it'll do nothing for another - and while one business might have tons of engagement on Facebook, another business will gain more traction on LinkedIn.

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15 Top Social Media Sites & Platforms (A Handy 2022 Guide) (smartblogger.com)

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Wondering which social media sites your business, brand, or blog should be on in 2021?

You've come to the right place.

Because social media platforms are always jockeying for dominance, it can be surprisingly difficult to find articles with the most up-to-date information on Google.

The good news is we've done the legwork for you. Below, you'll find the freshest data from sites like Statista to help you get the lowdown on the top social media sites around the world.

We'll look at cool features for each social networking platform, go over who should (and should not) use them, and provide insights that'll help you determine which ones are best for your business, brand, or blog.

Let's dig in.

The 15 Most Popular Social Media Sites in 2021

1. Facebook

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world.

But just because more than 90% of its daily active users live outside North America doesn't mean this social platform isn't popular in the U.S.

Seven in ten U.S. adults use Facebook, and more than half of Americans check multiple times daily, sharing posts composed of text, photos, videos, and GIFs that other users comment on, share, and react to.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features & Functionality

Who Should Use Facebook?

Just about every audience is on Facebook, and it is the most popular social media network for seniors - a rapidly growing demographic on the site.

Who Shouldn't Use Facebook?

Although Facebook dominates social media usage, if you're in an industry that elicits unhappy or angry feelings, then your message may not be well received on Facebook.

Final Word on Facebook

Facebook advertising's massive reach and powerful social media marketing capabilities make it a no-brainer for most businesses (just make sure you set up a business page, if you haven't already).

And if you're a content creator (whether it's a blog post, infographic, or an article for a client), Facebook is one of the best social media platforms to share content.

2. YouTube

When it comes to social networks, YouTube dominates video content sharing.

This massive video-sharing platform lets users post, comment on, and upvote or downvote music videos, TV shows, vlogs, educational content, live streams, movie trailers, and more.

They can also subscribe to other users' channels and add videos to playlists.

YouTube functions as a massive search engine (2nd only to Google), making SEO an important consideration for content creators.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

YouTube Cards visually enhance links to other videos and playlists, making your content more interactive. They can appear at any specified time during your video.

YouTube Live allows you to stand out by creating an engaging experience with your audience.

After reaching 1,000 followers, channels can post text, images, GIFs, live videos, and more within the Community tab to further connect with their audience.

Who Should Use YouTube?

Tons of businesses have leveraged this top social media site to reach potential customers successfully. Here are 50 content ideas to get any business started.

Who Shouldn't Use YouTube?

An astounding 500+ hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. If you're not committed to producing high-quality content, you won't gain traction.

Final Word on YouTube

Chances are your audience is regularly tuning in to this massively popular social media site to be entertained, educated, and informed. Will they find you there?

3. WhatsApp

In a crowded messaging app market (QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, etc.) WhatsApp stands as the most popular, with more monthly active users than Facebook Messenger (both are owned by Facebook).

Users can send text and voice messages or make voice and video calls for free with this mobile social media app. However, unlike the app Viber, users cannot call non-app users' numbers.

WhatsApp Business is a standalone app available on desktop, and many business owners use it as a handy customer service solution.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use WhatsApp?

Businesses that want to offer quickly accessible customer service, including local businesses offering delivery.

Who Shouldn't Use WhatsApp?

If your customers aren't likely to use the app, then it won't work because both parties must have it to connect.

Final Word on WhatsApp

It's easy to see why WhatsApp has become such a popular social networking app with small businesses. Check out this HubSpot article for WhatsApp marketing ideas.

4. Facebook Messenger

Messenger, originally Facebook Chat, is a standalone messaging app and platform.

No Facebook account is necessary to use this social networking site to communicate via text messages, voice, or video chat.

More than an instant messaging app, users can also share photos, videos, stickers, and other file formats.

Messenger was recently redesigned to be lightweight and fast - deprioritizing a number of features, including chatbots that had become integral to many businesses' customer communication strategy.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

US users can send and receive money through Messenger by connecting it to their debit card or PayPal account.

Location sharing (remember Foursquare and its check-ins?) makes it easy for your friends or customers to find you.

Messenger Rooms is a video chat feature similar to Zoom that allows up to 50 participants at a time.

Business solutions, like purchase tracking, notifications, and connecting customers with your customer service representatives make it easy to serve your customers.

Who Should Use Facebook Messenger?

Businesses whose customers are already on Facebook (and probably on Messenger), that want to offer their customers an easy and convenient way to reach them.

Who Shouldn't Use Facebook Messenger?

Those not able or willing to respond to customer inquiries within Messenger's allotted 24-hour window (prevents spamming), may want to consider another solution.

Final Word on Facebook Messenger

For a time, chatbots were a big marketing strategy on Messenger. Those days are over, with a shift toward user satisfaction. Respect your customers' inbox.

5. WeChat

WeChat (Weixin) is one of the most popular social media sites to come out of China.

Owned by Tencent, the parent company of QQ and QZone, this app does a little bit of everything.

It's a messaging, social media, and mobile payment app rolled into one, and users also play games, shop, and access government services through the platform.

Like other social media apps, users can also share photos, make video calls, and text.

Advertisers on WeChat benefit from Facebook-esque customer data collection.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

WeChat Pay allows users to shop and make money transfers.

Automated replies create a smooth customer service experience.

A customer history chat log is available for easy reference when corresponding with clients.

WeChat Shop platforms allow businesses to set up online stores that leverage features like WeChat Pay, phone number and address collection, retargeting, and customer service capabilities.

Who Should Use WeChat?

If your audience is in or from China - including tourists, students, and expats - then this all-in-one social media service is worth a look.

Who Shouldn't Use WeChat?

Foreign businesses must go through a 3rd party agency to advertise on WeChat, which is a lot of hassle unless you're serious about reaching Chinese audiences.

Final Word on WeChat

WeChat is a huge platform with tons of organic and paid marketing options for brands and businesses.

6. Instagram

Instagram is a video and photo-sharing social platform where users upload photos and short videos, often adding filters and other effects before sharing them with family and friends.

It's owned by Facebook, which provides robust marketing data for reaching your audience.

Instagram is the perfect place to show off products and tell visually centered stories about your business. Whether that's e-commerce or personal training, you'll find that users on this platform are ready to buy.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use Instagram?

A variety of brands thrive on Instagram, especially those in travel, beauty, and fashion - the largest demographic is under 35, urban females with above-average income.

Who Shouldn't Use Instagram?

If you're not prepared to consistently post unique, high-quality images and videos, then you won't capture much attention. (Thankfully, there are several great Instagram scheduling tools available to make consistent posting much easier.)

Final Word on Instagram

Instagram is growing every day. With increasingly sophisticated and powerful tools for marketers, it's a great social site for growing your business.

7. TikTok

TikTok is a massively popular social network coming out of China that bills itself as the "leading destination for short-form mobile video."

Users create various types of short (up to 60 seconds) looping videos to share, including comedy, talent, lip-synching, dancing, stunts, and more.

Like other social networking platforms, its algorithm will learn what you like and show you similar content over time.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use TikTok?

If your audience is young adults, and you can demonstrate a creative or visually appealing side to your brand, then TikTok is a must-have for your digital marketing playbook.

Who Shouldn't Use TikTok?

If your audience is older professionals, or if you're a B2B company, then this probably isn't the right place for you.

Also: The United States potentially banning TikTok due to data concerns was a popular topic throughout 2020, so if privacy is a chief concern of yours, keep this in mind.

Final Word on TikTok

TikTok is a fun space to show your brand's human side. If your audience is on this platform, it's a great place to cultivate awareness.

8. QQ

QQ is another Chinese instant messaging platform.

Users can participate in group chats and send texts and audio messages - comparable to Facebook Messenger.

Although it's primarily a desktop app, a lightweight and less functional mobile app is available.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use QQ?

The platform is especially popular with Gen Z, and you'll need an account to use QQ's blogging sub-platform QZone.

Who Shouldn't Use QQ?

If your audience is not in China, or they're older and have a higher income, then you're better off with WeChat.

Final Word on QQ

If you're doing business in China, then look into QQ further to see if it's a good fit for your brand. Here is a more in-depth article on the platform.

9. Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo, simply called Weibo in China, is a microblogging social network.

Similar to Twitter, you can find journalists, celebrities, and other public figures on this social networking website.

In addition to publishing text-based updates (up to 2,000 characters), users can share music, videos, and images. They can also comment, follow, private message, search, and use @Usernames to tag others.

And, like Instagram, users can post images (9 max per post) and create Stories.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use Sina Weibo?

If your brand can benefit from showing up in the larger social conversation of Chinese web users, then this could be a good fit.

Who Shouldn't Use Sina Weibo?

Foreign companies pay up to $2,000 USD registering for an official account. Probably not worth it if you're not sure if Weibo is for you.

Final Word on Sina Weibo

Weibo offers a number of ways to reach your audience, whether that's through advertising, content marketing, or via influencers.

10. QZone

With QZone, a bonded service to QQ, users share photos, watch videos, listen to music, keep diaries, play online games, shop, date, and blog.

Think of it as a mix of a social networking site and blogging platform. It's similar to Facebook, and users can like, share, and comment on posts.

They can also customize their profile backgrounds with accessories (mostly paid) and a song that plays in the background (like Myspace).

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use QZone?

QZone's user base leans heavily toward youth living in the smaller, less sophisticated cities and towns of China. Brands with mass-market appeal do well with this audience.

Who Shouldn't Use QZone?

If you're going after university students or working professionals, then consider WeChat or Sina Weibo.

Final Word on QZone

If your audience is Chinese citizens, either in China or living and traveling abroad, this could be a great place to run a marketing campaign.

11. Reddit

The "front page of the internet," Reddit is a forum where users can participate in thousands of communities called "subreddits," covering any topic imaginable (and many more).

Content is user-generated and includes written posts, discussions, photos, videos, and links to articles.

Users often pose questions to the community (similar to Quora), or just browse for random stories like you would see on StumbleUpon back in the day.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Ask Me Anything (AMAs) allows users to have live conversations with well-known public figures like politicians, authors, actors, or people with interesting jobs.

Activities on Reddit generate Karma, a point system that shows how much you participate and generates goodwill from other users.

Who Should Use Reddit?

If you want to gain insights into an audience's thought process and communication style, then follow any subreddits they hang out in.

Who Shouldn't Use Reddit?

"Redditors" are typically savvy internet users that bristle at overt marketing attempts and shut down anyone not observing group norms (" Reddiquette "). Ease in and add value, or just be a fly on the wall and gain intel.

Final Word on Reddit

Reddit is an awesome resource for learning about topics and people. To learn more about marketing on Reddit, check out this article.

12. Kuaishou

Kuaishou, called Kwai outside of China, is a short-video sharing and live-streaming app.

Users share clips of stunts and pranks and live streams of video gameplay.

Kuaishou's algorithm is designed for inclusivity, ensuring more visibility for a wider range of user-generated content.

This has opened the way for people from China's rural regions to share their lifeways while generating extra income, which they do by promoting their businesses or linking out to eCommerce platforms.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use Kuaishou?

E-commerce businesses ( conversions are higher on this platform) selling to the Gen Z demographic in China's smaller cities and rural regions.

Who Shouldn't Use Kuaishou?

If your Chinese-speaking audience is more mature and sophisticated, you may have better luck with WeChat.

Final Word on Kuaishou

Kuaishou's algorithm is designed to be more equitable in providing exposure. That could be an opportunity to "break in" and be seen.

13. Snapchat

Snapchat is "a camera and messaging app that connects people with their friends," specializing in ephemeral content - media that is only accessible for a short time (kind of like Tumblr's ephemeral chat rooms).

Users share image and video massages called "snaps" can be modified with stickers, text, filters, and other effects.

There are also private and public stories that show the last 24 hours of a user's content.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use Snapchat?

If your audience is Millennials or Gen Z, and your brand aligns with the fun, laid-back vibe of this platform, then go for it.

Who Shouldn't Use Snapchat?

Brands targeting older audiences won't have as much success here.

Final Word on Snapchat

Snapchat users are always looking for interesting content. This is a great opportunity to tap into your creative side and engage younger audiences.

14. Pinterest

People visit Pinterest for inspiration and to find and share new ideas.

This " productivity tool for planning your dreams " has virtual boards that users (called Pinners) fill with image-based "pins," bookmarking them for future viewing.

Pins typically link to an external website and can be repinned from one user's board to another.

Pinners view pins from all the other users and topics they're following on their home feed.

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

"Lens" allows users to perform a visual search for objects they've captured on their phones or another mobile device.

"Catalogs" allows brands to upload their catalog into Pinterest and turn products into Product Pins.

"Rich Pins" come in 4 formats: Product Pins, Recipe Pins, Article pins, App pins. Each with its own dynamic function.

"Shop the Look" pins allow Pinners to click on items and go to a product page to purchase.

Who Should Use Pinterest?

If your audience is made up of women, and especially Millennial moms, then Pinterest could be perfect for you.

Who Shouldn't Use Pinterest?

Content must be visually amazing on this platform. If you're not willing or able to invest in great images, then you'll be wasting your time.

Final Word on Pinterest

Pinterest users have proven to be ready to buy. The great thing is that Pinterest gives marketers plenty of tools to channel that buying intent.

15. Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging platform where users primarily share short posts called tweets (280 characters maximum) with their followers.

Users can then like, comment on, or retweet these posts to their followers. It's like having a massive conversation with people all over the world.

Twitter is full of businesses and brands communicating with their audiences, and " 40% of Twitter users reported purchasing something after seeing it on Twitter."

Quick Snapshot

Standout Features

Who Should Use Twitter?

Probably anyone, but B2B companies targeting millennial males, living in urban areas, with above-average income do well.

Who Shouldn't Use Twitter?

Twitter is a politically charged space. Be mindful about stepping into social and political conversations, because the wrong tweet can bring quick consequences for brands and businesses.

Final Word on Twitter

Twitter is a great place to have a conversation with your audience. Show up and be ready to have a conversation with your people.

Social Media Sites for Every Type of Business

You don't need 15 social media accounts to get in front of your audience.

In fact, that would be a terrible idea.

You're better off focusing on one or two platforms where your target audience is most engaged.

Each of the social networks we covered has its pros and cons. Pick one or two that you think could be a good fit for your brand, download their app from the Apple or Android store, and follow our links to learn more.

Now is a great time to start showing up in front of your audience. Study them, engage, add value, and before you know it they'll become loyal fans and customers.

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15 Top Social Media Sites & Platforms (A Handy 2021 Guide)

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Wondering which social media sites your business, brand, or blog should be on in 2021? You've come to the right place. Because social media platforms are always jockeying for dominance, it can be surprisingly difficult to find articles with the most up-to-date information on Google. The good news is we've done the legwork for you.

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TikTok known in China as Douyin, is a video-focused social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. It was released in 2016.

Users upload short videos, typically 15 seconds to three minutes containing tricks, jokes, dance, and entertainment but also videos with live informative news content.

Most internet users now access information on the go using their smart phones or mobile phones. Tik Tok offers short, snackable, easily digested entertainment.

Time is a commodity in short supply for many of us. This might explain why platforms like Tik Tok are gaining in popularity.

Tik Tok may also offer more of a social connection through short easily accessible videos rather than pictures or text. This may be the reason why its popularity increased during the pandemic as social interaction was so limited.

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Devices Used - CSO - Central Statistics Office

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Devices Used - CSO - Central Statistics Office

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In 2021, nearly all (95%) internet users used their smart phone or mobile phone to access the internet. Internet users can use the internet on multiple devices so in this survey, respondents could select more than one option. Three quarters (75%) used the internet on their laptop, 52% used a tablet…

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Our Top 21 Visualizations of 2021 - Visual Capitalist

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In this eighth edition of our yearly round-up, we highlight visualizations that broke new ground in design and data-driven reporting.

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Between the Lines: How Politicians Use Color Psychology to Win Your Votes - The LAMP

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Between the Lines: How Politicians Use Color Psychology to Win Your Votes - The LAMP

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Just like sneakers and beer candidates are products for sale. Each has a team of experts creating their image. What role does color play?

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Infographics provide a means of presenting information visually. They are effective and efficient. Infographics condense complex information into a simple and easy to understand message. They can be used in marketing, to convey a message or represent comparisons in data, time, and place, as well as statistics, maps, and hierarchies.

Infographics can tell a short story thus making the message more accessible. Most people wont engage in long textual articles unless they have already made a conscious decision that they want to. Whereas with an infographic, the message is conveyed in seconds.

An infographic should be designed to grab your attention through the use of a particular word or phrase, illustrations, pictures and colour. It should bring you on a predetermined journey designed by the creator.

The key message should be clearly visible. More detailed information can be conveyed in smaller text but it is important that the infographic is clear and concise. Text should be kept to a minimum letting the infographic speak for itself. We often get the main point in the picture without ever reading the limited text. Providing a link to a website is a simple way of giving consumers access to more detailed information.

Cognitive research has shown that the human brain processes images quicker than words. We also remember pictures better than words which is why branding and logos are so important in marketing.

Infographics could also be seen as more inclusive and reaching a wider audience as the picture speaks for itself without language or educational barriers. The infographics during Covid 19 an example of this.

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What Are Infographics and When Should You Use Them? (seguetech.com)

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Written by The Segue Creative Team on April 4, 2014

Who wants to spend a lot of time reading, trying to understand pages of complicated facts and figures? It's certainly not a coincidence that so much of what we share online today is picture related. There's just so much information around us that we cannot possibly remember it all in a limited amount of time. However, there is no doubt, using infographics to convey figures and data will help people absorb information in a much more efficient way

What are Infographics?

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge, intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns and trends (source: Wikipedia). Infographics are really about telling a story; they help you organize data, and make it visually digestible so that viewers can easily process the information. Infographics display large amounts of data and information in the form of a graph or picture. They are used for many reasons: They're entertaining, eye-catching, concise, and all the information they contain is easily digested by the reader so they're useful, too.

The Components of an Infographic

Infographics are composed of the following elements:
1. Visual Elements 2. Content Elements 3. Knowledge Elements

Why Should You Use Infographics?

As a graphic designer here at Segue, I have found infographics to be an educational, entertaining, and useful tool. We use infographics for our marketing /social media collateral pieces. Most importantly, infographics are fun and deliver the information you are trying to relay in an engaging and interesting way. Here is a great example:

Using infographics is also a quick way of getting your point across to your customer and grabbing their attention, and make it easier for the image to go viral. People see your infographic, click on the link, and presto! You have a new potential customer on your site. Done correctly, that picture will always be associated with your brand or website and can attract visitors to your site long after it was first posted.

Does your industry need to present data in an effective and compelling manner? Then infographics could be the right tool for you. According to the Search Engine Journal, "Studies have found that 90 percent of the information that we remember is based on visual impact. We live in an age where 1.5 billion pieces of content, 140 million tweets, and 2 million videos are created on a daily basis, and you can easily understand why a simple visual aid can make your brand stand out."

It's not everyday that you can utilize something that is not only visually pleasing , but also has the capability to present a compelling narrative. An infographic can help you simplify a complicated subject matter or turn an otherwise boring subject into an engaging experience. At the end of the day, our main objective is to create something compelling to be seen, found, and shared. There are no limits to where your infographic can be posted. Being able to pack a ton of information into a visual package is a great opportunity to get your point across, drive interest and traffic, get exposure, and build your reputation as an expert.

Some references:
Need Help? Contact us

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What Are Infographics and When Should You Use Them?

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Written by The Segue Creative Team on April 4, 2014 Who wants to spend a lot of time reading, trying to understand pages of complicated facts and figures? It's certainly not a coincidence that so much of what we share online today is picture related.

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What Makes a Good Infographic | Visme

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Video Transcript

Today I want to start a new series about A Beginner's Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics.

I just recently did a 3-part series about how to create compelling presentations and of course, it's time to do one about infographics.

Just in the last 5 years, the word infographics has skyrocketed and you kind of hear it and it has become a big part of visual communication. That's why I think it deserves its own series and I'm going to be doing 6 or 7 videos on this. But to start off with, the first thing I want to do rather than jumping into showing you how to create infographics, is to first show you what makes a cool infographic.

Infographics are pretty much tall form formats of a presentation. They're tall versus being composed of multiple slides.

This is a very good example. It's about "5 Minutes About Your Digestive System" and starts off well, but the problem is that as you scroll down and as you move down, it ends abruptly and it kind of has a poor narrative. What you want to do instead is to have a good story to tell. So take readers by the hand and actually guide them through the visuals. This one about airport hacks, it tells you a story throughout the process. So as you go through it tells you different aspects of how to get through airport and different tips and guides on hacking through an airport. 2. Takes your eyes on a predefined journey Now, number 2 is you want to take users on a predefined journey. It's about where you start and where you end.

And along the way, you want to fill between the gaps and them a story and actually give them a narrative.

This one is not really a great example. The problem with this infographic is that there really is no sense of a beginning and an end. It lookks like a soup of letters and numbers. The problem is that by just looking at it a few seconds, you have a hard time understanding what has been related to you.

Does it bring value to your audience?
Does it inform them? Does it give them something different and they're not aware of?

Or give it to them in a more easier to understand aspect. We actually created an ebook on infographics in our visual learning center. We analyze over 200+ most shared infographics of Visme.

One of the things that we found out is that a lot of the infographics that are mostly shared, provide a tangible benefit to their readers. They are a compilation of difficult tasks and make them easy to understand. It might be a visual cheat sheet, it might be how-to guides. This one is a great example. This infographic is about the history of ice cream. It goes throughout the different years and actually tells you about the evolution and also where we are today with one of the most commonly consumed snacks being the ice cream. 5.Well structured Next is your content, the infographic should be well structured. You want to organize when you have a lot of information. And that's the thing, infographics are meant to take large amounts of information and make them easy to understand.

The problem with a lot of infographics these days is there's a lot of information and people typically take that and they don't really concentrate on the key points and they just put it all together.

This infographic has a lot of content, a lot of information and it also kind of has been processed in a way that it's a little bit hard to understand. You don't know where your eyes are suppose to follow. However, with this one, they broke it down into sections. You want to break your infographic into sections, and each section lets it concentrate on a specific message. So the user and the viewer can understand the message in just a few seconds. 6. Sends one key message Number 6, you want to send one key message. When creating an infographic, concentrate on one key message.

If it's too complicated of a design such as this one, it's very hard to understand, it kind of beats the purpose of an infographic.

If this was geared towards the engineering community with very large and complex pieces of data, I can understand why it would be created that way but we're talking about the general audience. We're talking about mass producing or mass sharing of infographics and allowing your audience to be able to view it, find something interesting and also be able to actually store it for later. One of the tips I recommend when creating yours is to ask someone else that wasn't involved in a process to view it. If they don't understand it, the challenge is going to be that others may not as well.

This example here, it's actually very neatly done. It's a radial design and what it's doing is talking about the paid leave maternity. It shows that US has zero weeks maternity leave and then the UK has surprisingly 40, Iran has 12 weeks. It's a pretty cool way of presenting the information. 7. Visually appealing Now let's talk about 7. It should be visually appealing, a very common mistake amateurs make. There is no visual appeal to this design. There's way too much text and it kind of looks like maybe it's a page out of a book; A big fail. This is a big no-no when it comes to creating compelling infographics.

What want to do instead is to concentrate on a clear title and take advantage of clear use of [00:07:26] . And also this one has a very harmonious, clean design to it.

One of the big sins data visualization and infographics is misleading your readers. Do research and make sure you don't provide inaccurate or incomplete information.

This example although it's actually neatly designed, from a closer look it exaggerates the results of the study.

Here's a perfect example. It's a very similar to the last one that I showed you, the problem is that it's a very common amateur mistake. We see this all the time with people creating infographics at Visme and other tools, is that they just copy paste content onto their design. The problem is that you are creating an infographic.

Infographics are supposed to take useful information into bite-sized pieces and to allow the users to be able to easily understand that. It kind of beats this one. Defeats the purpose of a visual communication. This one is a great example though. Basically it has a catchy headline, the design is pretty clean, there's a nice contrast on the text over the background.

You can easily understand and see the information. There are visuals supported by various small pieces of content. The key messages are supported by visuals. And there you have it!

This was nine attributes of what makes a good infographic and the next episode I'm going to actually talk about the different types of infographics where I'm going to talk to you about timeline, the process to infographics, and series of others and that way you can actually, when you create yours in the future steps.

In the future episodes, you will be able to understand and know what type of infographic is going to accompany the type of content that you want to present.

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This is Part I of the Beginner's Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics, where I show you what makes a good infographic by providing you real life examples and how each tells a story, are well structures and add practical value, hence making them highly shareable and engaging to the viewer.

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1. Focus on the message. It must be clear and concise.

2.Tell a story.

3. Consider the audience.

4. Choose appropriate visuals for the audience you want to reach.

5. Use colour to focus attention on the message

6. Aim for easy to digest snackable content

7. Avoid too much text.

8. Use different font styles to catch viewers attention but avoid overuse.

9. Add a link to a website for more detailed information.

10. Make an impact

INFOGRAM is an effective tool for creating infographics.

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https://youtu.be/GmsMQsFldRE

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Perfect Wedding Version Short Piano Instrumental

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I made a short video as part of the assessment.
I found screencast o matic very easy to use.  It is an invaluable tool and one I will definitely be using in the future when I am teaching.

I uploaded the sheet music to my  laptop and then I used a webcam to record myself playing the piano. I created a you tube channel and uploaded the video.

There are so many different ways screencast o matic  can be used and with the increase in online education I am very excited about discovering the many different ways I can implement it.

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I created a Google Map tracing back the historical Viking roots of our family and showing how they spread out from that starting point. The Gohery side of our family is descended from Ragnar Lothbrok (A King of Denmark and Sweden) and the Browne side of our family is descended from Rollo (A King of Normandy). The map shows the locations that these Viking ancestors travelled to and the places where they settled.

The blue points show where the Browne Vikings settled, the green points show where the Gohery Vikings settled and the purple dots show where both Browne and Gohery Vikings settled.

These are locations which I plan to visit in the future to explore the places where my ancestors had an impact on the world.

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<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=17WS8Z4FBmk_bjRYK83HUuM5tYGMZ30Xs&ehbc=2E312F" width="640" height="480"></iframe>

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The Social dilemma is a documentary on Netflix that I decided to watch during this module which warns of some of the potential dangers of social media. It is written by Davis Coombe, Vickie Curtiss and Jeff Orlowski and features interviews from former employees of some of the largest social media platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc. Many of whom were involved in the development of these companies.

This documentary exposes the negative side of social media networking.

1. The collection of data which can be sold on to interested parties.

2.The manipulation techniques used to prolong a users engagement online which can lead to addiction (The Dopamine Hit).

3. The perfection portrayed online which is impossible to achieve creates an unrealistic goal. This can lead to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and suicide. Teenagers would appear to be especially vulnerable.

4. The dangers of biased content which can lead to polarisation and political radicalisation .

5. Fake news - Conspiracy Theories.

6. Artificial Intelligence can solve problems at speed that humans are unable to but it also has the capacity to manipulate thoughts and behaviour which could have dangerous implications for the future.

Tristan Harris was a major contributor to the documentary. He studied the ethics of persuasion at Stanford University and worked as a design ethicist with Google. He resigned from google in 2013. He is co founder of the Centre For Humane Technology which is a non profit organisation that aims to highlight the dangers of digital technology and find alternatives which will protect and support public wellbeing.

Justin Rosenstein was the inventor of Facebook's "like" button. He explained that the button was intended to "spread positivity."  Users would create content and then monitor their likes. Other users could "like" posts to show their approval which initiated a good feeling.
However this button has the power to influence behaviour.  Users may become anxious waiting for others to engage becoming dependent on public approval. If the post doesn't get the number of likes expected, it may lead to disappointment and be perceived as a failure. This can influence self esteem which may lead to negative feelings of low self worth.  Unconsciously users may be seeking external validation. The danger in that they are becoming dependent on social approval and giving control of their emotions to an external source. These  feelings may then cause them to amend their behavior in order to attract more likes. The reality being the algorithm now has the control and can modify behavior.

Several contributors to the documentary had safeguards in place concerning their own families including limited or no screen time for their children.

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Facebook likes - Social Approval - Social Media Addiction

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Facebook likes - Social Approval - Social Media Addiction

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https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-positive-reinforcement-2795412

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In operant conditioning, positive reinforcement involves the addition of a reinforcing stimulus following a behavior that makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future. When a favorable outcome, event, or reward occurs after an action, that particular response or behavior will be strengthened.

One of the easiest ways to remember positive reinforcement is to think of it as something being added. By thinking of it in these terms, you may find it easier to identify real-world examples of positive reinforcement.

Sometimes positive reinforcement occurs quite naturally. For example, when you hold the door open for someone you might receive praise and a thank you. That affirmation serves as positive reinforcement and may make it more likely that you will hold the door open for people again in the future.

In other cases, someone might choose to use positive reinforcement very deliberately in order to train and maintain a specific behavior. An animal trainer, for example, might reward a dog with a treat after the animal shakes the trainer's hand and pauses for a count of five.

Examples of Positive Reinforcement

There are many examples of positive reinforcement in action. Consider the following examples:

After you execute a turn during a skiing lesson, your instructor shouts out, "Great job!"

At work, you exceed this month's sales quota, so your boss gives you a bonus.

For your psychology class, you watch a video about the human brain and write a paper about what you learned. Your instructor gives you 20 extra credit points for your work.

Can you identify the positive reinforcement in each of these examples?

The ski instructor offering praise, the employer giving a bonus, and the teacher providing bonus points are all positive reinforcers. In each of these situations, the reinforcement is an additional stimulus occurring after the behavior that increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur again in the future.

An important thing to note is that positive reinforcement is not always a good thing.﻿﻿ For example, when a child misbehaves in a store, some parents might give them extra attention or even buy the child a toy.

Children quickly learn that by acting out, they can gain attention from the parent or even acquire objects that they want. Essentially, parents are reinforcing the misbehavior.

In this case, a better solution would be to use positive reinforcement when the child is displaying good behavior. Instead of rewarding the misbehavior, the parents would want to wait until the child is behaving well and then reward that good behavior with praise, treats, or even a toy.

Different Types of Positive Reinforcers

There are many different types of reinforcers that can be used to increase behaviors, but it is important to note that the type of reinforcer used depends on the individual and the situation.

While gold stars and tokens might be very effective reinforcement for a second-grader, they are not going to have the same effect on a high school or college student.

Natural reinforcers: Occur directly as a result of the behavior. For example, a girl studies hard, she pays attention in class, and she does her homework. As a result, she gets excellent grades.

Social reinforcers: Involve expressing approval of a behavior, such as a teacher, parent, or employer saying or writing "Good job" or "Excellent work."

Tangible reinforcers: Involve presenting actual, physical rewards such as candy, treats, toys, money, and other desired objects. While these types of rewards can be powerfully motivating, they should be used sparingly and with caution.﻿﻿

Token reinforcers: Points or tokens that are awarded for performing certain actions. These tokens can then be exchanged for something of value.

When Is Positive Reinforcement Most Effective?

When used correctly, positive reinforcement can be very effective.﻿﻿ Positive reinforcement is most effective when it occurs immediately after the behavior. Reinforcement should be presented enthusiastically and should occur frequently.

A shorter time between a behavior and positive reinforcement, makes a stronger the connection between the two.

If a long period elapses between the behavior and the reinforcement, the weaker the connection will be.

The longer the time, the more likely it becomes that an intervening behavior might accidentally be reinforced.

In addition to the type of reinforcement used, the presentation schedule can also play a role in the strength of the response. These schedules of reinforcement can have a powerful influence on how strongly a response is and how often it occurs.﻿﻿

A Word From Verywell

Positive reinforcement can be an effective learning tool when used appropriately. Sometimes this type of learning occurs naturally through normal interactions with the environment.

In other cases, people are able to use this behavioral technique to help teach new behaviors. Some important things to consider when using positive reinforcement include the type of reinforcers that will be used and the schedule that will be employed to train the new behavior.

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Positive Reinforcement Can Help Favorable Behaviors

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In operant conditioning, positive reinforcement involves the addition of a reinforcing stimulus following a behavior that makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future. When a favorable outcome, event, or reward occurs after an action, that particular response or behavior will be strengthened.

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 Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior

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 Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior

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Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior Emily Weinstein a,* , Evan M. Kleiman b,d , Peter J. Franz c , Victoria W. Joyce d , Carol C. Nash d , Ralph J. Buonopane d , Matthew K. Nock c,d

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Why do users stop scrolling and focus on certain content?
If you want to create an effective digital campaign you will need to communicate with the correct audience. to do this you have to consider
The Audience
Who are the correct audience, age, social status, possible likes   dislikes, location?
When are they most likely to be online, what days what times?
Are they more likely to look at specific content at work or in their free time
What do they aspire to?
What issues or content is popular with the target audience?
How can you engage their interest?
How to grab their attention/

Visuals
Use appropriate pictures
Use colour and font styles to draw attention.
Avoid too much text.
Use Infographics to tell a story and make complex information more accessible

Use Reactive Emotive Titles

This will motivate the user to click and explore content further

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"If you’re not PAYING for the product, you ARE the product.”

Tristan Harris, former Google Executive

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https://blogs.im.international/10-ways-to-protect-your-privacy-online

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The Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, has stirred up the fears of digital media and smartphone users. Many people already have concerns about how they are being tracked online and how their data is being used, and this show deepened concerns about how they are exposing themselves to the influence and manipulation of corporations, advertisers, and politicians.

The Social Dilemma discloses how social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter, as well as email providers and search engines like Google, have access to our personal details.

It goes on to demonstrate how these corporations use our data, not only to sell us stuff, but to manipulate us into an addiction to their services, to influence our opinions on social and political issues, and potentially to coerce us to do things we would not otherwise consider doing.

The Social Dilemma increases the power of their messages by interviewing many credible individuals from virtually every digital channel, including:

Google: Tristan Harris, former Google Executive and Guillaume Chaslot, former Google Engineer

Instagram: Bailey Richardson, one of Instagram's first 13 employees

Facebook: Sandy Parakilas, former Operations Manager and Tim Kendall led the charge for monetization of the popular network

Twitter: Alex Roetter, SVP of Engineering

Pinterest: Tim Kendall, former President

The documentary has sparked terror in viewers regarding their privacy and the idea that these digital channels may have too much control over their lives and the lives of their children.

DISCLAIMER

Full disclosure: I'm a marketer. I love researching and understanding algorithms. I love the capability digital media provides so our team at IMPACT can help our corporate and education clients identify an audience of people who will actually be interested in what they have to offer. In my opinion, the intelligent data provided by these organizations steers us away from spamming those who are not in the market for our client's products and services.

Even as a consumer, I appreciate seeing ads that are relevant to me. I do admit, my preference would be to not see ads in my feed at all, but if I'm going to see ads I'd rather not see pick-up trucks or nail polish because those things aren't my jam. Show me wine, outdoor events, or running gear and it will put me in a good mood and, yes, I may even buy something!
Typical ad in my Facebook feed, catering to my interests.
Facebook and Google are "free" and it's the advertisers that pay for our privilege of using the service.

"If you're not PAYING for the product, you ARE the product."

Tristan Harris, former Google Executive

While I love the marketing capabilities of digital media, I have concerns. I am most disturbed about how we are served information, posts, and content from our contacts that most align with our existing point of view. I'm concerned about the lack of exposure we have to content that challenges our beliefs and diversifies our views on subjects of social, political, and lifestyle.

We all think we are savvy and smart enough to look at all sides of a story, but we can't help but be influenced by the stories we see. It makes sense that Facebook is going to serve us content similar to what we spend time viewing, reading, liking, and commenting on. That's the service they provide! However, this method is creating more division in our society than ever before.

Stories that look like authoritative articles and quotes taken out of context with their own spin are appearing one way on your feed and another way for that person on the other side of the political or current event fence.

"Two billion people will have thoughts they didn't intend to have because a designer at Google said this is how notifications work on that screen that you wake up to every morning."

Tristan Harris, former Google Executive

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY ONLINE

Personally, I want to stay connected via social media with my friends, family, and associates around the world. I want to continue using the tools for business purposes. However, I want to have a balanced view of current events and politics, and I don't want every move I make to be tracked by the big data corporations.

So what can we do to mitigate the exposure of our private data and the control technology and algorithms have on our lives? Here are some of the things I'm personally shifting and what you can do as well.

The best way to protect your privacy online is to turn off your computer or, at least, disconnect it from the Internet. Since most of us use social media and search engines like Google to connect with friends and family, interests, and hobbies, disconnecting from the Internet isn't really an option.

Under the assumption that you would like to stay connected to the web, let's talk about how to maximize your privacy while still utilizing these tools.

1- GET RID OF SINGLE SIGN-ON

Single sign-on is the term used to describe when you use your Gmail or Facebook account to sign in to another account instead of creating a unique username and password. It's so convenient! But every time you do this, you are giving Google or Facebook access to yet another source of information on your behavior and interests. Other single sign-on sources include, but are not limited to, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Apple, and others.

When giving the option between using your email address and using Google, Facebook, or Apple,
opt to use an unaffiliated email address.

2- SIGN UP FOR A UNIQUE EMAIL ADDRESS

If your email address is associated with Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, or other major data players, they don't only have access to everything you sign into with those accounts, they also have access to all the content you send or receive by email. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone is reading your email, but the combinations of words and phrases are going into the algorithm.

I'm not confident there is an email service that does not track or sell your data, but you can avoid a single source having every byte by diversifying the resources you use to communicate.

3- USE ALTERNATIVE BROWSERS TO CHROME AND SAFARI

Logic dictates that if you don't want Google to track your every move, don't use Google. Your Chrome browser is owned by Google and your favorite search engine tracks everything you search for and click on.

You can limit your exposure by mixing up your search and browsing habits, and using a browser that isn't owned by Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge, Explorer), or Apple (Safari). Firefox is one well-known alternative, but there are others. Check out this PC Magazine article with some other options.

4- GO INCOGNITO

You may want to do this out of curiosity if nothing else, but using incognito also prohibits the browser from tracking browsing patterns to your personal data profile.

Whether you want added protection or you just want to see how Google is delivering results according to your own biases, first do a search in your usual manner and then do the same search on an incognito tab.

In Chrome, you access incognito by clicking on the three dots at the top right corner of the browser and selecting " New incognito window". Repeat the search in the new tab using the same search terms, and see how the results differ.
Where to find "incognito" on your Chrome browser.
5- AVOID CLICKING ON SUGGESTED VIDEOS

If this is a big struggle for you, take note. The fact that irresistible videos are served up to you, one after the other, is a sign that YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram has your profile dialed in. They know exactly how to keep you on their channel so they can increase the value of their service and serve you more ads.

Every time you click on another video, you are adding data to your profile about your likes, opinions, biases, political and social leanings, and fascinations.

Suggested videos can show up in the right column on the desktop view, below the video on your smartphone, and will be recommended upon completion of the current video on YouTube Facebook, and others.

Suggested videos can show up in the right column on the desktop view, below the video on your smartphone,
and will be recommended upon completion of the current video on YouTube Facebook, and others.

6- PURSUE CONTENT CONTRARY TO YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM

That's right! Intentionally follow and engage with people who are in opposition to your beliefs. To avoid receiving messages that are customized to manipulate you according to your habits and weaknesses, you need to take responsibility for pursuing other opinions.

Keep an open mind and have discussions about other individual's beliefs. Test your beliefs against news from sources you don't typically follow. Beware of gossip websites and non-credible news sources, but don't write off the opposition's favored source as non-credible.

Try tuning in to the BBC or another media channel outside of your own region. This will encourage the algorithms to serve you a more balanced mix of content and viewpoints rather than reinforcing your own.

7- DON'T TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT

If something sounds outrageous, there's a good chance it's false. Before you get outraged and feel compelled to re-share the content or comment on a sensational post, find the source, and verify whether it's reliable. See if other sources support the claims made.

Take some responsibility to stop false, exaggerated, or one-sided views from spreading.

8- DO AN INTERMITTENT TECHNO-FAST

Consider putting yourself and your family on a techno-diet, specifically an intermittent techno-fasting diet.

Define a window of time each day that you access screens and a time that you are all screen-free. Perhaps before dinner each day you all throw your technology into a drawer until the next morning.

9- PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN

I don't have young children, but I was the parent who made my kids go to bed at 8 p.m. even when their friends played on the street right outside their bedroom windows until 10 p.m. I was the mom who wouldn't let her kids watch The Simpsons because of the way the kids spoke to their parents and other adults.

It's your call, of course, but the longer you hold off on allowing your children to have smartphones and other devices for personal use, the better. I specify "for personal use" because understanding technology is an integral part of adult life and should be incorporated into education in a safe environment.

When you do give in and provide a device to your child, take advantage of parental controls and limit access to social media and chat channels that subject children to content above their maturity level, open them up to the possibility of bullying, and subject them to pervasive distraction.

10- TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS - CURB YOUR ADDICTION

Stop your own addiction to technology. If you think everyone expects an immediate response, you're wrong. You've trained your contacts to expect whatever communication turnaround time you're currently delivering.

At minimum, turn off your audible notifications for email and social media. I keep mine on for some messaging apps and text messages. Direct contacts know to reach me there for a quick response, but I keep everything else switched off. I keep the visual notification on for email and LinkedIn, but I only check them at specific times each day.

Create your own protocols to minimize being controlled by the media, to avoid addictive behaviors, and to be present to whatever humans or work you are tending to.

Key Takeaways

The Social Dilemma didn't share anything that revolutionary, it mostly sensationalized what we already know. But I was struck by the polarity perpetuated through digital media serving us "more of what we want" as we naturally surround ourselves with people and resources that support our current beliefs.

Also, if you listen between the lines, you will note that many of the spokespeople in this film are personally using digital media and allowing their children some degree of access. Unfortunately, the film is so focused on the fear-inducing strategies of the media, that they neglect to offer solutions to mitigate the potential harm of technology.

While the ultimate solution is to unplug everything, the alternative is to take responsibility for how and when you use these services.

I welcome your opinions and feedback. Feel free to click here to send me an email if you want to discuss this or anything else related to digital media or international business growth.
Do you want to know more about the work IMPACT International does for Business or Schools?
Click here to learn about our work with Schools.

Click here to learn about our work with Businesses.

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The Social Dilemma - 10 Ways to Protect Your Privacy Online

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The Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, has stirred up the fears of digital media and smartphone users. Many people already have concerns about how they are being tracked online and how their data is being used, and this show deepened concerns about how they are exposing themselves to the influence and manipulation of corporations, advertisers, and politicians.

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Social media platforms are constantly evolving and in the same way that they can rise quickly in popularity, they can also fall.
Society is a very demanding consumer with ever changing needs that must be met in order for social media platforms to maintain their following.
Followers are in essence a product as their data and loyalty have the potential for  financial gain.

Businesses are constantly looking at ways to increase their sales. Organisations seek to gather awareness and gather support. Traditional standard forms of advertising have been used for generations eg. posters, leaflets, newspapers, radio, television, meetings etc. Social media was often considered as an added extra but it now plays a much bigger role than ever in marketing.

Social media has been gaining influence especially during the pandemic and its importance in marketing cannot be ignored. The pick and mix attitude which many held towards social media marketing in the early years is now replaced by many with strategic marketing plans.

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Collaborative idea generation: an experience of open creativity in the public sector (2021)

Henrique Muzzio, Manuella Gama

VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems

ISSN: 2059-5891

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https://hanahoxha.medium.com/the-importance-of-top-of-mind-awareness-in-brand-d

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Know your audience
Why do customers need your product?
Why do they engage?
Potential buyers - Lifestyle, Demographic, Age, Career, Values, Goals, Aspirations, Financial status.

Target audience
Who do you want to connect with?
Which platforms are they most likely to engage with?
eg. Facebook - middle aged audience
Tik Tok - younger audience
Facebook will allow you to target your audience with paid advertisements
eg. Different locations
Different age groups
Advertisements can be shown at specific times of the day
eg. Mornings - Stay at home mums with children.
Evenings, Weekends -  Office workers

Research the market
What do your target audience want now and in the future?
Create your content tailored to what your audience wants or aspires to
eg. lifestyle, product, emotional well being.
Target specific products to a specific audience.

Listen to the consumer
What can you do better?
Is there a gap in the market?

Plan Ahead
Build on the foundations of what you have proven to be effective.

Build brand awareness
The mere exposure effect has shown that familiarity with a brand helps to develop a preference. Slogans and logos have an important part to play in this.
Consider the Adidas logo or the Coca Cola logo.
Consider the Lidl slogan - Branded quality that's cheaper or the L'oreal slogan - Because you're worth it.
They are instantly recognisable - a short cut to the consumer as the slogan can lead directly to the brand and the consumers experience with it.

Generate Links
Post videos or stories to the platforms which your target audience are likely to use which mention a specific brand, product or organisation.
Videos highlighting the uses and benefits of a specific product can lead to sales. Involving social media influencers may lead to a stronger campaign.
Videos containing a general overview of a topic which contain free general information can encourage people to make contact for more detailed specific advice
tailored to their circumstances thus leading to paid sales for services.
eg. Insurance, legal services, counselling etc.
Sponsoring a sports event or local team will lead to more exposure and can maintain a connection with a specific audience. Similarly sponsoring a bridge club or musical event would possibly target a different demographic.
Posting these events online with reference to sponsors can encourage sales by keeping the particular brand in mind.

Create a map
How to reach the consumer and make a connection?
How to keep the consumer engaged?
How to direct them going forward?

Track performance
Measure how effective your campaigns are. Facebook allows you to do this. You can also look at the number of views, comments, reviews etc.
Monitor further by asking consumers how they became aware of your company, organisation etc
Track if advertising on specific platforms leads to a larger amount of traffic on the website.

Customer Reviews
Customer recommendations are powerful. Word of mouth has been known as the most effective form of advertising. It is very important in building a business.
Reviews can give a similar experience online. It may not be as powerful as word of mouth but would appear to have a similar effect.

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Social Listening is being aware of current trends online.
What are people talking about?
What are their concerns?
What is gaining popularity?

Many users of social media 'Listen' to public conversations online. This influences their decisions going forward for example,  developing a new product, changing a behaviour, creating new content to increase followers, users etc.

Marketers use different tools to identify and connect with their audience, for example platform insights, desk research, surveys, social listening etc.

Analysts use 'Boolean code' in programming to collect and analyse data.

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Social media allows marketers to connect and engage with potential customers. The aim is to create content that will have an impact and engage the customer.

Marketers use social media to collect data. Data can be powerful in marketing and also in directing businesses as to the best way of developing their brand or content moving forward. Data has monetary value and can be sold to the highest bidder.

It is important to be aware of the information we share online and to maintain privacy when needed.

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Social Media Influencing University Choice

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Social Media Influencing University Choice

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Social media can influence university choice. Prospective students can learn from the experiences of current students. This helps students to choose not only their universities but also their modules. Prospective students may not feel confident that they will be able to keep up with the workload of a particular course but through social media platforms connecting with current students who may be in similar situations, they can find out what supports are available. This may give them the knowledge and the confidence to enrol in a specific course.
I think virtual tours of universities and taster lectures are a great introduction for prospective students. Zoom information sessions or blogs can connect students from minority groups who may be considering a particular university. Social media platforms can also facilitate sharing of information and learning as we are currently. Discussion boards can also help students connect and possibly study together or work on a specific topic or problem.
Social Media allows for conversation and connection which allows us to learn from each other in every aspect of our lives including university

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The Five Rights are written here in a simple short format that young people can access efficiently and  understand. The question is why are many Privacy Policies written in complex time consuming formats. It would seem that perhaps some platforms are deliberately trying to conceal information from users.
Most users click and accept without ever reading the terms or conditions or privacy policy due to time constraints and the long winded complex language often used. However some platforms are now beginning to update their privacy policies possibly due to public opinion. Privacy issues need to be addressed. We need to take back control of our personal information and data and make organisations realise that they must clearly state and make us aware of exactly how data is collected, who it is shared with and the use of that data.

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5Rights | The 5 Rights (5rightsframework.com)

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That is the right to easily remove what you yourself have put up. It doesn't challenge Freedom of Speech, but the first rule of conscious use is being able to control what your history will look like online, in the space you curate.

5Rights interpreted and re-written by young people.

Our thanks to Girl Guides; this is their version of the 5Rights, in their language.

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That is the right to easily remove what you yourself have put up. It doesn't challenge Freedom of Speech, but the first rule of conscious use is being able to control what your history will look like online, in the space you curate. 5Rights interpreted and re-written by young people.

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We can easily create the identity online that we wish to portray. We may create different identities on different platforms. Are we being true to ourselves? Why do we feel the need to change?
It is also true that predators can easily create a fake identity to allow them to connect with others that they plan to manipulate or exploit in some way. Stranger Danger is something we need to be aware of.

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Emojis have become very popular in expressing our feelings. They are an efficient shortcut to communicate our emotions.
When we communicate with others in the real world we can use words , expression, tone of voice, loud or quiet communication, physical stance, how we dress, our manner to communicate a feeling or an emotion very effectively and almost instantaneously.
It can take time to accurately display our feelings in text. Emojis can replace words and may be more convenient

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Tik Tok is a very popular with the younger demographic. I think it will continue to grow because its short snackable entertainment fits into our busy lives. We have information overload in every direction and time is precious. Tik Tok offers short bursts of entertainment and information that is accessible and time efficient. I think it also offers more of a social connection through videos as opposed to text or pictures. This may be why its popularity increased during the pandemic as social interaction was so limited.

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What is the future of Social Media?
Some say we are living our lives online and not in the real world.
Are we becoming slaves to the click of a button eg. Comments, Likes, Thumbs Up .
The desire for Social acceptance is a strong motivator.
Are we allowing computer algorithms to change our behaviours and control our minds?
More and more people are reading the news online. How sure are we that the information is correct and isn't biased to effect our behaviour
What do we want now from Social media?
I would say more control.
We need laws in place to protect our personal information.
We need to find a way to ensure the information online is accurate and unbiased.
We need security in communicating with others.
What are the visions of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Will they find ways to at least move in some way towards truth, honesty and safety online.
All users and platforms on the internet should be held to the same standard and the same rules should be followed to ensure safety online.
It sounds impossible but we need to think about these problems and start to address them now before we allow others to control us.

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Lorraine Browne - Director of The Music Company Ashbourne - Self-employed | LinkedIn

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View Lorraine Browne's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. Lorraine has 1 job listed on their profile. See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover Lorraine's connections and jobs at similar companies.

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TIK TOK PRIVACY POLICY

Tik Tok is a social media platform used to discover, create and share short videos. As with all social media platforms, users must be aware that information shared or collected online can never be fully deleted. Although content or personal information can be taken down or deleted from the original platform, it may already have been shared with other users and platforms. You can’t fully take back this information. It is out of your control. There are however steps you can take to protect your privacy when using Tik Tok and other social media platforms.

It is important for you to know

What information is collected by TIK TOK?

Why is information collected by TIK TOK?

Who has access to this information?

How to delete content or close an account?

What can you do to maintain your privacy when using Tik Tok?

Tik Tok collects the personal information that you use to register for an account [ Name, email, phone number, birthday, username, password, Bio, profile picture]

Users can register for a Tik Tok account by using their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or email accounts. These platforms will also have access to your personal information.

Tik Tok collects content as you create or import it. Content can be collected before you save or upload it.

Tik Tok collects data about the videos you watch, upload and share.                     [ Topic, likes, preferences, comments]

Tik Tok saves the content of your direct messages and the metadata associated with those messages [Who did you contact? What time did you send the message? Did they reply?]

Tik Tok collects information on your payment card and other third-party payments such as pay pal. It also collects your transaction and purchase history

Tik Tok has access to your camera, microphone, contacts, location and Clipboard.

Tik Tok collects information about the devices you are using                       [Mobile phone, tablet, laptop or computer].

Tik Tok assigns a device ID and user ID when you log in to use the platform. It can track your activity over multiple devices.

Tik Tok uses Cookies which automatically collect information, measure and analyse which websites and ads you click on and how you use TikTok

If you live in the European Economic Area, the UK, or Switzerland, TikTok Technology Limited, an Irish company (“TikTok Ireland”), and TikTok Information Technologies UK Limited (“TikTok UK”), a UK company,are the joint controllers of any information you have shared on the platform

Tik Tok funds its platform through advertisements and by making your data available to interested parties. Your data is an extremely valuable commodity for manufacturers, service providers, organizations, political parties etc.

Tik Tok is a free mobile social media app which is made possible through the sharing of data and targeted advertisements.

Tik Tok collects data to create personal profiles so that it can direct service providers and advertisers to the specific demographic they wish to connect with. This targeted messaging and advertising gives much better results and Tik Tok monetises this.

Tik Tok uses the information it collects to provide you with videos and advertisements that are specifically chosen relating to your interests.

Tik Tok collects and saves data to make your experience of the platform more time efficient [You don’t have to re-enter the same information multiple times when using Tik Tok].

Tik Tok can use the data it collects to innovate and develop its platform to suit users interests and lifestyles.

Your personal data and information can be shared in multiple ways.

Tik Tok can share your personal data and information with its corporate group as necessary.

Tik Tok will share your personal data and information with organisations and service providers that enable Tik Tok to provide its service to you.

Payment processors

Customer and technical support

Research providers

Cloud providers

Advertisers

Marketers

Analytics vendors

Third parties can also gain access to your personal data and information when you

Log in [Google, Facebook]

Use your Tik Tok account to log in to other platforms

Make a payment [Paypal]

Share user content with other platforms

Tik Tok may also share your information and data if requested by legal representatives or government bodies.

Your profile information and user content may be visible to other platform users and the public depending on privacy settings

If you would like to delete your Tik Tok account.

Open Tik Tok

Press the profile icon on the bottom right

Press the three-line icon top right

Press settings and privacy

Press manage account > delete account

Press skip if you would like to skip the exit survey

Confirm you have reviewed your data request and wish to continue and

wish to continue deleting your account

Then press continue

Once the account has been deleted, it will be displayed as deactivated for thirty days. Users will not be able to access videos or likes on Tik Tok. The account will be permanently deleted after thirty days. Personal data, content and information that has been previously shared before deletion of the account will still exist but will not be visible on Tik Tok.

If you would like to delete a video on TikTok

Open Tik Tok

Press the profile icon on the bottom right

Press the three-line icon top right

Scroll through options > select delete

Press delete again when prompted to confirm

Once a Tik Tok account is created, it is set to public by default. This means uploaded videos can be viewed by other users. However, if you set your account to private you can choose who you would like to share videos with.

You can also adjust your privacy settings so that only friends you have chosen can comment, no one can comment or if your video is public everyone can comment.

If you would like to make your Tik Tok account private.

Open Tik Tok

Press profile bottom right

Press the three-line icon top right

On the settings and privacy page, press privacy

Turn private account off

Avoid linking your account to other platforms [Facebook, Google]

You can include a Bio in your profile. Do you want to share this information?

Do you want to share your profile picture?

You can choose to turn personalised advertisements on or off

If you would like to turn personalised ads off

Open Tik Tok

Press profile bottom right

Press the three-line icon top right

On the settings and privacy page, press privacy

Go to personalise and data

Turn personalised ads off

You can request your data to see what data Tik Tok is collecting from you

If you would like to request your data from Tik Tok

Open Tik Tok

Press profile bottom right

Press the three-line icon top right

On the settings and privacy page, press privacy

Go to personalise and data

Press download data

It is important to educate everyone including children about privacy. Children can impulsively upload videos or comments which they later regret. Content shared online is there forever. It is also important to remember if you set a Tik Tok account to private, you choose who you would like to share your content with but Tik Tok and other third parties will still have access to your content and other data.

Think before sharing your personal information. Be aware of data that is being collected about you. If you want to maintain your privacy online, be aware and limit the information that you share.

Clauses Retained or Left Out

I began this policy by issuing a warning of the dangers involved in disclosing information on this Platform. I felt that most users would read the first paragraph no matter the time constraints so it seemed the best way to communicate the dangers effectively.

I included a simplified summary of how data is collected on Tik Tok. I mentioned that data was shared with third parties however as these parties are not directly named we don’t really know who can see it. I included how to delete content.

The majority of the data that I left out related to specific legal obligations. I chose to leave out this technical legal jargon – because most people don’t want an explanation of the minutiae of their rights as defined in law – they want a simple clear explanation which clarifies their rights in a general way. It is practical and useful information which is accessible to the non- legally trained mind that should be conveyed at the outset – perhaps in addition to the legal terms.