Who Needs Words?

Sometimes I think we, as a society, are regressing in our communication skills. Think about it: cavemen (I know, I know, that isn’t the PC term for them) used simple drawings on cave walls to convey meaning and share messages.  With the advent of emoticons and other texting visuals, we have started replacing words with images.  Consider the following text messages: 



Lorri Brown (C)

One person didn’t even have to say (or text) a word. Her (or his - this is a no-judge zone) emoticons said everything.  Facebook has started to integrate these types of visuals into their messaging and status updates, and now people can add little pictures to show how they are feeling.  This style of communication has started to seep into my workplace as well.  I’ve noticed a significant uptick in the use of smiley faces (or frownie faces) in my coworkers emails. These little symbols can convey major meanings. They illustrate how much we rely on images, especially when it comes to multimedia messaging.   

Selfie Nation

Increasingly visuals, whether images, photos or videos, play a huge role in the way we communicate. They contribute to a more robust message and better user engagement.  According to Ionescue, image-upload genrates 50% more activity than othe types of publications on Facebook (2013). People like pictures. They are drawn in to stories that have images.  Let's face it, we are a selfie nation. 

Death by PowerPoint

Multimedia tools that integrate visuals offer a variety of ways to communicate more effectively.  From an educational point of view (AKA my day job) visuals and multimedia tools are vital for staff education.  There is nothing worse than reading a powerpoint that is full of nothing but text and then taking a quiz at the end to demonstrate what you learned. NOTHING IS WORSE THAN THIS. NOTHING.  Migrating away from PowerPoint, my department has started using a multimedia tool called Articulate to creat online staff education.  It allows us to integrate video, animation, and simulation with core messages, distributed in an attractive and inviting package.  What would you rather do? Read a lengthy PowerPoint like, say, HIPPA (Health Information Patient Privacy Act) or take a fun and interactive  online, like this.  Which do you think you’ll learn more from?      

What Makes a Blog Great?

Smitten Kitchen is one of my favorite food blogs.  Described as "Fearless cooking from a tiny kitchen in New York City" this is one of the most popular food blogs in the Blogosphere, with over 100,000 followers on Bloglovin.  The author of Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perlmen, writes in a fun and inviting style. Her photos are gorgeous and she has new cookbook, which adds a high degree of credibility to the blog.

According to Burton and Greenstien, blog best practices include focusing on a specific topic, utilizing social media, and developing a system to produce new content (i.e. linking to other blogs) (2011)  I agree with much of what they outlines.  To build on the list provided by Burton and Greenstien I think the most important blog practices you should focus on include:

Well written content - I've stumbled across many poorly written blogs.  They either contain spelling and grammar mistakes or the author's just voice isn't there.  It isn't friendly or knowledgeable or authoritative. It just tends to ramble, never reaching a point. My favorite blogs have a fun and inviting voice that makes me feel like I'm reading something from an old friend. I feel included in the conversation.

Good photos - I am attracted to blogs by their photos. Food and garden photos lure me in, well written content and a strong voice keep me coming back. The power of the image has been noted in several studies.  According to Ionescu, image uploads on facebook result in 50% more engagement from users (2013). Photographs or other good quality images are essential for promoting a blog on social media.

Professional design - No offense to Blogger, since it is kindly hosting this blog, but it lacks the polish and shine of a WordPress site. There are so many inexpensive WordPress themes available, it isn't hard to put together a professional looking site in no time.

Consistent publishing schedule - Nothing is worse than falling for a blog, only to be left with weeks or months of silence. Was it something I did? Successful blogs publish content consistently. They may not publish big articles or recipes every post, but they post something at least a few times a week.

Adherence to the blog topic - It's okay to wander off topic occasionally. Like if you post about food, but once in a while throw up a photo of your dog dressed up for Halloween.  I'm okay with that. But as a rule, I think 90% of a blog should be dedicated to the topic or somehow support it's mission statement.

Credibility - This goes back to last week and our discussion about ethics.  Kovach and Rosenstiel point out the importance of credibility: “Transparency is the best measure of the confidence the organization itself puts in the information it provides”(185).  For me, I am not looking for the perfect blogger, but rather one that is honest and transparent. Even if it is about food.

References

Burton, B., & Greenstein, L. (2011, August 28). Food blog Code of Ethics 2.0 [Web log post].             Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://foodethics.wordpress.com/

Ionescu, N. (2013). Online political communication: the role of image upload on Facebook. 

  Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication, 53-58.

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: how to know what's true in the age of information            overload. New York: Bloomsbury.

Press Release and Facebook Post

 

For Immediate Release:

State College, PA

Joe Paterno, former head coach at Penn State, died this morning at Mount Nittany Medical Center, following a brief battle with lung cancer.  Paterno, 85, worked at Penn State for 61 years, 46 of them as the head football coach.  Known for his conservative coaching style, Paterno is credited with 409 victories on the field, including 37 bowl games and two national championships.  More than 250 college athletes who played under Paterno went on to careers in the NFL. 

Paterno’s accomplishments on the football field are overshadowed in the last days of his career by a child sex abuse scandal.  Paterno was charged with failing to execute his moral responsibility when he did not contact police regarding the allegations of rape by his defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.  Sandusky was charged with sexually assaulting 10 boys over a 15 year span.  Though Paterno was told of abuse happening within his locker room, he never pressed the issue with school authorities.  Following an investigation into the Sandusky assaults, Paterno was fired in November.  

Despite the child abuse scandal that marred his last season as head coach at Penn State, former players, colleagues, friends and family all spoke high praise of Paterno, who was known for his dedication to his players both on and off the field.  Former player Paul Posluszny, now of the Jacksonville Jaguars, said of Paterno “Besides the football, he’s preparing us to be good men in life.”   

A college football player himself, Paterno played quarterback and cornerback for Brown University, where he set a defensive record of 14 career interceptions. He began his career at Penn State in 1963 as an assistant to the head coach.  He took on the role of head coach in 1966.  Never one for the spotlight, Paterno lived in a modest ranch house within walking distance to the football field.  Despite the controversy surrounding his last year at Penn State, rival coach Bobby Bowden noted that “You can’t ignore the great years he had a Penn State and the great things he did for Penn State.”

Paterno is survived by his wife, Sue and their five children.  A statement released by his family summed up how Paterno approached life and coaching. “His ambitions were far reaching, by he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players, and his community.”

  

Joe Paterno, 85, dies in State College. (2012, January 22). Retrieved from ESPN : http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7489238/joe-paterno-ex-penn-state-nittany-lions-coach-dies-85-2-month-cancer-fight

FACEBOOK POST

How Should Penn State Coach Joe Paterno be Remembered? 

Which Social Media Tools Reach Audiences Effectively?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Never has that been more true than with social media.  Sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr are built around images rather than text.  This visual marketing revolution includes more than six billion photos published each month, worldwide (CITE).  Even social networking sites that were built around words, like Twitter, include image sharing.  Pretty pictures, funny memes, graphic mashups guarantee more user engagement on sites.  In 2013, more than half of user activity was image uploads (Ionescu, 2013).  It makes sense that the most effective social media tools are those that capitalize on images.  According to Coleman “….visuals have been linked to increased attention and involvement” (2006). 

To test this theory I selected three social media tools that incorporate some type of image.  First up is a mash-up. A mash-up is a website “that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool” (New Media Tools , 2014). More specifically I created a ZeeMap, featuring some local attractions from Maine (my favorite beach and my favorite surplus salvage store):    https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=1149003&add=1

This tool would be great for listing geographic resources, like support groups, historical societies or health centers.  The images are really just a place holder and hard to see in detail, but they give the individual pins a more finished look which I think would encourage more sharing of links among users.  

Next I tried Tumlbr. I admit, I like this tool much better. It is kind of like a dressed up, grown up version of Facebook. You can post images, audio, links and text and there are no ads to clutter the layout. It is popular with artists and those looking to express themselves in a creative format.  https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dandelionwine76  Tumblr is just ….pretty. However, for commercial purposes, I don’t think it would be the best format for getting a message out.  Users on Tumblr follow personal interests and I didn’t see a way that they would be exposed to other areas, like a “What’s Trending Now…” list that other social networking sites use. 

My freelance job requires that I have an active Twitter account, but I am rarely active on that particular social networking site. Instead, I use Hootsuite to post all my latest articles in one foul swoop to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.   For this experiment I thought I’d try posting a tweet with an image (something I didn’t know you could do until this week’s assignment).  As much as I don’t like Twitter personally, I do think it is effective for relying messages to a large and diverse audience. And as I already mentioned, messages that include an image are more likely to get clicked on.  https://twitter.com/Abt_Restaurants

Images can make people laugh and cry.  They can shock and motivate people to action. You don’t need to think too much when looking at an image.  It can encapsulate a message that would otherwise be ignored by the masses.  This visual form of communication will continue to grow and evolve with social media and I suspect be a major way businesses, organizations and individuals communicate in the future (Ionescu, 2013). 

Works Cited

Coleman, R. (2006). The effects of visuals on ethical reasoning: what's a photograph worth to journalists making moral decisions? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 835-850.   

Ionescu, N. (2013). Online political communication: the role of image upload on facebook . Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication , 53-58.

New Media Tools . (2014, October 8). Retrieved from Aids.Gov: http://www.aids.gov/using-new-media/tools/

Sources

At first glance this assignment seemed simple enough: find an online article and evaluate its sources. Easy-peasy. Eight articles later and I finally click on a headline that features an actual article with actual sources. The seven previous headlines had been nothing more than a paragraph of loose information with no sources cited at all. And these were in notable online publications: Time, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

I settled on an article in the New York Times: Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work? Usually Not by Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll. As a member of my hospital's Wellness Committee I am heavily involved in our worksite wellness program, so an article declaring they don't work definitely caught my attention. Both Frakt and Carroll have strong backgrounds in public health, as cited in the article and Frakt’s bio page listed several of his peer-reviewed publications. Within the article there were numerous sources cited including the Kaiser Family Foundation, the RAND Corporation and PepsiCo (Red flag! Red flag!) (Frakt & Carroll, 2014).  The article itself I felt was slightly bias, basically claiming that wellness programs shift costs from employer to employee. Per Dr. Z’s instruction I donned my Sherlock Holmes detective hat and started investigating the trail of evidence on which this article was based.

I have heard of the Kaiser Family Foundation within my own work in public health and wasn’t surprised that as a source, they checked out. Their survey and its funding all appeared to be neutral.  The mission of the RAND Corporation is to “advance understanding of health and health behaviors and examines how the organization and financing of care affect costs, quality, and access. RAND's body of research—conducted primarily through the RAND Health division—includes innovative studies of health insurance, health care reform, health information technology, and women's health, as well as topical concerns such as obesity, complementary and alternative medicine, and PTSD in veterans and survivors of catastrophe.” (Workplace Wellness Programs Can Cut Chronic Illness Costs; Savings for Lifestyle Improvements Are Smaller, 2014)  A little wordy, but it certainly sounds official. I found the specific study that was referenced by Frakt and Carroll, and it was based on PepsiCo’s (Yes, as in Pepsi cola and Frito-Lay potato chips) Healthy Living Wellness Program.  PepsiCo was the sponsor of the study and two of its authors are PepsiCo employees. The study, even though it was sponsored by a huge junk food conglomerate, still backed up what Frakt and Carroll wrote –worksite wellness works in some ways, but not in all the ways it is intended.     

The potential impact of unrestricted web publishing is that anyone could put forth information in a format that seems credible and legitimate.  While the article I focused on for this blog post was based on credible findings and presented in a fairly unbiased manner information is only as good as the way in which it is presented.  Even if authors cite credible sources, if they do so in a way that shows only one perspective, just to get their point across, its nearly as bad as just making things up. Unrestricted web publishing, while leveling the playing field for people to voice their opinions and create positive social/political movements, also poses the risk spreading falsified information, where facts are cherry picked to suit the author’s motives (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010).

 

Works Cited

Frakt, A., & Carroll, A. E. (2014, September 11). Do Workplaec Wellness PRograms Work? Usually Not . Retrieved from New York Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/upshot/do-workplace-wellness-programs-work-usually-not.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: HOw to know what's true in the age of information overload. New York: Bloomsbury.

Workplace Wellness Programs Can Cut Chronic Illness Costs; Savings for Lifestyle Improvements Are Smaller. (2014, January 6). Retrieved from RAND Corporation: http://www.rand.org/news/press/2014/01/06/index1.html

Social Media: Making Information Interesting

How do I know what I know? What is one new thing I learned today? If you read my first post, you know that my favorite things to learn from social media involve food and/or wallpaper removal tutorials.  But I don't think those are the types of things that Dr. Z is looking for.  So, in an effort to appear more intellectual than I actually am, I took to my Facebook and Twitter pages to see what was popular in the news.  After surfing through many videos of the Ice Bucket Challenge and Cute Kittens Doing Cute Stuff, I settled on  Does Organic Make Food Better For You? from FoodTank, a food think tank. Usually the term think tank is a red flag. To me, it's like people who say they tip well and then leave their restaurant server 5%.  But the for the purpose of this blog, I thought the article would be a good exercise in mindful social media consumerism (did I just make up a new buzz phrase?).

Not surprisingly, FoodTank, whose mission is focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters, declared organic foods as better for you than non-organic versions.  How do I know this is true?  Well, if the article was just commentary from FoodTank I wouldn't believe it, based on that information alone.  While I support organic foods, slow foods, local foods, sustainable foods (I really love food) it's pretty obvious that this website is interest-based journalism at it's finest (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2011).  But just because I approve of their agenda doesn't mean I won't question the validity of the report, even though studies show that people give more street cred to content that they approve of (Kaye & Johnson, 2011).  No, the reason I believe this article's information is accurate and credible stems from the fact that the authors cited a peer reviewed paper from the British Journal of Nutrition. "A new study by Newcastle University on organic versus conventional crops confirms that organic farming methods do have a positive impact on health. Results found substantially higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticides in organic crops versus conventional crops."  That source gave the content the credibility I was looking for (Nierenberg & Reed, 2014). 

Social media sites like Facebook are a good jumping off point for finding information. While they may not tell you the whole story or present all the facts at once, their content can offer up the most pertinent information and a path for finding out more about a topic.  And let's be honest- often times information posted through social media sites is just more interesting and entertaining than the original source.  Case in point - I don't follow the British Journal of Nutrition (Fun Fact: They don't even have a Facebook page- I checked) so I probably wouldn't have stumbled upon this study were it not for my fellow Facebook foodies reposting the article from FoodTank.

Social Media takes important information and transposes into interesting, bite sized chunks for the average consumer. You don't have to be in grad school to understand the information presented. Though it certainly doesn't hurt.

Work Cited

Kova   Kaye, B.,  & Johnson,T. (2011) Hot Diggity Blog: A cluster analysis examing motivations and other factors for why people judge different types of blogs as credible. Mass Communication and Society. P. 236-263.   

             

           Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2011). Blur: How to know what's true in the age of information overload . New York: Bloomsbury.    

          Nierenberg, D., & Reed, M. (2014, September 9). Does Organic Make Food Better? Retrieved from www.FoodTank.com: http://foodtank.com/news/2014/09/organic-produce-higher-in-nutritional-content-than-conventional-produce

Influence of The Media

Even though new media has the capacity to connect people across the globe and spread information almost instantaneously, I find it keeps me rather insulated from outside events.  Thanks to innovations like Netflix and Spotify, I am often blissfully unaware of what is happening in the world around me.  I watch TV through streaming, without commercials or newscasts. Ditto for music. I rarely listen to broadcast radio in my car and never in the house. Instead, for $10 a month I enjoy unlimited, commercial free music through my Smart Phone or iPad. I have been living in this insulated commercial-free bubble for about 18 months and it wasn’t until recently I realized that I really had no idea what was going on in the world.  Or even in my own backyard. One Tuesday evening in early August, a hurricane blew through my town located in the western Foothills of Maine (we rarely get hurricanes).  I had no idea. I thought it was just a really bad rain storm.  It wasn’t until later in the evening when I popped onto Facebook that I saw all the posts about people taking to their basements and losing power.  Geesh, I thought. I don’t even have any bottled water in the house, in case of an emergency.  The situation made me realize how removed I am from current events.

I wasn’t always so disengaged from what was happening in the world.  As a former social studies teacher, I know the importance of being an informed citizen.  I used to read the local online newspapers and occasionally watch a local or national newscast the day after it was broadcast, on the Internet.  But there was always so much information available.  One article would link to another article and another and so on…until I had frittered away my morning reading news that was usually pretty depressing, not to mention bias.  I think my hermit-like aversion to both local and national news started slowly, replacing the New York Times with Martha Stewart Living on Hulu and CBS Nightly news with Youtube channels of How to Remove Wallpaper.  I am slightly addicted to Pinterest and all the ways to use a mason jar.  I use Facebook to stay connected with my family and friends and to cyber-stalk my teenagers.  LinkedIn is useful only when I am feeling disgruntled at work and want to look for a new job. Essentially, I am selfish social media consumer.  I only use it if it benefits me directly.

Is this positive or negative?  New Media allows me to be much more selective about the content I consume.  Obviously, I’m generally happier looking for dessert recipes on Pinterest than reading about fighting in the Middle East.  Add to this the fact that there is so much content available all the time – and  it starts to feels like information fatigue.  I know I should care, but I just don’t have the energy right now.  I’m going to check out Halloween craft ideas on Pinterest instead.