Following from Deepak Ranjan Jena
Managing Editor, Media Watch
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55401
Beware the Monstrous Algorithms!
They are Omnipresent in the Growing Media Space
Dr Sony Jalarajan Raj
Editor-in-Chief, Media Watch
St. Thomas University, Miami, USA
sonyjraj@gmail.com
Majority of the mass media in the present day
world, which now appear through the World Wide Web is counted and calculated
through algorithms. You are under the invisible surveillance of these programs,
which traces your behavior and nomenclature of media consumption and day today
uses. You are intelligently studied and monitored for a global market database.
What are algorithms? How are they going to change your interactions in a
mediated world?
Algorithms are
becoming omnipresent in the digitally enhanced online and mobile media. The
explosive expansion of the new media catalyzed the growth and development of
the algorithm culture in the news desks. They have already started the gate
keeping and ‘preferred highlighting’ of news and information. One need not be a
computer programmer to understand and use algorithms. It is simple and straight
in keying and providing the preferred words and images to the already
programmed and purchased package. It does the work like a robot with artificial
intelligence in placing, highlighting, positioning, promoting and even killing
out or blackening of the news, information, data or images one want in one’s
news media webpage or personal blogs. In short it acts as a cruel editor who is
mechanical devoid of any human emotions.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55371
Sharing Fear via Facebook: A Lesson in Political Public
Relations
Jan Boehmer1 & Michael B. Friedman2
1University
of Miami, Florida, USA
2University
of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA
Our
study compared the use of fear messages on Facebook by Barack Obama and Mitt
Romney during the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. Results show that written
fear messages embedded in photographs posted on Facebook by both candidates
affected the degree to which those photographs were shared. More specifically,
photographs containing written fear messages were shared more often than
photographs not containing written fear messages. Furthermore, while the
challenging candidate, Mitt Romney, used more photographs containing fear
messages, the increase in shares was consistent across candidates. Implications
regarding information distribution within communities, public relations
practitioners specializing in political campaigning and society as a whole are
discussed.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55376
Fake News? A Survey on Video News Releases and
their Implications on Journalistic Ethics, Independence and Credibility of
Broadcast News
Chandra Clark & Shuhua Zhou
University
of Alabama, USA
The
traditional lines between journalism and public relations are now intertwined
and public relations practitioners have an influential role on the content
consumers see every day in newspapers and on news broadcasts. This survey
looked at video news releases and their implications about journalists’ ethics,
integrity, independence and credibility. 533 participants from three different
populations (average viewers, communication college students, and journalists)
responded to a 54-question survey that employed two predictors (i) level of
experience and (ii) years of journalism experience. The results indicated that
average viewers found the use of video news releases (VNRs) more unethical than
journalists and communication students, although experienced journalists
believed VNR use is having an impact on journalistic independence in news.
Implications are discussed.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55381
Perception of Government Public Relations Practice
by the People in Sabah: A Public Opinion Survey
Mohd Hamdan bin Adnan
University
Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia
This survey focuses on how the people in Sabah
perceived Malaysia’s governmental public relations practice and their
perception of the government based upon it. It includes how the different types
of mass media and its content that they expose themselves to have influence
their image of the nation administration as well as its policies and
implementations. Also included are how their own experience with the various
government agencies has impacted their views with regard to those authorities
specifically and the government generally. Method used for this public opinion
survey is the random sampling technique. Respondents selected were 600 people
based on four categories. All of them were located in and around Kota Kinabalu
and chosen randomly. For the interview a structured questionnaire was prepared
and pilot tested on 40 respondents with ten from each category. This survey
finding further revealed that the media the public chose and exposed themselves
to, do impact their perception of the government and its public relations,
positively or negatively, depending on its content. However, the survey found
that the impact was rather moderate with about half of the respondents
declaring positively and the remainder not so positive and a few negatively.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55387
Advertising and Ethnicities: A Comparative Study of
Sri Lanka and Northeast India
Darshana Liyanage
University of
Ruhuna, Sri Lanka
Ethnicity has become a key
interest of advertisers in diverse societies. Contrary to the popular argument
that ethnic identities are threatened by the intensified influence of media and
consumer culture, they have become the core sites of representation and
reproduction of ethnic identities. It is arguable that in today’s (mass)
mediated societies there are no ways of imagining ethnicities without the
media’s influence and impact on them.
Advertising1, no longer a mere commercial activity, is an important
component of popular culture and hence plays a crucial part in the social and
cultural life of our times. Sri Lanka2 has long
been a country of communal unrest, which culminated in a civil war. Northeast
India is a region where a number of conflicting identities are in a constant
battle of production and reproduction. The ways the ethnic identities are represented
in advertisements in these two societies are worthy of studying in this
context. When ad-makers segment a market for a particular brand, they mostly
rely on ethnic identities. As a result, advertisements too become a site of
reproduction of ethnic identities. This paper is intended to identify and
analyze the ways of representations of ethnic identities in advertisements in
Northeast India3 and Sri Lanka by a comparative reading of a
sample of print and electronic advertisements.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55389
Community-Based Media in Promoting
Identity and Culture: A Case Study in Eastern Thailand
PISAPAT
YOUKONGPUN
Griffith
University, Australia
This
paper analyses the role of community-based media in information distribution in
the Riverside community, a cultural tourism destination in Chanthaburi, Eastern
Thailand. It has started to produce its own media, and to use social networks
to promote itself to the nation. Exploring the role of community media produced
by locals will reinforce the idea that community media have provided much more
effective communication channels for local people in a community environment.
By using ethnographic action research as a methodology, this research gains
strength through a rich understanding of the community by following an ongoing
research cycle of planning, doing, observing and reflecting. Moreover, this
study reflects the idea of ‘hyperlocal’ media. With approximately one hundred
households on which to focus, it is much easier for ‘hyperlocal’ to reach local
people by providing local news, covering local politics and engaging people in
the affairs relevant to their area.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55390
Social Media Challenges and Adoption
Patterns among Public Relations Practitioners
Radhe Krishan
Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, New Delhi, India
Social media has altered the design of modern society. It has
changed the way people lived and worked. Though no profession or industry is
left untouched by the communication revolution stirred by social media, yet
communication professionals bore maximum impact. This paper analyzed the usage
and perception of public relation (PR) professionals regarding the use of
social media, particularly, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The primary research questions, this paper
attempted to find answers for, are: (i) Did social media transformed the modus
operandi of PR practitioners?; (ii) Do PR practitioners rely on one social
media tool/platform over the other?; and (iii) To find out whether social media
is an aid or a burden for a PR practitioner? By attempting to answer these
three questions the paper explored fresh aspects of social media with regards
to public relations. For the purpose of the study a survey was conducted among
PR practitioners based in Delhi and working with prominent multinational
companies or PR agencies.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55391
Branding Unity: Impact of Advertisements
on Patriotism, Unity and Communal Harmony
Jyoti Raghavan
Kamala
Nehru College, University of Delhi, India
Patriotism
and national unity have become favorite brand positioning propositions for
advertisers in India. The paper explores the reasons behind the popularity of
these patriotic themes that also embrace notions of nationhood, communal
harmony and national unity in commercials and public service advertisements.
While these patriotic themes used to be the exclusive domain of the government
media in the country, they are being taken up in a big way by private business
houses in their public communication endeavors. The research study has examined
six frequently telecast advertisements on Indian television networks centered
upon the theme of national pride, communal harmony and national unity. While
tracing the historical context of these advertisements, the paper also attempts
to study their impact upon the public. The primary research for the study
comprised interviews with respondents to explore the impact of these
advertisements upon the public. The findings of the study show that positioning
brands on the themes of national pride, unity and patriotism succeed in
establishing a strong emotional connect in public minds leading to brand
recall.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55393
Communication through Advocacy
Advertising for Public Health Promotion
Mahendra Kumar Padhy
Babasaheb
Bhimrao Ambedkar University, India
This
research work is an investigation into the reception of anti-smoking
advertisements that make use of “fear appeals”. The objective of the research
is to bring audience perceptions, interpretations and making sense processes of
such advertising campaigns to the limelight. Instead of measuring effects or
effectiveness of anti-smoking messages using shocking images, this project has
at its basis the assumption of an active audience that interprets, makes sense
and decodes media texts in various ways. Research methods used in this study
are qualitative by nature. Research
findings show that the prospective audience champion the use of anti-smoking
advertisements and see the use of fear appeals as a one-way road to drawing the
audience’s attention, they nevertheless perceive these communication efforts in
a highly individualized manner, resisting to advertising techniques of
persuasion and showing signs of desensitization towards fear appeals. Findings
show that advocacy advertising using fear appeals are always decoded within the
wider media context and the identity of smokers themselves often nourished by
media representations of smoking, which plays an role in the way the audience gives different
interpretations and relates to these messages.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55397
Digital Access and Inequality among Primary School
Children in Rural Coimbatore
Sudha Venkataswamy
Amrita
Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India
This
paper examines the dynamics of access and exclusion in children’s Internet use,
in both private and public school spaces and interrogates the role of
socioeconomic and demographic predictors as well as the schooling system in
shaping Internet habits. More specifically, it explores the nature of Internet
use by primary school children, mainly for education and information and
attempts to understand the differences across and within two types of schools-
a rural public school and an elite private school. Through in-depth interviews,
this research investigates the level of computer and Internet literacy among
the primary school children in the age group of 8-10 years and reports the
differences observed among the various social dimensions. It attempts to stress
the significance and need in today’s context to provide the opportunities for
physical and material access so that disadvantaged children are not excluded
from the digital opportunities.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55438
Social Media and the Arab Spring
M. Rabindranath & Sujay Kapil
Central
University of Himachal Pradesh, India
This
paper discusses the effect of social media on the occurrence of ‘Arab Spring’.
In the Arab world no country could claim to be truly democratic and most were
autocratic coupled with desertification (68.4 per cent of the total land area),
phenomenal rise in population and scarcity of water. Moreover, about 60 per
cent of the population is under 25 years and this group belonging to lower-
middle class with high education, self- constructed status, wider world views
and global dreams forced them to raise their voice and change the autocratic
set up. But, in the absence of effective social media since the year 2000 made
it possible to raise their voice unitedly through Facebook, twitter and blogs
culminating to the ouster of Hosne Mubarak in Egypt. The ‘top to down’ approach
adopted by the Western social scientists, thus proved wrong and ‘bottom to top’
approach through social media brought the dramatic changes in Arab nations.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55398
Constructing a Comprehensive Coverage Criterion of Indian
States and Union Territories News
Umesh Arya
Guru
Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, India
The
study posits a twelve pronged formulation of indices to measure the over
coverage and under coverage of the Indian states and union territories by
newspapers on socio-economic, demographical and political aspects. Union
territories (UT), mainly Delhi and Chandigarh were unjustifiably favoured on
all twelve counts which clearly points out media’s biased leanings to cater to
the regional aspirations and preference to the power center. Northern states
were most favourably covered and the coverage reduced with increasing distance
of the state from the power center i.e., the capital of India whereas north
eastern states suffered severe coverage blackout. Quantitative and spatial
indices were developed to see news coverage in a new perspective.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55399
Public relations: Scope and
Challenges in Digital Era
Manish Verma
National
Institute of Fashion Technology, Kangra, India
With the emergence of new
media in 21st century communication industry has been
revolutionized. Although digital or social media provides an advantage to reach
the audience in minimum time but it is critical to draft a right message for
this medium. Digital media has indeed changed the way of communication for
public relation practitioners around the world. Now information is disseminated
much quicker through the internet and mobile phones. In this digital era, it is
imperative that public relation would need to adapt to technological
advancement happening around the world and utilize this advancement as tools to
effectively reach its audiences and achieve the communication objectives. To
achieve public relation, it has become important for a PR practitioner to adapt
to these new changes. The new technologies and methods of communication have
made public relations a much more versatile and effective tool. New communication
technologies allow inventive ways to accomplish a public relation campaign to
build stronger association and trust between businesses and target consumers.
