Blog Post-#7

As the rapid development of information technologies in the society, public medias such as newspaper, televisions or radios are gradually less likely to be used by citizens, social medias such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram become the mainstream of people receiving world-wide information. As people could connect with world-wide information, the diversity of social medias is overwhelming the public medias as well. Therefore, if a person wants to curate his/her social media with critical public audience, the most important factor is to know what kind of audience he/she wants to attract and curate. For example, if the person wants to attract audience in academic field, his/her main tasks to build-up an academic PLN are to participate other’s online communities or activities firstly, and provides the communities with significant contributions to build positive reputation. When he/she has some influence in academic filed, he/she could express his/her significative individual opinions in his/her social medias. As someone agrees with his/her thoughts, he/she would gain an audience. As Jody Vance mentions in the video, the PLN helps her so much to expand her connections with others, she considers that people do not need to know that someone maybe “the important piece of your network” (8:07) in the future. I think as the expanding of audience, critical public audience who may provide the person with large help must be appeared in his/her PLN in the future. The risks and benefits coexist when engaging the media space with public audience. When a person has a public audience, his/her opinions and thoughts could be heard and spread with wider range in the society.  Also, the public audience could bring this person with more reputation and connections. However, the risks are also brought by the reputation and connections with others. If someone agrees with some idea, there must be another population that disagrees with the same idea. The public audience could bring encouragement but also could bring extreme criticism. The influencer’s actions would be  magnified under the public eyes, any speeches and behaviors are monitored by public. This limits personal freedom of the influencer to a great extent. If the influencer expresses some statements that are not to the public’s liking, his/her reputation would be damaged rapidly, at the same time to accept constant critiques. For example, the lawyers always have stereotypes that they are worked for helping the disadvantaged groups to get justice. However, if a lawyer helps the rich chaebol win the cases against vulnerable groups, this lawyer’s reputation and public trust would be destroyed in public views, what follows are constant criticism and moral kidnapping. But actually, this lawyer is just employed by the chaebol and responsible for completing his/her job. Under the normal situation, if a person’s personal values or employer’s social media policy have negative replies and critiques, the first thing is to check the individual reasons of why the negative replies would happen, then control the negative influence on the internet, and try to improve or solve the problems. However, if the same situation happens on the lawyer example, I think the lawyer does not need to pay attention to these negative replies because he/she is just completing his/her job responsibly. For a notable individual to use social medias, the most important thing is to mind his/her actions and speeches to the public. For example, the president could use strong eloquence to make his/her citizens believe in him, but also use eloquence ability to avoid controversary on himself to ensure the reappointment. The social medias are good places for president to express his/her speeches and lead the trends of public. As Jody Vance mentions in the video that “social media complicates things and yet at the same time exposes your strength”(19:45). The public might misinterpret what you mean sometimes, but also they accept something that is good for their lives. For a lawyer, he/she could demonstrate his eloquence strength by showing the public with success cases he/she has achieved before in PLN, the public maybe attracted by his/her success and ask for help when they need. The reputation of the lawyer could be built-up gradually, his/her business would become better. The community which is built by the employer always has both restrictions and benefits. The community could help the person connects with more unfamiliar people through effective communications in the group and expand his/her PLN, but the person cannot share his/her own lives and ideas to let others know more about him/her. Therefore, the connections between this person and other people are stopped at the level of work. The verifiable resources always come from official medias or government-verified websites. If a person or a veteran storyteller wants to build a reliable PLN or sharing correct information with verifiable resources, his/her speeches on the social media must be legal and based on the facts that the government or official channels provide to the public. As the Navigating Social Journalism mentions that “most social journalists are not going to earn a living from their work” (Hirst, M. 2019)) because as they released some important information to the publics, their work are always being pirated. They cannot really get paid from doing this job. In addition, the pirated contents always include misinformation that misguide public’s views. Therefore, respect to the copyright and boycott pirate is also an important way to for veteran storytellers to share correct information, and for people to build a reliable PLN.

Reference:

Hirst, M. (2019). Navigating social journalism: A handbook for media literacy and citizen journalism. New York: Routledge, 2018, pp.142.

Jody Vance. “EDCI 338 – JODY VANCE”, YouTube, uploaded by MILLER, 1 Mar, 2021 of publication, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgZOJgJkdyI