Week Eight: Digital Activism and the Web Ecology Project

Activism consists of intentional action to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism is usually in support of, or in opposition to, one side of an often controversial argument (See lecture 16). Digital Activism can be potentially positive or negative for a brand. Digital Activism can be defined as “the practice of using digital technology for political and social change” (Mary Joyce, Meta-Activism Project). 

The first thing I am going to look at defining digital activism better as I don't know about you. but the term confused me slightly at first. The following model aided me in understanding the emergence of digital activism (See article here). 

I'll just give you a quick explanation of the model: Though there are many sub-categories digital activism can emerge from three groups - doers, builders and thinkers. The size of the bubble represents the relative size of the group, with doers being the largest.  Areas of overlap refer to multiple roles: a person who is both a builder and doer, a thinker and builder. Doers is the largest and potentially most complex group, who create digital activism through their practices such as strategies failed. blog posts. tweets and uploaded videos. "It is through them that the infrastructure of the builders is tested (in the case of activist platforms) or appropriated (in the case of commercial ones) and the ideas of the thinkers are applied.  It is from their actions that thinkers create theories and interpretations about what digital activism means" (See article here). Builders create the infrastructure that allows digital activism to take place such as platforms, software, organisations and injections of money. Next comes the thinkers who are the smallest group yet potentially the most critical in defining what digital activism is.  They act as the filter through which the tactics of digital activism are analysed, shared etc and digital activism practice would never move forward, always acting on past methods without them. Digital activism is said to move forward easiest when all levels of analysis are interlinked and closely integrated with practice. Social networking has made it extremely easy for members of the general public to become involved with digital activism. With  the click of a mouse, they can permeate the doer category.

This leads me on to concept that theorists are calling 'Clicktivism' that, in their opinion, is destroying activism. This is the "obsession with tracking clicks" (See article here). 

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"The end result is the degradation of activism into a series of petition drives that capitalise on current events. Political engagement becomes a matter of clicking a few links. In promoting the illusion that surfing the web can change the world, clicktivism is to activism as McDonalds is to a slow-cooked meal. It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone." (White, 2010).

Tim Hwang has an interesting insight into the world of online activism; "I want to argue that where digital activism is concerned, an understanding of web culture is absolutely key to effectively operating online" (See article here). He believes that activism relies on engaging "the underlying forces of communication and culture at work in a particular media or space". The thing I found most genuinely interesting whilst reading around the subject of digital activism was in 'Digital Activism Decoded' and the chapter 'Digital Transforms Activism: A Web Ecology Perspective' by Tim Hwang. It speaks of the Web Ecology Project formed in Boston in 2008. They are an emerging research group who want to approach the challenge of gaining a better understanding of cyberspace by embracing a serious study of the underlying social forces  that are at the root of both cultural fads and more serious activism against established authorities. 

This gave me new insight into the topic - I would have thought social media would make work easier for activists to spread their opinions online; however, it is in fact the opposite, making it harder for activists to get the proper information to the right people one the spotlight of attention is on them. This means  that activists need to find a way to sift through information as well as raise awareness. The web can be a flurry of reposting, commenting and spamming where actionable content often becomes increasingly obscured referred to by Hwang as 'memetic entropy'.  "In an era of social platforms that are tightly networked, the bar to merely getting a message out from a circle of activists into the public sphere is much lower". So although at first  the subject seemed straight forward, I feel I have actually learnt the most from this topic than any other so far. And I will leave you with what I think is a huge problem that needs to be overcome on popular social platforms: "the period between when a conversation becomes widespread or trending and the point at which it becomes "polluted" with a high amount of noise in the form of spam and tangential conversation is rapidly shrinking". 

Week Seven: Gladverts...Invasion of Privacy?

          Digital has made an advertiser's job a whole lot easier. It is no longer a case of the widely known saying "everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" but in fact, as Banksy suggests "In the future everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes". With rapidly developing technology and advances of the digital presence in all industries, it has led to a wide debate of privacy issues, with consumers feeling their person privacy is being violated further and further. With no regulation/legislation currently in place to effectively deal with the digital communications environment, activists are springing up everywhere campaigning for their rights to privacy. Not only is there the personal invasion, but also the dangers that exist such as phishing, online/physical stalking, identity theft and the list continues. Research conducted in the US found email Phishing attacks 4 times more likely to be successful when send using personal information gathered from social networking profiles.

        

Privacy can be defined as “the claim of an individual to determine what information about himself or herself should be known to others….This, also, involves when such information will be obtained and what uses will be made of it by others” (Alan Westin, 2003)”.

         And it looks like digital privacy activists are going to have something new to protest against. According to a BBC report released last month, 'Minority Report' like ads will be soon appearing in the UK (See article here). A DIGITAL ADVERTISING REVOLUTION has been forecast for the near future, the technology being called 'Gladvertising'. The first step to this is going to be adverts that reflect our moods. The technology uses emotion recognition software (ERS) and provide an advert based on how you feel. It is the intention of advertisers to further the technology so that it can read age, gender and even interests, possibly using social network profiling or from existing market research. Privacy campaigners are already kicking up a fuss about this 'scary' technology and it has developed due the industry so far existing unchallenged. 

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We have a situation where the boundaries between our online and offline worlds become even more blurred and we currently have no regulatory or legislative regime in place to deal with these dangers.”

Alexander HanffPrivacy International

       Dr Shaw, of Future Studies, has said there will naturally be research into 'gladvertising' to consider the publics concerns and anxieties but believes the public will become increasingly comfortable with the new technology. I am torn between my views as a consumer and as an advertiser. As an advertiser this creates hugely exciting new opportunities and ways to target potential customers....from the view of a consumer I can understand the privacy issues involved. I guess the only thing to do is wait and see what the new technology in the digital age has in store for us...

                   

Week Six: The Daily Mail's Success & The SEO Pyramid

           

   "Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is defined as a form of marketing on the Internet that businesses and organisations seek to gain visibility on SERP's through paid or non-paid means" (Moran and Hunt, 2005 cited at See Journal Here). Therefore, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines, and SEO tactics may be incorporated into website development and design. It considers how search engines work and what people search for, involving editing a website's content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to removed barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. 'Search engine friendly' is a term used to describe website designs, content, images, videos and menus that have been optimised for the purpose of search engine exposure. An example of this is the Daily Mail website. They are an unlikely website to have mastered the marketing

 tool of SEO, but with a total of 40, 500,667 unique users the website broke online records in April 2010. This has been puzzled over, as The Daily Mail reaches no where near these figures with sales on the newsstand. Easy access, quality content is the cornerstone for the websites success - housing most popular sections high on the first page for celebrity-obsessed browsers. Down the right-hand column of the page is the latest celebrity gossip in small sections that help the website get picked up by search engines. Keywords chosen especially to optimise the chances of search engines finding the site can be seen within the copy. All the stories on the Mail's website are short and accurately detailed to encourage people to click through. 

 The SEO Success Pyramid

            The model was adapted by Matt McGee (See Article Here) and goes through the process of making great websites that earn traffic and convert visitors into customers. I feel that it is an interesting way of thinking about Search Engine Optimisation and could be applied to any company who wants to use SEM as a marketing tool.

                           

                                                             See Larger Version Here

            I think, we as marketing students, have had drummed into us that Word of Mouth is such a powerful marketing tool - this is also true and must be remembered when using this model. As you get further up the pyramid, buzz/word of mouth marketing and community play a huge part in making the process of SEO much faster, the human element being the deciding factor as to whether a company is successful in the search marketing arena. 

              According to McGee's model, the success of SEO depends on:

Commitment: The team working on the project, whether it is directly the marketing team or an external SEO specialist team must be enthusiastic and engaged.

Planning: Setting goals for the SEO Campaign and developing a set of strategies and statistics is essential just like any other marketing campaign.

Product/Service: The product/service being marketed needs to have potential and quality for the marketing to work.

Education/Information: The search marketing industry changes rapidly so information needs to be up to date and ongoing as this is also just as rapidly changing.

Patience: Search marketing takes time to implement correctly even though it is rapidly changing. This makes the marketing a hard task.

Design & Usability: The website needs to be attractive and easy for the visitor to use without any hard technological ways of entering it.

Keyword Research: This is a hugely important part of SEO - keywords need to be researched carefully and can never be too specific or overused. 'Longtail' keyword phrases may also need to be looked at.

Analytics: Measuring, analysis and adjusting a company's SEM is the only way that it can be deemed if the strategy is effective or could be improved in any way.

Tools: Using SEO tools can give a company an advantage over competition, but more importantly the skills to interpret this data.

Crawlability: A search engine cannot index pages that its spider cannot crawl such as Flash movies, complicated DHTML and javascript.

Content of the Website: Can be blogs, articles, videos or user generated content such as product/service reviews. 

Links: Great content needs links to get a better rank on search engines.

Social/Local Findability: Social Media Marketing and Local Search are essential and will be dictated by the size of a company which one  you emphasise more. The company want customers to be able to find them as easily as possible.

Reputation Management: This is extremely important at a time when social media is such an effective vehicle and the public have a growing influence over user reviews - these can have a huge impact on how your company is perceived.

Trust: Is at the top of the pyramid, and the Number 1 goal for any company is creating a trusting relationship with its consumers. Trust = Power so when a company achieves trust from users and search engines, according to McGee it is on its way to marketing success.