Apr. 8 Weekly Article

Project GramGram is a satirical initiative to encourage millennials to communicate more regularly with their grandparents.

I think the website and campaign are genius, funny, and creative. My only qualm with the website is that it seems a bit misleading. Watching the video leads me to believe that the service is actually available. I think that the group needs to be more explicit as to whether or not the product will actually be available, and if it will be when. Otherwise viewers will be disappointed when they find out this service is not, or not yet actually available.

Source: http://projectgramgram.com/#firstPage

Apr. 1 Application Log

This week in class we had an awesome lesson about giffs from Gabe. I thought it was very informative. One of my favorite things about this class is learning that fun and interesting things like giffs, picture quotes, and more are actually really simple to make. The more I learn, the more manageable a career in communications in this digital era seems to be. It has been empowering to see so many people my age creating fun, professional looking content with the intent of doing something good and positive for the world around them. I have seen things like giffs and picture quotes all over the place for a long time now, but after taking this class I look at them more analytically than before. It's exciting to think about the things I can create in the future.

Mar. 25 Application Log

My sister just got home from her mission on Wednesday. My brother just went through the temple last night, in preparation of going on his mission in a little over a month. We took picture and posted them on social media for both events, and they got sooo many likes and comments! This has got me thinking about why certain posts do so much better than others. The biggest thing that comes to mind is authenticity. The things we posted were truly significant moments for us. They brought us great joy. The message is simple, we love our family members and are proud of all the great things they are doing. People all want to connect with joy and love. However, I feel that sometimes people create content that can have a tendency to feel pandering or manipulative of these emotions. Nowadays, as people become more and more technologically savvy and social media literate, it can become easy to see through content that is not genuine. When it comes to the posts I most recently posted, and much of the content that I like, even if it isn’t necessarily and family member’s or friend’s achievement, authenticity is often a central part of the content.

Mar. 18 Weekly Article

An elementary school teacher has witnessed a surprised trend of hate speech among his first graders. He believes that Donald Trump’s popularity, and the culture of hate that has become associated and, sadly, popularized with it, is what cause this. He has caught his kids using the N word, and mocking kids for being Muslim. He found through some research that the parents of these trouble makers were supporters of Trump.

Sadly our group’s mission is going head-to-head with one of the most popular figures currently in the media, Donald Trump. When I say popular, I don’t mean he is praised by all, I mean that he is getting the most publicity, and occupying much of the population’s attention. We are attempting to combat the hateful culture that is being propagated by him and his speeches. I hope that our articles, and more importantly the viewpoints we are trying to popularize can disseminate into the minds of the kids of America, so we can create a better future for our kids.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisElection/videos/1128080470556775/

Mar. 18 Application Log

After discussing Narrative Theory in class I was brought again to reflect on the videos of my favorite YouTuber, Olan Rogers. He as a series of videos where we simply recounts stories from his youth. They are hilarious from a number of reasons. Even though his stories are unique to him the feelings he describes are extremely relatable. The fear, sadness, excitement, embodied in these videos have been felt by all of us in one way or another. The way he pokes fun at himself makes it even more endearing. Like we discussed in class, we love to be taken on a journey, we love when we are made to feel something. I believe that Olan Rogers’ ability to implement these things in an honest way his contributed to his success.

Mar. 11 Weekly Article

This week I will be looking over and evaluating the website of some of my classmates, Vote With Your Voice. Their campaign is targeted at millennials, a group who have traditionally been the most apathetic about voting. The goal of their campaign is to get these people out to vote. They have created entertaining videos to help people realize how important it is for us to be informed about current events. They also are keeping a blog about the history of voting, and about ways millennials, and citizens as a whole can get involved in the political process. Their website is very professionaly looking and easy to navigate.

One improvement I have for them is the addition of a ‘pledge’ section on their website. While it isn’t too difficult to use the web-traffic tools we’ve been presented with in class, a pledge section will make it even easier to measure the reach and success of their campaign. This pledge section could also prove a perfect opportunity to invite people to subscribe to receive updates on future content they release, helping them maintain a consistent audience for the media that they will continue pushing. Lastly, this pledge is a clear invitation for anyone visiting the website to act.

Source: http://votewithyourvoice.wix.com/vote

Mar. 11 Application Log

This past week in class has provided us with the opportunity to hear from many of our classmates as they have instructed us on their areas of expertise. I was especially impressed by Brad’s lesson on utilized advertising in social media. This advertising is pretty easy to use, relatively inexpensive, and can apparently play a big role in getting an individual or organization the publicity that they want. He also taught us about reddit. Sadly I was completely ignorant of this website prior to his lesson. I hope to use this new-found knowledge in my advertising class. We have a personal project we are supposed to be working on. I will be setting up a guided meditation service of sorts and hope that I can utilize these tools to get the reach that I want.