Technology and culture

One implication of social media is technology and culture that’s to say influence on human behaviour where by it has played a role in people’s behaviour to promote public participation, engagement and process of democratizing the public life. For example take the saga of the pro Malay red shirts that took place in Kuala Lumpur in year 2015 in protest of “bersih 4”, this was mobilised via social media like Facebook and twitter and many people came in big numbers to protest. Another is the protests of the Arab spring, the mobilization of resistance against the government of the Ukraine or in Hong Kong that was dependent on resources from social media (Aspeninstitute.cz). Social media is believed to be the most powerful instrument to influence human behaviour in a creative way with many responses from the users.

Social media and everyday culture

The other implication is social media and everyday culture that’s to say transformation of people’s lives in terms of communication and interaction, today the texting and online communications have emerged to another evolution of a new language through social media having many impacts on culture. Friendship interactions, peer to peer relations are believed to be increasing everyday through wall posts, and status. (Aspeninstitute.cz). New requests and followers are increasing on people’s Facebooks, Instagrams, twitter and snapchats everyday which has also lead  to online datings and the outcomes sometimes are bad such as embarrassment  through nude pictures when shared among the online daters.

Social media and children culture.

The other implication of social media on culture is social media and children culture which is a product of two interrelated and sometimes contradictory developments (Aspeninstitute.cz). This is a frequent impact nowadays days where by children prefer to be in their bedrooms stuck on their mobile phones browsing as well as playing games rather than being outdoors interacting and playing along with their fellow friends as it used to be in the past. Certained about this, it’s believed that this has a desire in the creation of their own space and enjoyment of their independence in order to gain their freedoms that may be lost. Many children are believed to have computers in their bedrooms hence keeping them online browsing and checking wall posts and status on Facebook mostly forming a forged world that is distinct from their parents through pursing a project of self-socialization hence insolation from family members (Aspeninstitute.cz). This has made children have their own personalised and private life from their own families and friends hence low interactions between their parents and friends.

National political campaigns depend on social media.

Forget in the past where politicians would use radios and televisions to campaign sometimes which would be too expensive, today in the era of innovation of multimedia called social media has changed the world and the way campaigns are done for example social media sites such as Facebook, twitter, blogs or even YouTube has helped politicians do their campaigns successfully and at a cheaper price. More to that these sites do provide different ways in the stimulation of people engagement in political issues. Individual communication on social media sites conveys politicians and parties to their potential voters, permitting politicians to give faster and quicker information to reach a larger audience of voters in a more focused way and the other way round without the role of socialisation methods such as door to door or face to face, responses, criticisms from both opposition and voters and discussions have been created. Last but not least posts by these politicians have been multiplied to more target audiences when shared by their potential voters. In this way, new audience is reached that supports that particular politician hence gain of more voters or supporters, voters are the native ones and supporters are global audiences for those people who are in love with politics. On how to handle these campaign trials via social media sites, politicians can follow the three models of communication such as Homestyle information provision (HIP), impression management strategy (IMS) and participatory communication strategy (PCS) and choose the one that predominates or main strategy to be used. No wonder with Covid-19 in place, Ugandan politicians will be forced to use social media to campaign as we going to go into a scientific election that was announced by the electro commission. All eyes now will go to the social media influencers who will be hired during this period to influence  the politicians with their agendas during these campaigns. 

Hard news make it on front pages! It’s all about politics in this post.

How special are news in the world today? One may wonder about that but truth to be told, news is something great to know about, without news we wouldn’t know what the world is all about, we wouldn’t know what the latest information across the world. News is published minutes after minute’s hours after hours, and on a daily basis, news is published in newspapers, televisions, radios, and also on the "mighty" social media such as Facebook, YouTube, blogs and twitter. News is categorised in very many ways such as hard news, soft news and investigation news but for now am looking at hard news.

Hard news stories make up the bulk of news reporting that consists of basic facts like who, what, when, where and how, hard News are about important events such as politics, government actions, International happenings, social conditions, the economy, crime, the environment and science, also has significance for large number of people reading about them and usually filled at the front pages of newspapers and the lead top stories of televisions, radios and social media like Facebook, twitter and blogs, hard news also is news that is up to minute on events that happen and reported straight away after happening. Henceforth, lets look at only political issues here that are under hard news from different online blogs.

In addition to the above, one of the examples of hard news from the political side is “Obama cries over guns, then frees more terrorists” Published January 08, 2016 by FoxNews.com,  another headline was “This is the moment Obama cried during his speech on gun control” published on January 6, 2016 by fusion blog. These blogs used different forms of headlines to describe about the same news which is about H.E Barack Obama crying in public over guns in the U.S.A. In his speech, the president explained the new measures and stronger background checks, better enforcement of gun safety laws already in place, better support for mentally ill Americans, and improved technology that would make it harder to steal guns, among others won’t rob citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Rather, Obama said, they would offer more protection of other rights, like peaceful assembly. But there was one moment that brought H.E Barack Obama to tears with an emotional face, Obama pointed to recent incidents where minority groups were targeted and killed by guns and finally this was the emotional moment and memory when he had to shed tears but this is the news that made not only my day but to many across the world, why would a president really cry, it looks to funny for me.

More to the above, the second example of hard news from the political issues is, “Rebel Leader Machar set for big return as South Sudan coalition government t up in January” published by africacradle.com on 15 JANUARY 2016. Another blog headline was “South Sudan: Rebels Welcome Kiir's Decision to Form Joint Transitional Government” published by allafrica.com on 8 JANUARY 2016.

The third news is also from the political side which is “Uproar as John Magufuli Orders All ‘Foreigners’ To Surrender Their Jobs to Tanzanians” published on 8^th January 2016 by niaje.com, another headline from the star.co.ke is “Magufuli wants illegal foreigners deported” published on 9^th January 2016. All the two news approached this news from a different angle but all on the same topic of president Magufuli wanting to deport all foreigners working in Tanzania. It’s so bad that when a new president comes in, the economy has to go down in most African countries. The newly elected president Magufuli of Tanzania wants all foreigner workers in his country to pack and go back to their home countries so that his people can have jobs and this time round his actions have left everyone wondering why and how he would do this to them. He has ordered all foreigners without working permits and residence permits to leave the country as soon as possible. 

Apparently in my own understanding, the most important news is always on the top of newspapers, televisions, radios and social media like Facebook, twitter and always go viral   and the least news is always at the end of newspapers, televisions and radios. Most of the hard news especially political news is on the front pages of newspapers because it always includes current events and so do audiences need to know what’s immediately taking place across the world. Political news headlines are always accurate and true with good headlines interesting to read for everyone who seems to be interested also. Unfortunately the worst thing about political news most times is always involving in conflicts between governments and oppositions. Last but not least I quote the most quote about politics “politics is a dirty game”, no wonder why there is so much conflicts, violence’s and fights in politics.

SOCIAL MEDIA DEPRESSION

In this generation of social media revolution in regards to multimedia, there is no doubt that many people are connected to social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram or WhatsApp extensively for the purpose of communication, connecting with other people around the world and to be informed. Social media of today has become a way of life to this 21^st century generation people around the world that without it, there is nothing much to be done making people become lazy. In fact children as young as three years old have their own iPads and phones (mostly in developed countries like UK, USA) that they are even able to access social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube, they are further referred to as “Social Media generation” implying on the excessive use of social media sites (Charlotte Kirk-Patrick and Roxanne Steijn 2014). According to (Pelt 2016), social media depression can be caused by users seeing status updates, wall posts, tweets, photos and selfies that may make them feel unpopular on social media sites, she further stated that social media can contribute to depression on three ways which include, bullying, comparison with others and influencing self-worth.

Bullying in this case can happen when friends post insulting statements about others, upload embarrassing photos such as nude pictures and also give negative comments on their posts (Pelt 2016) so that the victim feels bad, in a such away someone feels so sad hence become depressed, this may definitely lead to mental disorder of someone by feeling that he or she is not loved. Comparison with others is something common to everyone but this depends on how and why someone compares him or herself to the other, in this case teenagers start comparing themselves by seeing the posts of their friends on Facebook such as vacations, birthday parties, weddings and start feeling jealous and bad as why they can’t afford what their friends are affording hence become depressed. In addition to that, influencing self-worth, this can also refer low self-esteem where by someone feels unhappy and negative about oneself for example when oneself posts something on Facebook and doesn’t get likes, this may cause him or her depression in a sense of self-worth from the friends not liking his or her posts, nevertheless this can be avoided by reading inspiring books and watching movies.

Social media depression and social media bullying is real and it is there to stay.

7 steps on how to become an online influencer

First and foremost, in the world of digital marketing and especially in our own country Uganda, there is a large number of people who refer to themselves as “social media influencers" who only have a Twitter account with unclear header image and a bio that describes their love for food, sports teams like Manchester united, Barcelona, PSG and other things they interested in. Moreover, when you scroll through their feed you have hard time getting a sense of their direction or focus since their tweets are about their day to day activities, food, sports, sex, alcohol and many others.

For starters, a Social Media or online Influencer is a user on social media who has established credibility in a specific industry or someone who generates content in order to shape an opinion, change behaviour, and amplifies a message.  A social media influencer has access to a large audience and can persuade others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.

According to (Glucksman, 2017), the success of social media influencers is vitally important to brands; therefore, technology has been developed to identify and track influencers’ relevance to a brand or organization. This technology tracks the number of hits on a blog, times a blog is shared, likes and comments, and followers. All of these points are pivotal aspects of a social media influencer’s success

Now have you ever wondered how you too can get into this space and get paid to enjoy the finer things in life? Here are a few tips on how to become a credible and trustworthy online influencer.

1.  Understand your audience

Define your target audience through the people who follow you. Invest a considerable amount of time in finding who your audience is, what do they love and want. If you can understand them, you will know what type of content you should be focused on creating on a daily or weekly basis.

2.         Content generation.

After understanding the kind of audience you have, determine what kind of content you will be generating online and stick to it. If its Sports, lifestyle, technology, fashion, politics, entertainment. It is important to be consistent and continuously put out this content to position yourself as a thoughtful Influencer in the field you chose to specialize in, thus build your audience that will trust your content.

3.  Be active on social media

After knowing what content and specific field you want to venture in, then start being active throughout by sharing information about the field chosen.  You will notice social influencers get a considerable number of comments and shares on whatever they post. That is because they have already established themselves and have developed a community of their own.

4. Identify the companies you would like to work with, and find ways to grab their attention.

See that restaurant that you always love to go to like KFC, Cafe Javas? Tag the restaurant and talk good about it every time you post a selfie dinning from there, highlight what made your experience so memorable. These authentic endorsements will definitely catch their eye.

Continuously document your experiences or interactions with a product or brand online, and always tag them. Review their products on either your platforms or there’s, and give them constructive feedback.

Companies value customer's sentiments and where possible, even go as far as implementing them where possible. They will notice you and may even consider working with you to advocate for their products or campaigns whenever they have them.

5.         Build your portfolio

After all the gigs you have worked on, develop your profile as an online influencer clearly indicating your current audience (followers), sample content that you generated that received a wide reach, and document any work you have previously done for other brands, or content you have proactively generated about a company or brand. Paint a picture showing why any company would benefit from working with you as their influencer of their brand, product or service. This can be done using the google analytics on the campaigns you run. Use a power point for a good presentation.

   6.  Promote your content and yourself

To be an influencer, you need to have people to influence. You cannot expect people to go to you when you don’t introduce yourself to them. In order to grow your audience, you may need to promote some of your posts online in order to reach more people. Social media marketing is very targeted and allows you to be specific with regards to the people you would like to reach with specifications of age, region, cities, countries or interests.

7.         Collaborate with other influencers

Don’t worry if you haven’t established yourself as an influencer yet. Because one way of achieving that is to be friends with other established ones. Thanks to the event and hashtag of Ugandans on twitter #UOT that happens on Wednesday every week. Now this is the best time for you to join these fellows and make a good collaboration with other influencers. You can collaborate with those within your industry but doesn’t sell something that you do. When you contribute on their blog, you are also tapping the audience that they have. But also collaborate with those that are not in the same filed with you to gain more confidence and experience.

Conclusion

Becoming an online influencer doesn’t happen overnight. It will take you months, even years to get to a point where people recognize your name without them having to search for it. But with hard work and a right amount of luck, you will surely get there. Remember to always put up good content and always tag the brands, products or services that you would love to work with.

References

Benitez, C. (2018). 10 Ways to Become a Sought-After Online Influencer. [online] Available at: https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/10-ways-become-sought-online-influencer-02005869 [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].

Ethangatta, V. (2018). 5 steps on how to become an online influencer. [online] Linkedin. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-steps-how-become-online-influencer-vivienne-ethangatta/ [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].

Glucksman, M. (2017). The Rise of Social Media Influencer Marketing on Lifestyle Branding. [online] Elon.edu. Available at: https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/communications/journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/2017/12/08_Lifestyle_Branding_Glucksman.pdf [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].