Getting involved in public discourse can be exciting and terrifying at the same time, especially within such a digitalized society today
How do notable individuals use social media?
Different from ordinary people, celebrities or notable individuals see social media as a more important platform for them to show rather than communicate with others. How to maintain a resilient public image and reputation is the ultimate goal of using social media. However, it’s also a digital alternative for notable individuals to tell their options on different subjects, spread their voices around to expand their influences in different areas (such as politicians). For instance, famous influencers will evaluate the content for its gain and risk before posting them and that’s exactly what Jody Vance has covered in the interview. As she mentioned she represents her brand and being completely herself when engaged in public discourse, and she also pointed out that she’s a broadcaster but not a journalist so that she can share some of her personal opinions in a more open space.
What are the benefits of being in the public eye and having a PLN?
As for the benefits of engagement within a pubic environment, there are different levels of rewards when people’s behaviours are decent. 1. It strengthens your connections with other people, that’s when the good impression was delivered to the mass and you have built up a trustable figure. Jody expressed that putting herself in the public eye and making progress on the formation of PLN has increased the chances of meeting more professional individuals or collective groups during her career. In return, benefited her career to reach another level. 2. It boots your exposure and potential opportunity when applying for a job through the employer. Exposing your abilities and advantages helps to show what you are capable of and your strengths. Sometimes people do have the ability to finish the task and satisfy the job requirement, but they lack demonstration of their ability. So presenting what you are capable of such as Jody’s excellent broadcasting skills and communication ability can lead you to success.
Delivering information in a connected society requires verifiable resources, how to build a PLN to rely on?
When considering bring up some information within a public context, we have to ensure its authenticity to avoid unnecessary misleading information. It’s crucial for us to seek reliable resources. However, taking the concern of modern digitality into account, it can get difficult to acquire verified material. It’s an easy observation that fake news and disinformation had a long history spreading around the Internet without proper restriction which can be a complicated result of the transformation from the post-digital age into a highly digital society nowadays. The digital disruption has damaged the advertising-reliant business models of legacy media, it has resulted in the practice of aggregation with its attendant side-effect of appropriation of the content without paying(Hirst, 2018). Paying attention to professionalism when building a PLN and includes people from various fields can lower the risk of uncertainty about the resources. In addition to that, we should also be more cautious about the information we can take from the massive Internet system. It seems that information is much cheaper than before because of the convenience of the internet, people can get very comprehensive content about things on the internet without much effort. It really changed the way people value information, that’s why a lot of freelance journalists were paid dramatically lower than the average salary standard because people are ignoring their efforts making original content with the biased lens. That’s why different generations can have huge gaps in the practical application of public media, people do not depend on news being broadcasted on the radio anymore today, they would rather search it on the Internet.
References
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
