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Is Trending the Ultimate Goal for Teenagers?
If you live outside the UK, or don’t have a passing interest in soccer, you'll almost certainly have missed the recent ‘ball boy scandal’ which engulfed the League Cup semi-final between Swansea City and Chelsea.Needing to score twice to take the...
Vines, Sound Bites and the Obsession with Brevity
"If you couldn't say it in less than 10 seconds, it wasn't heard because it wasn't aired” - Michael Dukakis, 1988 Presidential candidateBy the time you've finished reading this sentence, almost six seconds will have passed and precisely 140...
Is Outrage the Only Mode of Online Discourse?
The Guardian recently published an opinion piece by writer and comedian Viv Groskop in which she claimed that “outrage has become the lingua franca of a generation”.She bemoaned the fact “words and opinions are less important than the...
The Imperceptible Impact Of Social Media On Our Everyday Lives
“The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer - often, indeed, to the decider himself” – John F. KennedyThere have been a increasing number of studies recently looking at the impact our friends can have on our decisions...
Social Media's Role In Understanding And Influencing Reputation
The newsjacking blunderSEO professionals have always made use of rising searches on Google to create content that drives traffic to a website. Twitter Trends now offers a more readily available opportunity to jump on a trending topic or hashtag....
How Social Media Subtly Shapes Behavior
A recent lecture by British documentary-maker Adam Curtis explored the idea that, since the advent of the internet, all we have is our own experiences and our circle of friends and we don’t believe in the big stories anymore.As these stories are...
'Digistalgia': Has Social Media Shaped Teen Attitudes to Brands?
I think, or at least imagine, it has always been the case that a shorter passage of time need pass before nostalgic tendencies develop in younger people.To a teenage girl, a few years will clearly appear to be a far longer time span than to a woman...
Could A Social Media Poll Ever Prove To Be Dangerous?
With the race for the Presidency fast approaching, I have no doubt we’ll see even more agencies releasing ‘opinion polls’ derived from social media data.With more people using social media, there is, as Tweetminster has shown in the UK...
People Don't Really Know Why They Do What They Do
According to Nielsen’s latest ‘Global Trust in Advertising’ report word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews, either from someone they know or a stranger’s opinions online, are the most trusted sources of information for buying decisions....
Who's Afraid Of The Big Other? The Interpassivity Of Social Media
A recent study by researchers at Boston University discovered that people were, not surprisingly, using Facebook for two reasons: (1) the need to belong and (2) the need for self presentation.We now check Facebook and personal emails at...
