Personally, I have taken this course for the past two semesters and I found it to be a positive and wonderful project, however, I never quite felt like we were reaching an audience. The internet is expressed as being the platform individuals go to in reaching their updates on the world. This proves to be true but I also have experienced individuals that have taken a stance on the internet because it often provides a lot of negative information. There are also individuals that struggle to access internet or media platforms and prefer to get their information from the news.
I am an individual that does not focus my primary finds in either, though if I had to choose one, I get most of my information online. With this said, I do not have a lot of social media. I have gone through Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Facebook, and more. The only social media platforms I have left are Snapchat, Tumblr, and Facebook. With these three social media platforms I hardly check either of them. Instead, I read my Google picked articles that are selected for me everyday. This is my source of information, and if I am feeling a bit fancy I will watch the news.
Now, this story is not to share my distance towards the internet. Instead, it is to share that I am a younger individual and I, myself, cannot seem to tolerate social media for long. Rocks-Macqueen mentions that there is no way we could use all social media and I agree with this statement. In my first couple semester attending university I was involved in the Anthropology Club as Public Relations. I was given social media accounts we had as a club as was instructed to post frequently to ensure our followers were up-to-date. Initially I thought this was a fantastic idea until I quickly realized it was impossible for me to post on five different accounts in the split of a second the update our followers. In time, we reduced our social media appearance and I found that to be more manageable. The club was then reduced to Facebook and Instagram.
For our project, I am torn between these two platforms for our project because I am unaware of the follow count on each, generally. Both platforms have made advancements that are great for our project, such as offering a “going live” feature. With this feature our followers could watch what we are doing in real time and have the opportunity to ask questions as well. Considering we are reaching a larger audience I believe that Facebook may be the better source of information because it could be treated similar to a blog whereas Instagram would be composed more as pictures. Additionally, because our graves date to earlier times we are likely reaching an assumed older audience. Because Facebook (2004) had been around for a longer time period than Instagram (2010) a larger portion of our audience may be more likely to have Facebook accounts than Instagram accounts. Lastly, though blogging is interesting I believe this website reaches a more academia audience than a general public audience for the fact that before this class I have been completely unaware of this website.
There are plenty of social media accounts to choose from when deciding what is the best to represent the project. I would like to point out that the importance of the HCPCP is that it is still relatively new and therefor still growing and improving. There is on going work from semesters before, such as yourself that can account for the start and continuation of the project. It’s true that this website is no where near my radar or rather any popular sites to just luckily fall into someones lap. Its hard to decide what platform to use but it deserves more than what an article can provide. This project is a continuation of work that would be nice to share to others who have no knowledge of the course or project. We do a lot in a day that only ads up and a place to share that would really promote this work and get others more involved and informed. Even most older generations are flowing into daily technology as the younger generation. Perhaps not as frequent but it happens and so that is why it’s important to move with the flow of the generation but also make the transition easier. The more we share, the more we get people hooked and we get news stations to come out and share a wider ranger of people who may not have that easy access to an internet source.
I agree that we should probably look into a Facebook page and other media outlets. I myself only have Twitter, Snapchat and whatever pops up on Google to keep me updated. I hardly watch local news either. My main source for local information is the University’s paper.
Hi, I have to agree with you that I don’t really think that we aren’t really reaching the audience that I think we want to connect with. Another point that I agree with is that Facebook would be a good site for this project to post on. Something that you mentioned in that paragraph that I hadn’t thought about was the age group. The people that would be interested in the information that we are trying to tell them would be the older generation and many of them are probably on facebook instead of instagram and twitter so that was eye opening.
personally I do not agree with the statement in which you have said that we are not trying to reach a specific audience, because if that where the case then this project would have meant nothing. I know you do not mean ill intent, however i do believe that our audience should be the local government, and the families that have lost deceased family members at the grave site, as well as the general public. I do not own any social media, but i do agree that this project should primarily engage in Facebook as i feel there are a full range of people logged on to Facebook everyday.