Emma Barnard

Although Ellen’s tweet went “viral” and still holds the record for the most retweeted photo on twitter it doesn’t mean as much as it might with other tweets. For example, Ellen herself already has a very large following and then when you combine her with everyone else in that photo the following is enormous. This photo is going to go viral just because of who is tweeting it. To me someone who starts out with almost no followers like Carter Wilkerson and gets a tweet to 3.4 million retweets that is viral yes, just like Ellen’s but it is more impressive considering where he started from. Viral in this context is a 16-year-old boy getting more retweets based off a tweet about getting chicken nuggets than Ellen and other celebrities did with tweet and a selfie photo. In this article https://www.lifewire.com/what-does-it-mean-to-go-viral-3486225 it talks about how there isn’t a “secret formula” to going viral and it often times will happen by accident. When I think o...

McDStories Case Study When I first started reading this case study I was intrigued because McDonalds is one of the largest businesses in the world that everyone seems to know. McDonalds think they have this brilliant idea of creating a hashtag so everyone can share how much they love the organization. However, it backfires on them. I learned a new phrase in this article “expert blind spot”. The people in charge at McDonalds have this expert blind spot which hinged them from seeing anything wrong with this idea of the hashtag. They thought it would only bring in good stories and free advertising. However, this was not the case. In an article from Forbes website titled McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/24/mcdstories-when-a-hashtag-becomes-a-bashtag/#4fca22eced25)   you can see pretty clearly what path their hashtag took. One of the sample tweets from this article is “Dude, I used to work at McDonald...

How has social media changed communication? The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear this question is the effect that social media has on face to face conversation. In this article it talks about how we would rather have those conversations over email, or texting rather than face to face. (http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/051313p10.shtml)  We tend to hide behind our phones and say things that we normally wouldn’t say face to face but we’ll say through social media. This is a way that social media has changed communication in more of a negative light. One of the most amazing things about social media is the way that it connects us to people all over the world. It allows us to communicate with others that we normally wouldn’t be able to without social media. Yes, we communicate differently with people over social media than we would face to face but I believe that we can still make genuine connections and friendships through social media. Social media helps us get...