Privacy 2.0

Edward Snowden and the conspiracy that surrounds his actions is a heated topic in my home. My wife believes in absolute transparency in governmental affairs. I think that is a beautiful ideal, but it is an unrealistic expectation. The government's actions were unethical, but Edward Snowden's actions were deliberate and malicious, as well as self-serving. Many people hail Snowden as a hero because he blew the whistle on the NSA. I don't think his motives were just. It is possible information he has could damage democracy, not save it.

It is interesting that I see Snowden as a traitor. With my history, one would assume I would e all for bringing down political corruption. My wife often laughs at the anarchy tattoos that I have on my hands.
 I recently watched the documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, this as the title denotes the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Once again my opinion is that this man is a self-serving criminal who is a product of the information age and too much anti-social social media.

Furthermore, the government's need to know is creating a scenario where there are things they need to know. What I mean by this is by looking for discontent they create discontent.

I find it interesting that privacy is such an issue in this day and age where people put everything and anything on the internet. They blog about t=things from breakfast to breakups. People believe that if they have allowed someone to view their page of "friend" them that they are not sharing information, not true. If you want to keep yourself to yourself, stay off the web!
Recently I have been looking for a new matress. I took my laptop, and while on campus googled and viewed a video about a certain matress, now this same mattress ad and others like it has made an appearance on my wife's facebook and in the random ads that show up when she uses the internet. Now that's scary!!

Religion 2.0

The topic of religion is an interesting one and somewhat difficult to broach. It is interesting that being from and living in this area that it is taken for granted that someone is a member of the most prominent religion. Often this isn't the case, or in other situations when talking with someone, I find out that they are a member of the "The Religion" and would never have assumes otherwise (I am sure that I fall into this category myself). What I'm saying is its funny how a discipline based on love and acceptance breeds common behaviors like stereotyping, shunning, and judgment.

I could use the rest of this post to engage in the standard practice of complaining about the religion of this area but I won't. I will, however, point out how with the ever growing presence of social media how religions have had to change the way they reach out and interact with others.
For example, when the LDS church came out with their most recent edict on gay marriage and the LGBT community. When they released the decision that homosexual relationships and marriages would not be recognized by the church they had to put out a press release to do damage control. This is not something they would ever have to have done in the past. Realistically in the past, their view if these marriages never would had been so widespread. What was laughable was the random numbers that were thrown around and the one story that I read about a lawyer representing s few thousand members who were renouncing their membership in the church. In case anyone doesn't know, you don't have to sue the church not to be a member; you just stop going.

Social media has changed the way we worship. Apparently, if I see something horrible on Facebook and scroll by without typing amen or sharing I am going to hell. SHIT!!

Racism 2.0

Racism 2.0 - the position of privilege

Although this story is not at first glance about race, if we dig deeper it is. I do not hesitate the to repeat what others have said that if this rapist were a young black man he would be serving many years in prison regardless of any heartfelt comments from his dad. This story is a perfect example of how a white boy who excels in a white court was given a sentence fro rape that is so lenient that it would be laughable if it weren't so appalling. The boys father made comments about how his son should not suffer a lifetime for a bad decision that lasted twenty mins. What about the lifetime of mental anguish that the young woman will suffer that will never heal. The father asks us to feel sympathy for his son who no longer enjoys his food as he once did, what about the young woman who will never benefit from the touch of another man with the same sense of security and safety?

I here the comment often where some will say about an African American that they are playing the black card. Why would someone want to play this so called black card? Nobody ever gives an African American person any sympathy because they are black, and I find it very offensive to insinuate that anyone would try. A black man is only playing the cards he has been dealt from an incredibly stacked deck. This story is a perfect example of playing the white card, and it sucks.

The fact that racism is alive today and is being fed every day with the fear and ignorance of people who should know better. Donald Trump's whole political campaign is built upon racism. Racism is bred by fear, and Trump is feeding off of peoples fears. Racism breeds fear in everyone the black man fears how he will be treated, and I know I fear weather I will come off as a racist whenever discussing the topic of racism. Although I am a white man, I don't come from privilege I have more than your average black man or women. I fear that without meaning to I will be unsympathetic to their struggle or offend in y attempt to relate. That's what keeps the subject of racism alive, the fear of being branded a racist. 

Facebook Final.

My Facebook campaign was to take over my wife's Facebook page Felons Can Vote in Utah, which she started last semester for her senior capstone. My wife's intentions with this page were to make it more well known that felons do have the right to and can vote in the state of Utah. Initially, when the page started, it was her goal to monitor the public opinion of this rule as well as getting the message out there and to raise voter awareness. It was my goal to not only continue her work but to hopefully improve upon what she had already started, a grand expectation to say the least. If any of you know my wife, you understand what I mean when I say that the bar she set is one that is high indeed.

Our target audience were as the name denotes felons in Utah, relatives, and friends of felons. The range being these types of people ages 18+ men and women alike

This graph shows that our page had relativly equal reach in regards to men and woman and the most reach was with those between the ages of 25 - 34. This likely due to the way in which we first targeted our audience, my wife and I both invited our entire friend list to like the page. I also took copies of flyers that my wife had made for her project promoting the page and placed them in law enforcement agencies lobbies like probation offices and drug testing centers and the St. George police department.

This graph shows were the people who like my page live. Most in St, George and Cedar City. The rest spread out throughout Utah.
It also shows the language spoke by my audience, mostly US English,  two speak the UK English and one French speaker.







When I took over the page my wife and gotten around 110 likes, today I have 142 likes

I generated content by looking on the internet for related articles or videos explaining voting rules. I got a lot of subject matter from the Sentencing Project and youtube.

Around Feb 3rd, my page received 13 likes the second most likes at one time since I have taken over. The most likes I received at one time were the week of the caucuses in St George. I put it a lot of work at this time and posted links on how to find where to find your caucus as well as more videos from youtube explaining what a caucus is. I found some funny cartoon-like videos and these generated the most views and likes.

This graph shows what post created more engagement, meaning likes, impressions, and clicks on links to other complimenting sites.

My page like were equally spread between the page itself, my post, and page suggestions

.My total reach for March 29th is shown here. The 29th is when I paid for an ad, and it shows.

Although I didn't always generate more likes, this graph is evidence that likes are not the only way to calculate whether my page was being seen. Post reach is the number of people that saw my post or were reached. I know that at times I reached a lot of people and other times not so much. Many elements factor into to this. Whether I reshared my post on my page or if others did. If I reshared my post and commented on it myself, it reached more. 

Paying for an ad doubled my range and generated more views, I didn't get a lot of likes from my ad, and I understand that is due to not enough engaging content.

I didn't get a whole lot of actions taken by others on my page, and this is due to how entertaining and informative my content was. Sometimes it got a great reaction and other times none at all.

This last graph shows how people found my page, whether from Facebook itself or other servers, bing in my case it appears was used to navigate to my page.

MY  campaign plan was to use the internet to generate content designed to draws viewers to my page, once on my page I would use that platform to help raise voter awareness and contribute to educating citizens in the process. I intended to use youtube to cross to promote my page by creating a youtube channel. On this channel, I would share videos I had created personally describing the voting process as well as some of the harder to understand ins and out of voting. I placed banners around town promoting my page. During the recent caucuses in town, I had the most engagement and the traffic on my page.

I believe I had an ok campaign plan and a lot of good intentions. However, I did not put into my campaign enough to help it grow much at all and feel that had the foundation not already been set it would have been entirely unsuccessful. I never did post the videos that I had begun making for the youtube channel, had I done so I think that it would have been significantly more successful. If I had shared more on a personal level or put more of a personal face in what I was trying to accomplish, I would have reached more and created more of a reason for others to engage with my page. My page lacked a real reason for others to spend much time if any to visit. In the end, it did not have a lot of conviction at times. Esentially my page mirrored my conviction in the cause. In the future, I would educate myself more in my cause before I venture to gather others to it. I don't feel it was a complete loss or failure, but I defiantly needed to be more engaged myself to engage others.

My ad was approved. YAY!

 I created a facebook ad to promote my page, we will have to check back and see.
I chose as many options that closely related to my subject to get the most engagement.
This is the second ad I have made and I will say facebook has nade it fairly simple and it has been updated since the last time I used it and only gotten better.

My target area

How much $ do I want to give Facebook

Since my page is about voting in Utah I chose to focus on Utah as my target area, makes sense right.

I am actually really interested to see if I get more engagement with this ad so, I did pay to have it ran for a few days. I will post again about the conclusion.

Automatic Attitudinal Response.

Automatic Attitudinal Response.

The first thing that came to mind when this assignment was given was the upcoming elections looming over us. The unfortunate realism is that we just do not have the greatest of candidates from which we must choose. That opinion itself is the epitome of an automatic attitudinal response. I,  don't always view politicians with excitement, so when politics or politicians are mentioned I automatically groan, at least inwardly.  The funny part is, my Facebook page's entire platform is based on getting others to care about their responsibility to vote. So, I figured I better make a better effort in caring who and what I'm voting for.

My wife supports Bernie Sanders, and I follow Mckade's page, which does the same.  I was defaulting to the same opinion about Sanders without knowing enough to actually make an informed decision-good job McKade. I was beginning to share any positive message or video I came across about Sanders, especially with my wife, and although being on the same political path as Holly defiantly wouldnt hurt our happiness at home, my support for  Sanders was not my own. I did not at the time know anything about Sanders or his platform, leaving me unable to make a reasonably informed decision. My automatic response was just to like what my wife and others around me liked because that is what I've been hearing about for so long. At the onset of this assignment, I chose to take the time and look at each candidate deeper, as opposed to the surface look that other's social media memes will give. This more familiar look at each candidate has allowed me to more effectivly run my facebook page as well as enabled me to vote more responsibly come November.

Raising Voter Awareness

https://www.facebook.com/felonsvoteutah/
My wife told me she was holding back emotionally. She said that she could have invested more, and she was a little disappointed. Then, she left me her Facebook page.

My wife's senior capstone reflected her passion for acceptance, change and an inherent belief that people can do great things whatever their origin story may be. I am more skeptical, but I was willing to buy into her belief that civic involvement encourages connection which in turn promotes personal growth.