Identify the risks and benefits of engaging with a public audience in a media space – what are the risks for a public figure or person in a position of trust (educator, lawyer, government official)?
There are both advantages and risks when a public figure interacts with people in media. The best benefit of interacting with media is they can increase their sense of trust between the people and the public figure, make more connections and reach more and more people with growing technology. Making such connections for public figures is a very crucial aspect as their industry connections may benefit them in the future. Jody Vance points this out in her interview on how building trust and meaningful connections led her to grow in her career. Lot more people start trusting you and your ideas in such a way. In this way, many public figures also run successful events and campaigns. With all of these advantages, there are always lots of risks as well. Anything a public figure or a person in position of trust posts or says in media space can be easily manipulated and/or understood in a different context by the population which can create chaos and negative following for the public figures. This gets more complicated if politics is involved which then takes the matter to a national or sometimes even international level. And it is very difficult to remove this digital identity that is created online. Hence, I believe that being a public figure brings on lots of benefits with as many risks too if one is not honest and portrays themselves different than they are.
How to best address negative replies and critiques reflective of your personal values and employer social media policy?
Criticism is a part of being out there in the media world. Not everyone will be supporting an idea always, there’s always going to be negative views and replies. In such an event, one should be very much aware of such setback and as Jody Vance says in her interview – prepare yourself for such setback and criticism. Everyone has a different opinion of everything and there is no point to argue over it. As long as one is true to themselves, you will be ready for whatever comes ahead in the career. It is very difficult to ignore the negative replies but once you have done it, you are growing in your career a lot faster.
How do notable individuals use social media?
Social media has grown exponentially over the last decade and is still growing a lot. Its become a very fluid tool where people use it for a lot of things. Notable individuals use a lot of normal social media like us for a lot of different reasons like socializing with their colleagues and friends, professional use, for playing games, for entertainment, keeping up with the current trends in the world, etc.
What are the benefits of being in the public eye and having a PLN?
There are lots of benefits of being in a public eye. I believe the most important one is that it helps to grow your career and provides more opportunities to showcase your work and ideas. A strong PLN in the public eye encourages others to connect with you and helps everyone diversify their PLN. Having a public PLN is great for marketing reasons and also for individuals who want the world to know them for their work. Prime examples of PLNs in the public eye can be seen on Instagram where influencers showcase their talents and thoughts to the world and grow their career.
Building community wth online tools provided by the employer can be limiting, what are the perceived restrictions and benefits?
Online tools provided by the employer come with great benefits but with even greater risks. This is because when building community with the employer tools, you are representing your company first and then yourself. This is beneficial because you can grow a very strong community depending on your company’s reputation and reach but also provides your community with a sense of trust related to you and the company. However, this can limit a lot of things that can usually be done by normal online tools not associated with the company. Employees have to be very careful in what they say with these tools as everything is monitored closely by the employer and this puts a risk on their career with the company as well. This is why the online tools provided by employers need to be very secure and be able to catch these things beforehand.
Delivering information in a connected society requires verifiable resources, how to build a PLN to rely on?
It is very crucial to have verifiable resources to deliver information in a PLN. It’s important for everyone to trust the PLN and that’s done using verifiable resources to build up credibility. This credibility and trustworthiness you build help you strengthen your PLN and grow yourself.
How do those, who are veteran storytellers, minimize risk in sharing information?
It’s important for veteran storytellers to not share a lot of information not supposed to be out there in their stories. The way they can minimize these risks is to tell the story in a way that’s more personal to them, their view of the events about them. In this way, they don’t risk sharing any information which they shouldn’t.
Attributions
Cover photo by Emile Guillemot on Unsplash
References
Miller, Jesse. (2021, June 6). Jody Vance – Media Voices. YouTube.
1 Comment
I quite agree with you. I think there should not be too much idea when veteran storytellers share information. They should avoid using too absolute words, which may give others an excessive guidance.