Mediaboss Marketing

Social media platforms are where billions of people around the world go to connect with others, get information and make sense of the world. These companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and Reddit, collect vast amounts of data based on every interaction that takes place on their platforms.

And despite the fact that social media has become one of our most important public forums for speech, several of the most important platforms are controlled by a small number of people. Mark Zuckerberg controls 58% of the voting share of Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, effectively giving him sole control of two of the largest social platforms. Now that Twitters board has accepted Elon Musks $44 billion offer to take the company private, that platform will likewise soon be under the control of a single person. All these companies have a history of sharing scant portions of data about their platforms with researchers, preventing us from understanding the impacts of social media to individuals and society. Such singular ownership of the three most powerful social media platforms makes us fear this lockdown on data sharing will continue.

After two decades of little regulation, it is time to require more transparency from social media companies.

In 2020, social media was an important mechanism for the spread of false and misleading claims about the election, and for mobilization by groups that participated in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. We have seen misinformation about COVID-19 spread widely online during the pandemic. And today, social media companies are failing to remove the Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine that they promised to ban. Social media has become an important conduit for the spread of false information about every issue of concern to society. We dont know what the next crisis will be, but we do know that false claims about it will circulate on these platforms.

Unfortunately, social media companies are stingy about releasing data and publishing research, especially when the findings might be unwelcome (though notable exceptions exist). The only way to understand what is happening on the platforms is for lawmakers and regulators to require social media companies to release data to independent researchers. In particular, we need access to data on the structures of social media, like platform features and algorithms, so we can better analyze how they shape the spread of information and affect user behavior.

For example, platforms have assured legislators that they are taking steps to counter mis/disinformation by flagging content and inserting fact-checks. Are these efforts effective? Again, we would need access to data to know. Without better data, we cant have a substantive discussion about which interventions are most effective and consistent with our values. We also run the risk of creating new laws and regulations that do not adequately address harms, or of inadvertently making problems worse.

Some of us have consulted with lawmakers in the United States and Europe on potential legislative reforms like these. The conversation around transparency and accountability for social media companies has grown deeper and more substantive, moving from vague generalities to specific proposals. However, the debate still lacks important context. Lawmakers and regulators frequently ask us to better explain why we need access to data, what research it would enable and how that research would help the public and inform regulation of social media platforms.

To address this need, weve created this list of questions we could answer if social media companies began to share more of the data they gather about how their services function and how users interact with their systems. We believe such research would help platforms develop better, safer systems, and also inform lawmakers and regulators who seek to hold platforms accountable for the promises they make to the public.

Social media companies ought to welcome the help of independent researchers to better measure online harm and inform policies. Some companies, such as Twitter and Reddit, have been helpful, but we cant depend on the goodwill of a few companies, whose policies might change at the whim of a new owner. We hope a Musk-led Twitter will be as forthcoming as before, if not moreso. In our fast-changing information environment, we should not regulate and legislate by anecdote. We need lawmakers to ensure our access to the data we need to help keep users safe.

Link:
Its Time to Open the Black Box of Social Media - Scientific American

Major luxury goods mall Beijing SKP, pictured here in 2021, said Friday it would close with no reopening date specified after the city confirmed three Covid cases in an apartment community nearby.

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BEIJING China showed few signs of loosening its zero-Covid control policies as the country continued to battle its worst outbreak in two years.

Some businesses have resumed production in Shanghai and northern China. But the capital city of Beijing temporarily closed Friday a large luxury mall and non-essential businesses in one area to control an ongoing spike in cases stemming from the highly transmissible omicron variant.

China's top leaders said at a meeting Friday that Covid and the Ukraine crisis have increased challenges and uncertainties for the domestic economy, according to state media. Chinese President Xi Jinping headed the economic meeting, held regularly with China's leadership, known as the Politburo.

The leaders noted the mutation's new characteristics and said the country should stick to its "dynamic zero-Covid policy," state media said.

That implies the Covid policy will not ease in the near term, said Bruce Pang, head of macro and strategy research at China Renaissance. He said the meeting reflects how headwinds for growth are stronger than previously expected, and noted leaders called for more policy support in order for China to achieve its GDP target of around 5.5%.

Many investment banks have cut their China GDP forecast, one as low as 3.9%, in the wake of new Covid cases and controls.

Mainland China reported more than 5,600 new confirmed Covid cases with symptoms for Thursday, with the majority resulting from cases in Shanghai that had previously showed no symptoms.

The southeastern metropolis, home to the world's busiest port, has kept residents mostly in lockdown for more than a month in an attempt to control the local outbreak. Other parts of the country, including Beijing, have locked down neighborhoods, conducted mass virus tests and restricted travel in an attempt to control new spikes in cases.

Beijing reported two new Covid cases without symptoms and 47 with symptoms similar to the daily count for much of the last week. More than 15 other province-level regions reported new cases, including the export-heavy Shandong, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.

Specific virus control measures may "sacrifice" the convenience of life for some regions and people, affecting the economy in the short term for some localities, Liang Wannian, head of the Covid response expert group under the National Health Commission, said at a press conference Friday.

But that will allow the largest area and number of people to work and live normally, for a cost-effective balance, he said.

Liang on Friday described the virus situation in Shanghai and Beijing as seeing significant improvement. He said the dynamic zero Covid policy does not mean zero infections, as variants such as omicron mean authorities cannot ensure that no single case appears.

Shanghai has tried to allow some major businesses to resume production by releasing a list about two weeks ago with 666 companies that could get priority for restarting work.

Just over a third, or 247, of the companies are foreign-funded businesses, the Ministry of Commerce said Thursday.

German automaker Volkswagen and U.S. electric car company Tesla have resumed production, the ministry said, noting other foreign businesses have applied to join the second batch of whitelisted companies. The ministry said it would make every effort to ensure resumption of work.

Changchun city in the northern province of Jilin began resuming normal operations Thursday after weeks of lockdown, according to an official announcement.

Getting truck shipments between ports and factories remains a challenge.

Merchants have had to pay more for logistics costs now about 25% of selling prices, up from 15% or 20% at the start of the pandemic Diane Wang, founder and chairperson of Chinese e-commerce site DHgate, told CNBC on Thursday. The company primarily works with small Chinese companies selling abroad.

But with existing inventory, stay-home and lockdown orders would have to last for at least three months in order to really affect the businesses, she said.

Schools in Beijing closed Friday, beginning the upcoming Labor Day holiday one day earlier. The last day of the long-weekend holiday in China is Wednesday, May 4. Many of the Covid cases in the city in the last week have been traced to schools.

Major luxury goods mall Beijing SKP said Friday it would close with no reopening date specified after the city confirmed three Covid cases in an apartment community nearby. Beijing city government has claimed the department store's sales reached 17.7 billion yuan ($2.72 billion) in 2020 to rank first in the world.

State media said gyms, movie theaters and other non-essential businesses in the surrounding area would need to close, while the city conducted mass tests of residents and employees there through Tuesday, May 3. The report did not mention stay-home orders, but discouraged people from going out.

Nearby, in an area one subway stop south of the main business center, local authorities have extended a lockdown that began Monday until the upcoming Tuesday, May 3. Authorities also expanded the scope of the lockdown area slightly to the south.

The affected areas above are in Beijing's main business district that began three days of mass testing on Monday.

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Chinese leaders stick to Covid controls as the virus spreads and forces a Beijing luxury mall to close temporarily - CNBC

Digital marketing technologies and their ecosystems have dominated growth in marketing budgets for over a decade. As consumers have shifted their attention from stationary media to perpetual media on the go, traditional advertising lost some of its appeal. In turn, marketers pivoted investments from television, radio, newspaper, events, and outdoor advertising to digital channels, from TikTok to TechTarget.

For the last decade, marketers have consistently predicted that their traditional advertising spending would decline. According to data from the 28th Edition of The CMO Survey, on average, marketers reported an annual decrease in traditional advertising spending of -1.4% between February 2012 and 2022, compared to an annual increase of 7.8% for overall marketing budgets during this same period.

However, recent evidence suggests that a shift is underway. In contrast to the historical trend, in August 2021 and February 2022, marketers predicted that traditional advertising spending would increase by 1.4% and 2.9%, respectively.

Consumer-facing companies are leading the shift, with B2C service companies predicting the largest increase in traditional advertising spending (+10.2%), followed by B2C product companies (+4.9%). Further, and somewhat ironically, companies that earn 100% of their sales through the internet are leading this inflection predicting an 11.7% increase in traditional advertising spending over the next 12 months.

So, why is traditional advertising on the rise, and will the trend continue? We see seven drivers behind the shift.

As consumers are spending most of their waking hours online, it seems they are becoming increasingly numb to conventional digital advertising and engagement. They report frustration and negative brand association with digital advertising clutter that prevents them from reading an article, watching a video, or browsing a website. For example, a HubSpot survey found that 57% of participants disliked ads that played before a video and 43% didnt even watch them. As a result, marketers are looking for a way to cut through the noise.

Traditional ads, on the other hand, are experiencing increased engagement. MarketingSherpa reports that more than half of consumers often or always watch traditional television advertisements and read print advertisements that they receive in the mail from companies they are satisfied with. Indeed, research by Ebiquity suggests that traditional media channels led by TV, radio, and print outperform digital channels in terms of reach, attention, and engagement relative to costs. This performance differential is amplified as costs of online advertising have increased, especially when accounting for impression, click, and conversion fraud whereas the costs of traditional media have fallen. It simply makes good economic sense to rebalance spending away from digital clutter.

The same MarketingSherpa survey found that the top five most trusted advertising formats are all traditional, with customers trusting most print advertising (82%), television advertising (80%), direct mail advertising (76%), and radio advertising (71%) to make purchasing decisions. Similarly, it found that British and American consumers trust traditional advertising such as television, radio, and print more than social media advertising. As a result, marketers can use traditional advertising to build brand credibility and trust with jaded buyers.

For years, marketers have relied on third-party cookies to track website visitors, using detailed data on their search preferences to improve the user experience and target consumers with personalized ad experiences. However, with Google phasing out the third-party cookie on Chrome browsers by late 2023 and Apple implementing changes to its iOS14 operating system, the death of third-party cookies is imminent. The CMO Survey found that 19.8% of companies invested more in traditional advertising (outside of online approaches) as a result.

Because of this inevitable change to the advertising landscape, marketers will be forced to rely on segmentation methods that hew closer to traditional advertising models. Without advanced data-driven targeting, marketers will need to refocus on extending their reach.

Podcasts are a form of digital media. However, unlike banner, display, and other social advertisements that often appear within consumers everyday browsing, podcasts use an on-demand approach that is more similar to traditional radio. And this is one reason advertising succeeds. According to Ads Wizz, Podcasts saw a 51% increase in available inventory, a 53% increase in new podcasts, and an 81% increase in podcast ad impressions.

In addition to reaching over 100 million monthly listeners, podcast ads are effective because listeners trust their podcast hosts and are genuinely influenced by their endorsements. In fact, Edison Researchs Super Listeners 2020 study found that 45% of podcast listeners believe the hosts of their favorite podcasts actually use the brands mentioned on their shows. According to the same study, almost half of podcast listeners pay more attention to podcast advertisements than those of any other format. Given the match of target market to podcast content, podcasting has proven to be an effective way to get a companys brand in front of a well-suited and attentive audience.

Digital technology can leverage traditional tools in powerful and surprising ways. For example, who would have thought that direct mail would be resurrected? Thats exactly what happened when mailers are paired with a QR code that consumers can scan to learn more. Furthermore, as Madison Taylor Marketing shares, unique URLs and QR codes allow marketers to gather extremely granular data, permitting them to develop robust marketing analytics regarding ROI and attribution, and eroding the advantage of digital channels.

Marketing is an art and a science of contingencies and context. This means that sometimes traditional advertising is a perfect fit for some brands, markets, and messages. For example, broadcast TV continues to offer an ideal platform for emotional storytelling ads, such as the clever Welcome Back Guinness ad that marked the reopening of pubs and restaurants following the Covid-19 lockdown. New addressable TV solutions, such as by Finecast, now enable advertisers to precision target viewer segments across on-demand and live-streamed TV, thereby eroding the targeting advantage of online channels.

The CMO Survey showed that 54.8% of marketers track digital marketing performance in real time, with an additional 35.2% doing so quarterly or weekly. At the same time, marketers are also becoming skeptical of the hyped returns of digital media, because the platforms control both the advertising inventory and its effectiveness measurement. This has raised credibility concerns related to ad fraud and the worry that digital advertising may be far less effective than reported.

The digital promise of hyper-targeting and personalization is also under scrutiny. For example, recent academic research by Jing Li and colleagues published in the Journal of Marketing shows that retargeting can actually backfire if done too early. And research in computer science has shown that personalization can lead to consumer reactance, especially when consumers are unfamiliar with the brand. In short, marketers are learning that the advantages of digital media can be a double-edged sword and are becoming more cautious about blindly embracing it.

Pundits have long predicted the demise of traditional advertising. However, it is alive and well and headed for growth for the first time in a decade. When used together, traditional and digital marketing can reach more audiences, build and keep trust, and motivate buying from consumers who otherwise might tune out marketing messages.

More here:
Why Marketers Are Returning to Traditional Advertising - HBR.org Daily

The role, he said, has increasingly gotten him attention offscreen. He is regularly stopped on the street and recognized, particularly after Biden called him a stupid son of a b---- for asking if inflation was hurting his partys chances in the looming midterm elections.

Since then, hes been written about in the tabloids, and become a punching bag for late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert, who joked that the president should take a page out of Will Smiths playbook and slap the Fox News White House correspondent.

Im somebody that grew up watching presidents, watching late-night TV. So if I hear one of them referring to me in any way it is surreal, Doocy told Politico in an interview.

But if Doocy is the closest thing the Biden White House has to a high-profile antagonist, even his back-and-forths with the administration dont come close to the animosity on display between Trump and the assembled press corps, or the attention it generated. Doocy told Politico he has good relationships with the Biden communications office, who he talks to multiple times a day. He insists that he does not relish the chance to beef with the press secretary.

Earlier this month, Psaki was asked by former Obama communications official and current Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer whether Doocy really was a stupid son of a b----, or just plays one on TV?

Psaki replied by saying that Doocy works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a b----.

The exchange set off anger, including among Fox News personalities and executives, who said her comments were inappropriate. But they didnt seem to bother the Fox News correspondent himself. Doocy said that he had a private conversation with Psaki about her comments after the event, and told Politico that they were not mean-spirited.

I think thats a classic example of how stuff can be taken a little out of context, he said.

Excerpt from:
The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter - POLITICO

Sidechat is arguably the hottest online development to have struck Tufts campus this year. It is a smartphone application where users can post short messages and images completely anonymously in a domain accessible to anyone with an active Tufts email account.

On Sidechat, usernames do not exist. Other features include anonymous commenting, direct messaging between users and a system of points, known on Sidechat as karma. This feature tallies how many times a users posts or comments have been upvoted or downvoted: The karma level of an individual user can only be viewed by that user. The exception to this is a public leaderboard of the top ten levels of karma that users have reached none of which are attached to a name.

Sidechat was developed by the New York-based company Flower Ave Inc. The CEOs of Flower Ave Inc. declined the Dailys request for an interview.

Prithvi Shahani, a first-year in the School of Engineering, is an active Sidechat user and claims to hold one of the ten highest karma rankings at Tufts Sidechat at the time of his interview with the Daily.

Shahani estimated that Sidechat surfaced at Tufts at the beginning of the spring 2022 semester. He described how Tufts students have engaged with the platform.

I feel like its just a way for people to relate with their community and share funny memes that people at Tufts can relate to, or talk about whats currently going on, such as recently, some Senator visited, I believe, so everyone was like, Oh, my God, Elizabeth Warren was here, oh my God, she used the washroom in the Commons, Shahani said.

J.P. de Ruiter, a professor in the Computer Science and Psychology departments, shared his concerns with the applications anonymous feature, particularly as the lack of usernames on the platform disables users from verifying the continuity of the original participants.

Im a bit worried about [Sidechat] as a dialogue researcher because it does take away something extremely important in dialogue, which is coherence, de Ruiter said. Having no identity is something [different] than having anonymity. Anonymity is that there is an identity at the other end, but you dont know where they live, and how old they are, and how they look, but theres still a unique identity. Whereas [on Sidechat], you just also get rid of identity.

Shahani added that it can be difficult to determine whether the contents are credible in the first place.

Honestly, I just dont believe anything on the app Ill just assume everything on the apps a joke. That makes my life so much easier, Shahani said.

Samuel Sommers, professor and department chair of psychology, elaborated on the implications of Sidechats anonymity from a psychological perspective.

Being anonymous makes us feel less accountable to some of the social expectations and norms that otherwise govern our behavior. People put things online that they would never ever say to other people in regular conversations face-to-face, Sommers said.

Illustrating Sommers insight, de Ruiter cited the lyrics of Brad Paisleys Online (2007).

If you just look at the lyrics youll see its about a kind of a loser type sitting in [his parents basement]. But online, hes like a superstar with a Maserati and 17 girlfriends. Its really interesting how Brad Paisley sings about that, de Ruiter said. So [the song] suggests that there can be, of course, a very big difference between peoples online personality and real personality.

Overall, Shahani recalled that activity on Sidechat increased after the leaderboard was introduced around what he estimated to be late February to early March. He also noticed a general shift towards more discussion around controversial subject matters over time.

At the beginning, it was pretty much really basic things like campus happenings, but people started actually making memes for the app. But at the same time, people have also started [talking about] edgy, controversial topics on the app since its anonymous and it cant be linked to them, Shahani said. [Its] sometimes good to have that kind of discourse but at the same time, [its] sometimes bad since their opinions could be harmful to the community.

In light of this development, Sommers and de Ruiter underscored the salience of community standards and moderation for social media platforms such as Sidechat.

It does feel like things can deteriorate on anonymous message boards to the point where they have to be moderated or they have to have some community standards in place, Sommers said. The kinds of bullying and kinds of problematic commentary that maybe we as a community dont want to see [is] always going to be at risk [on anonymous platforms].

According to Shahani, it appears that Sidechat may hire students to act as moderators on the app. Shahani was reached out to by Sidechat to become a moderator himself. He was not interested in the role, however, and he subsequently declined the offer.

Shahani shared that he has been banned from Sidechat multiple times, ranging from about one hour to 48 hours. When users are banned from the platform, they can still access the app, upvote and downvote, but they cannot post or send direct messages, Shahani detailed.

Shahani shared his misgivings about the way moderation is carried out on Sidechat.

I feel like they selectively choose what content they want on the platform and thats a really dangerous game to play because that pretty much, could like control the narrative. For example, I believe [there] was some sort of conflict outside of Hodgdon like a week or two ago, and they were banning people left and right for that, Shahani said. Otherwise, if there were fights on the app, or people going full anti-masker back when [COVID-19] was extremely bad, they were cool with that kind of content. So, Im not really sure whats up with that.

Sidechat does indeed have community guidelines, yet the only way the Daily was able to access them was through a hyperlink buried in their terms of service.

Brian Schaffner, Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies, first heard about Sidechat through a Slack channel of current and former students from his Public Opinion Lab. Schaffner suspects that self-moderation might naturally take place on Sidechat because each unique user belongs to the same institution.

An app thats sort of specific to one university is likely, even if its anonymous, to be less problematic just because theres already a sense of community, like a sense of physical community here, Schaffner said.

Moving forward, Schaffner added that Sidechat has the potential to shape wider campus public opinion as the application continues to become more popular among Tufts students.

People probably go on [Sidechat] to feel some sense of validation, [which] can probably help to crystallize opinion, I guess, in a more aggregate way. I think that would have an effect on public opinion in a way that might matter beyond the app, Schaffner said.

As Sidechat is still in the early stages of development, its users are the primary determinants of the ways in which students will engage on the forum. Sommers underscored the responsibility of the applications users in this context.

What I would suggest is that if people feel like an anonymous platform like this is a useful part of the Tufts conversation, then, you know, use it for good, Sommers said. Im skeptical because sometimes these things dont go [in] that direction. But hopefully we can make the best of this platform while its around and have it be a plus for the university and not a source of stress or disparagement.

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The Sidechat storm: An anonymous social media application takes over Tufts campus - Tufts Daily