Today I would like to talk of how “Citizen Journalism” could also be changed and evaluated as “Citizen Marketing” through Twitter. I believe that the same concept can be seen through people interacting on Twitter. Specifically I believe that live tweeting, and trending topics can be seen as user generated advertising where the consumers are no longer just the consumers, but also in part the contributors as well. This idea will also tie twitter into participatory culture as well.
To begin I would like to define what it means exactly to have “Citizen Journalism”, or “Citizen Marketing” in my case. Anything that uses the prefix of “Citizen” means that it is user generated. It means that citizens are playing the roles that many of the people in this field would normally be playing. For example, Marketing specialists find ways to appeal to different audiences and market a product or whatever they are marketing for toward their audience. Now, the consumers are also the contributors or producers in this sense when it comes to things such as live tweeting. Twitter, and live tweeting is now a large way in which the consumers can become the people who are out promoting different things like shows, albums, games, and almost anything that you can think of. We are becoming the “Citizen Marketers” for these companies, and essentially doing the job that these people are being paid to do by large companies. I want to evaluate the political campaign industries, and how twitter is used as a way for the target audience to also become the contributors to marketing.
My example is the use of tweeting for presidential campaigns. Much of the marketing now for presidential candidates is done through social media. A prime example is the uses of live tweeting during presidential debates in the United States. During the 2012 campaign there were over 181,700 tweets sent out through twitter users about the 2012 debates. (McKinney, 2013, pg. 552) These tweets allow the users of the twitter universe to become the producers of knowledge, and use their own opinions to potentially “influence the framing of what occurred”. (McKinney, 2013, pg. 552) This is an example of how citizens are able to do their own marketing and promoting of their choice of presidential candidates through twitter. Twitter has given the opportunity for people to take what marketing specialists would do, and become contributors to whatever they want; even presidential candidates in my example.
According to research by the Social Science Computer Review elite members on facebook use non-elite members in order to spread their tweets. The 2012 election in the United States was a prime example of how twitter can be used to encourage “citizen marketing”. Through hastags and retweets the presidential candidates were able to send their messages to their followers, and then the non-elites were able to retweet, and spread the words of the presidential candidates to all of their followers as well. In a study by Golbeck et al, it was found that congressmen were using twitter in order to disseminate information, which would then be retweeted and passed on from their followers to other’s followers. Thus, growing the audience very immensely and rapidly. (Golbeck, 2010) This is how just normal citizens are able to just spread their views, and promote the political figures that they support. Through twitter we are able to promote our feelings and opinions to a larger audience. Political campaigns utilize this by sending out these tweets that are going to be seen by millions of people around the world because of these connections that link all of these people together. So, this is allowing every day citizens to be able to take part in the campaign, and the marketing for that campaign like never before. The citizens are one of the most important and most influential people in these campaigns.
References
Golbeck, J., Grimes, J. and Rogers, A. (2010). Twitter use by the US Congress. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61 (8), pp. 1612–1621.
Hawthorne, J., Houston, J. and Mckinney, M. (2013). Live-Tweeting a Presidential Primary Debate: Exploring New Political Conversations. Social Science Computer Review.
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