Missy's Media Adventures

 Digital badges offer a way to gamify learning. Everyone is looking for a way to make learning more interesting and increase engagement, and badges offer a 'concrete' incentive to do so. Most of the time, these badges have no bearing outside the context of the community that implements them, but that doesn't diminish the desire to achieve them.  Personally, I see badges in two main formats online: in Reddit and Facebook. Facebook communities can use "Top Fan" badges to notate who engages the most. Reddit can create different 'flairs' for users based on what kind of contributions they make. I have had a 'Top Fan' badge once, when I was liking a lot of a community's content. I don't think I currently have any other badges of note.  Ultimately, I can some up the reading with this: Wanna increase your engagement in a low cost way? Create badges for users to earn. 

 As part of this class, I started renewing my personal interest in Reddit. I started noticing some of the subreddits I was interested in announcing that they were 'going dark' as a boycott. I wasn't sure what exactly that meant, so I did a bit of reading.  Reddit is charging 3rd party apps a higher fee (I believe), and this creates a few barriers. Moderators will find their jobs more difficult, as they rely on certain apps to be able to do the moderating more easily. Second, some people use the third party apps to be able to access content at all for services such as screen reading. This is a huge issue for people who need those items to be able to consume media.  "Going dark" means the subreddit went private and people cannot browse it on their own. I did not know this was possible. Some are doing this short term, and others are doing it more long term.  I find this interesting as people are joining together to protest their disappointment by taking away the plat

 I went viral! Okay, my sister went viral but I was in it... Okay really, it was a TikTok she made with 750 views so not really 'viral'. It felt viral to me.  It's amazing what she did for this TikTok though. All I said to her was "I have a song stuck in my head, and this is all I remember". Next thing I know she was recording me, posting, and hashtagging the video with #WhatSongIsThis. We had the answer within 2 hours. (For those playing along at home: The band was popular in the 80s),  It's amazing, just by including the hashtag, our reach became so much larger, reaching many more people. Never again will I have a song stuck in my head that I can't remember - I'll just leverage the community of #WhatSongIsThis and be able to find my answer.  As a last note, my favorite comment on our TikTok came from Samantha Vogel: "I needed this laugh thank you. [cry laughing emoji]" I felt ridiculous in the moment, but somehow other's enjoying it mad

 I'm a lurker. There I said it. I will read and read what people post, but I have a tendency to not say too much for fear my input does not have value in a given space. It's much easier to answer a call to action or question than to find the right question or string the right words together that might provide meaning to someone else.  What value do lurkers provide in a space? Even though I am one, I would have to argue not much. We don't continue to build the community, but are usually the silent majority. John Summers breaks down strategies to help engage lurkers, and I can sum up his recommendations as creating personal invites. This breaks down the barrier to post that I find exists and offers me a way to begin to engage.  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lurkers-online-communities-benefits-downfalls-john-summers/

 This week I worked on continuing to build my LinkedIn community. When I first made it last year, I had approximately 3 connections. I was a teacher, and most of my coworkers did not heavily use LinkedIn (if they did at all)!  Having left teaching, I now have 200+ coworkers in the corporate sector that I am working on connecting with. I explored those I knew personally and began engaging with these profiles. I also worked on joining a few groups and following some pages that brought interest to me.  As I connected with people, it expanded my scope and I found other pages they were interested in that I thought might bring value to my sphere. I was surprised to see connections between people I knew that I wasn't aware knew each other.  How do you work on approaching people on LinkedIn? Who do you connect with? My profile link for anyone who would like to join me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/missy-meza-053941158/ 

 I read an interesting article this week, " You should have been there, man: Live music, DIY content and online communities" by Jessa Lingel and Mor Naaman.  In summary, the article explores how people record concerts, what parts of concerts they record, and where these concerts are posted. This article is from 2011 and I find that some of their findings still hold true today. The key takeaways were: 1. Balancing inhibited present (by recording) for future gains (reliving recorded content) 2. Replication of attendance 3. Provide a point of contacts between fans I have been to two concerts in the last 2 months, and I had truly different experiences at both of them. The first concert was in April, where I attended the Taylor Swift concert in Tampa. Here, I did not record any videos save for the first 2 minutes and last 2 minutes of the entire show. I knew that the 'future gains' for myself did not outweigh the cost of recording in the moment. Other fans disagree - there