Assignment 1 … Live blog post: 1,250 words 

Contents

• Introduction. 2
• WordPress. 2
• Affordances. 4
• Link Between Social Media and the World (communication strategies, social media politics & regulations, and impact ). 5
• Conclusion. 6
• References. 7

Introduction

This short essay will take the reader through an open thought journey, of an educator’s dilemma in marketing the “to be learned intangible piece of knowledge”. The Discussion will display the educator’s dilemma, while attempting to go public, participate in communal sharing, compete online, and find a spot in the cyber world to talk “education”, to a generation that will live in the future. This discussion will reflect on WordPress as the technology tool, using stakeholder’s communication strategies, social media politics & regulations, and to the future impact of such “marketing – teaching & learning” combo. The essay will start with an introduction to WordPress, followed by a discussion about the emerging image new forms of stakeholders engagement, then the concept of social media affordances will be argued within the context of a social participative way of learning for the desired impact.

WordPress

WordPress is a site that provides free published blogs, operated by content management systems, with templates, themes, and plugins. It is suitable teaching tool, because it facilitates an online “learning Management System (LMS)”.  Many security issues have been encountered with the website when it was first founded in 2003, that made it vulnerable to users. Yet, the security was optimized over the years to be protected with search engine optimization (SEO) tools, Canvas Security System, affiliation to Amazon website, and authorized by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR is a cyber data security system applied in Europe and countries that complies with European laws. Affiliation with Amazon and serving under the umbrella of GDPR gave the website a customer trust-based reciprocity, a legal existence, and maintained hierarchical authority.

In such setting, the product is “knowledge”, the customer is “a future entity”, and the management is virtual that is absent from the direct seen. A unique emerging image of business, in which the intangible product of knowledge will grow in the world of the learner upon use, influence social interactions, impact economy & politics, and become materialized (Adler, 2001). Also, the uniqueness of such a business model is what (Freeman, 2009) explained, a business with Nobel goals, that targets to make the world a better place, by creating values for another group of stakeholders, who are unknow to the business owner. Therefore, the management of communication of stakeholders is different, it is no more about changing the business plan to meet their interest, however the strategy emerged, is changing the story of business to suit the global community of stakeholders. Accordingly, the major link between the business sector and the customers is the globalization of code (Boredpanda.com, 2020), and in the language codes by which the message is designed (Halpern, Valenzuela and E Katz, 2017).

WordPress, has dealt with this concept through providing readymade teaching designs. Moreover, for a “cling” and “hook” in the message to the virtual customers, (Wenger, 1998:4) proposed three elements for a meaningful interactive coherence: mutual engagement to define a shared identity, joint enterprise via hashtags and emojis to give vitality, and a shared collection of tools, resources and standards; WordPress also provides a set of plugins as displayed in this video, to enhance spread of content.

Furthermore, WordPress has left space for choice of the previously discussed concepts of codesign, globalization of code, language codes and message design. This is to allow the virtual blog designer to consider self-oriented media impacting tools, from the owner’s perspective, which is thought to prepare digital environment to be a “homepage” for the customer.

Affordances

Affordances will consider the psychological impact on stakeholders’ relations by which the common desired emotions, designs, interests, and outcome are recruited. They’re used to direct the user’s attention to a desired outcome planned by the hosting website. Consequently, the actions of the designer of the blog are directed accordingly. Affordances are explained in the video below.

Affordances

From another point, scholars identified affordances as manipulators. Globalization of thoughts became a target of many politically oriented website hosts as symbolized in Figure 1.

In the era of technology control, the perception of affordances is identified as impact. (Wenger, 1998:4), quoted (Fowler and Mayes, 1999, p. 7) explaining that professional learning and development are about communities of practice, involvement, and participation of identities. Manipulation is happening anyway, as we all strive to participate in the cyber world.  However, to redesign the through of the designer or the consumer from manipulation to impact, the outcome will be more likely accepted. (Wenger, 1998:4) quoted (Efimova et al., 2005), to explain how a series of interlinked weblog posts and comments on a specific topic, emojis, and reflections buttons, create a narrative rhythm, pattern and linking practices of members. Wenger affirms how these practices support a basic content analysis to the participants, thus supports, and sustains stakeholder’s communication. It is not manipulation in its unpleasant meaning. It is an emergent meaning of a social participative way of learning, developed within a situated learning environment. An example of participative way of learning WordPress provides tens of teaching models to support the WordPress user enhance the desired outcome (explore).

Link Between Social Media and the World

In conventional business model, dialogue is introductory to the vital discussion session where decisions are made based upon its outcome. Politics, culture, and community practices where managed through the organizational policies. However, in the new emerging form of social media online business, dialogue occupies more space. The clear set boundaries became vague (Freeman 2009), with more freedom to bring the political, cultural and community views to the platform. This in turn, feeds a minimized discussion, through virtual Q & A, notifications, and comment. The decision-making process is then a matter of analysis and conclusions based on the interactive reflections on the post. (Johansson, 2020) elaborated on this shift with focus on the strategies required to sustain the emerging business form. He put the performance indicators as;  the number of people who learn message content (measured through , number of people who change opinions, number of people who change attitudes , number of people who behave in the desired fashion, and / or number of people who repeat or sustain desired behavior.

Johansson cited (Sundar, 2008), who explained how these number of people will raise or drop based on achieving a higher sense of personal empowerment by assuming a “forwarder” of information role, or assuming a “helper in teaching the information role”. Thus, when people provide information to others, they boost their confidence in dealing with issues, which again suggests an increase in their efficacy on cultural, political, economic and interactive communication (Johansson, 2020). In this regard, WordPress provides instant analytics of interactive moments, numbers of all types of responses as in like, comments notifications … etc as in here.

Conclusion

To find a way through all these challenges and reach a mass audience, is obviously not an easy task. Mass audiences, mass markets and mass media have been artificially created and largely illusory groupings of people (Macnamara, 2008). Therefore, taking attention of audience require creative in what is provided on the blog.  Using provided templates will certainly become ineffective with time. Accordingly, with emergent media business, here comes the Attention Economy business. Maybe the next teaching blog should focus on buying attention strategies, for more resilient aspects of social structure. Eventually, designing a mutual interest embedded in trendy attractions.  Will virtual interactions ever replace reality, specifically in teaching and learning? What about small ages, will social skills be acquired effectively? On an economic scale, will revenues of selling intangible products match? Will owners of competitive market preferences, be involved in a less economic value project, and accept a paradigm shifts in desired outcomes from profit to social values?

I understand that the disadvantaged will accept this shift out of need, but what is in the “need” of an owner with a high market position to accept undertaking such a shift? 

References

• Adler P., 2001. Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism. Organization Science, 12(2), pp.215-234.
• Benkler, Y., & Nissenbaum, H. (2006). Commons‐based peer production and virtue. Journal of Political Philosophy, 14(4), 394-419.
• Bonney, V., 2018. How Social Media Is Shaping Our Political Future | Victoria Bonney | Tedxdirigo. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kd99IIWJUw&gt; [Accessed 11 August 2020].
• Boredpanda.com, 2020. Globalization Of Thoughts. [image] Available at: <https://www.pinterest.com/pin/591660469782583859/&gt; [Accessed 15 August 2020].
• Brewer, K., 2020. It’s Not Manipulation, It’s Strategic Communication | Keisha Brewer | Tedxgeorgetown. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGeHS4jO0X0&gt; [Accessed 13 August 2020].

• Castells, M. (2013). Communication power. OUP Oxford. Castells and the network society. (2016). YouTube, Introduction to sociology. Retrieved 8 July 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=tLF5J8Y5zyg&feature=emb_logo&gt;

• Edorra, M., https://www.totalbusinessmarketing.com/, 2020. Social Media Management: Exactly How It All Works – Insider Secrets. [image] Available at: <https://youtu.be/rA178bYZCrA&gt; [Accessed 17 August 2020]. (https://www.totalbusinessmarketing.com/, 2020)

•  Freeman, R., 2009. 13- Stakeholder Theory. Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih5IBe1cnQw&gt; [Accessed 14 August 2020]. (Freeman, 2009)

• Guido Migliaccio, 2019. “Disabled People in the Stakeholder Theory: a Literature Analysis,” Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(4), pages 1657-1678, December.

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(Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS – WordPress, 2020)