Day in the Life of Sofia

This week I have been thinking more about the design of my website. I have been questioning what I can do to attract more viewers, what is more appealing to what I am trying to promote. Tanya Basu article (2020) spoke about Sara Garner wanted to create a page to focus specifically on what is obsessed with. Garner (2020) explained how she imagines a page where she writes about her favourite things, what they made her feel, and invites others to share what they love and what they’ve learned. That is the same aim I have for my website.

I had some honest feedback about my website, where I should include a tagline on where I live and what exactly my page is going to consist of. I am trying to come up with a catchy tagline that would want people to stay. I am trying to envision my digital garden by making it more like Pinterest and Tumblr. I am more of a visual learner, I can read something, but I will try to envision pictures in my head. That is why majority of my website includes photos to help people who are visual people too.

I know my audience is to tackle young adults in there 20s. I am trying to take more photos that are aesthetically pleasing. Allowing for more close ups and simpleness to my photos. I am trying to keep my website design more organized and cleaner because when there is too much going on it can be difficult to attract viewers or readers.  

My editorial process will include more ideas that I find interesting and what people are searching for. I know when I try to go out for dinners or brunch it is so hard to find good food near me. I know a good chunk of people go on Google and search “Good food near me” or “Good bars near me” or “Things to do near me”.  It can be very frustrating when you do not know if it is worthy to go. I want to really focus on adding another page of places I have gone in specific cities. There is information that is needed when going to a restaurant or location. I want to add that to summarize my posts for people. An extra page where I have food locations, rating, pricing, and wait times. Even when I go places I want to add how far away it is, when you should go, and for what you should go for.

I believe a lot of our ways to grow our audience is really from social media. There are millions of people on different types of apps at once. I know many people use social media to connect with people. I find that you can really grow your audience that way. I have made an Instagram account specifically for my website to allow more growth. I feel as though I could really bring in people who would be interested in this area. I think that is the hard part, growing a community of people that are willing to be invested in my blog. I have been trying to go through my photos and memorise to find things that would interest people to stick around. Analytics you get from Google are just numbers in my opinion. I feel like people would be interested in my things if I try to keep posting regularly about what I am up too. The more active you are, the more you receive. I remember this one saying, whatever you put into something, you will be receiving that amount of effort back. I know if I take it seriously, I could really grow it into something big. So, let’s see if I can do that.  

I believe in being able to grow your audience you need to get them from other apps. Instagram is a huge platform that can increase attention, but you need to add hashtags or other ways to attract. Another huge platform is Tik Tok that is growing a lot of attention right now. It has helped a lot of people grow into learning about new things and constantly growing with the space of so many people.

I feel like social media itself is a huge platform to market things that you want people to find. There are people using Tik Tok to grow an audience to bring in more customers for their online stores. I think it is important to market properly to be able to grow and make money. When there is very little dedication to building yourself, there won’t be a lot of support to grow money. I haven’t really tried to grow myself on social media because I never really saw an interest in growing into something. I want to see if I can grow with my blog that I have going on but I am open to be making money if I could.

I made a separate Instagram to attract more viewers to my website. I wanted to bring in more views to allow for better flow of traffic. I know a lot of people use Instagram, that is why I could bring in good flow that way. I could try to make more videos too, but it is difficult to always record things.

Democracy is defined as “rule by the people” (Britannica, n.d.). Social media is interactions between individuals that take place in online communities and networks that involve the creation, sharing, and/or exchange of information and ideas (Tufts, 2021). The interaction of social media and democracy is democracy is all about information and social media will present that information. They both correlate with one another, social allows for democracy to skyrocket.

There are 34.47 million social media users in Canada in 2022 (Dixon, 2022). 78 percent of social media users, use Facebook (Dixon, 2022). There was about 18% of adults getting their political news on social media in United States (Atske, 2021). A good chunk of individuals distrust Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to. find political and election news (Atske, 2021).

The negative repercussions of fake news span from the micro level, which affects specific people, to the macro level, which affects media systems (Yang, 2021). Disinformation, often known as fake news, is described as intentionally created material that imitates traditional news and spreads to advance the objectives of specific groups or individuals (Yang, 2021).  Both fake news and censorships can become frustrating online, Covid-19, is a huge example of it. There was so many fake news and censorships relating around Covid-19.

In the article written by Kitchens (2020), he stated the idea that social media use may restrict the information that users encounter or consume online, failing to foster a shared experience of free-flowing knowledge, is captured effectively by the metaphor of an echo chamber. People are exposed to information to outside their echo chambers but some individuals within their echo chamber do not trust this information which puts them in fear (Kitchens, 2020).

There has been an increase on social media of alt-right movement which implements advocating for political things like writing Trumps success (Marwick, 2017). It is called media manipulation where “conspiracy theorists, no-libertarians, white nationalists, men’s right advocate, trolls, bored young people and anti-feminists” are spreading their various beliefs (Marwick, 2017).  To improve the visibility of the audience for their messages, these organisations target weak points in the ecosystem of the news media (Marwick, 2017). These groups are racist online, they will use deliberately offensive speech towards minority groups. This forces for a lot of hatred and violence to occur online. These groups take over the internet and target people by putting hatred and offensive speech against people who disagree to some political views. The rapid growth of race hate speech on the internet has become overwhelming to the capacity of states, corporations, or civil society to limit its spread and impact (Jakubowicz, 2017).

The internet has impacted the culture, politics, and interpersonal connections that I regard as essential to my identity in ways that I have always deemed advantageous to me personally (Bridle, 2017). Social media has impacted some people in the sense that it has shaped them, many people use it to discover new things or keep up to date with media. The amount of news you hear about music artists and other famous influencers just crazy. There is constant news being published on Instagram or Twitter to tell you what is going on that person’s life. Recently a music rapper named “Takeoff” was killed. My Instagram feed was flooding with news posts about how he died and who killed him. His daughter posted a Tik Tok saying how she found out her dad passed through media. We talk about how social media is sometimes the main source for finding out news but who knows if it is truthful or fake. The younger generation nowadays use social media a lot more than us which has negative effects. Using social media frequently can worsen sleep quality and is linked with high levels of anxiety and depression (Mayo Clinic, 2022). The interaction between social media and depression symptoms are very high at such a young age because of all the fake information and hurtful comments (Mayo Clinic, 2022).

Social media will always be democratic. No matter what information you want to talk about, there will be a group or an individual opposing to what you have to say. There will always be someone that will disagree with an opinion or fact. That is why social media has its perks, but it can be very controversial and toxic.

Yang, Jeongwon, and Yu Tian. ““Others Are More Vulnerable to Fake News Than I Am”: Third-Person Effect of COVID-19 Fake News on Social Media Users.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 125, 2021, pp. 106950–106950, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106950.

“Democracy.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy.

“Social Media Overview.” Communications, 5 Mar. 2021, https://communications.tufts.edu/marketing-and-branding/social-media-overview/.

Atske, Sara. “4. Americans Who Mainly Got News via Social Media Knew Less about Politics and Current Events, Heard More about Some Unproven Stories.” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, Pew Research Center, 22 Feb. 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/02/22/americans-who-mainly-got-news-via-social-media-knew-less-about-politics-and-current-events-heard-more-about-some-unproven-stories/.

Dixon, S. (2022). Number of social network users in Canada from 2018 to 2027. Statista. https://www-statista-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/statistics/260710/number-of-social-network-users-in-canada/ 

Marwick, Alice and Lewis, Rebecca. 2017. “Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online“. Datasociety.net.

 Jakubowicz, Andrew. “Alt_Right White Lite: Trolling, Hate Speech and Cyber Racism on Social Media.” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, vol. 9, no. 3, 2017, pp. 41–60, https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v9i3.5655.

Kitchens, Brent, et al. “Understanding Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles: The Impact of Social Media on Diversification and Partisan Shifts in News Consumption.” MIS Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 2020, pp. 1619–49, https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2020/16371.

“How to Help Your Teen Navigate Social Media.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 26 Feb. 2022, https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/tween-and-teen-health/in-depth/teens-and-social-media-use/art-20474437.

I think everyone in their life has copied something off the internet and used it. I know a lot of my friends will use Pinterest for inspiration for specific things you are looking for. It can be hard to be creative and come out with your own ideas especially when you are trying to achieve something. I have been brainstorming ways to start my own clothing brand. It is difficult. The constant urge of coming out with ideas is hard when you are not that creative.

I have been trying to use my platforms right now to figure out my own niche. I am trying to come up with ideas that I believe will be worthy of attracting attention. Content is probably the hardest part of trying to create something. I have found taking photos and videos of everything has worked in my power. it’s the creative aspect that I struggle with that is why I use other content creators as inspiration to grow out of my comfort zone.

It can be hard but some of my tips would be look at Pinterest, follow people with the same niche, google specific topics to see if it helps you create ideas. The more you look around and add ideas to a vision board it can really help with making something good.

Social media has become super dominate in this generation for years. I remember when I first got Instagram, I was in grade 6, I posted whatever I wanted and followed only my friends on it. I did not use it to become an influencer which nowadays is the norm. I just wanted to document my life through photos. Ever since I can remember I have been a huge photo person. I document everything by either taking a video or photo so I can look back at it and be like “omg I remember this moment”. My friends literally always call me out because I just take photos of EVERYTHING.

Social media now has changed so dramatically since I began using it. Now you must worry about editing, getting rid of that pimple, or not posting because it does not match your aesthetics. I have always tried to gear away from that type of mindset, but it is hard. I need to constantly get reassurance from friends if I should post something because something looked odd. It is not the same environment that it used to be when I was in elementary. I still post everything that I love, adventures that I go on, places I check out to eat but I am a huge critique on myself. Social media has been filled with these high expectations which can be hard to maintain.

I have found myself in that vicious cycle of trying to lose weight or change the way I look to become more appealing. It can really affect your mental health. I remember trying to achieve this unrealistic goal but realized along the way that it was not me. I lost myself in the process of becoming someone I am not. That is the scary thing about social media is you start questioning yourself. You will bring yourself down, but you need to just focus on being true to yourself and posting whatever you want.

Social media will allow you to grow and find a safe community, where u can be your true self.