Illusions of Empowerment: Re-interpreting the Social Media Dream. Paper presented to the Human Communication and Technology Division/Critical & Cultural Studies Division at the 2010 Annual Convention of the National Communication Association.

1. Illusions of Empowerment
Re-interpreting the Social Media Dream
Can an
yone
hear m
e?
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Communication
St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas
corinnew@stedwards.edu
Twitter: @corinnew

2. The Social Media Hero Story
Dave Carroll vs. United

3. The Social Media Hero Story
Vincent Ferrari vs. AOL

4. Dell Hell Story
Jeff Jarvis vs. DELL

5. 184
Million Blogs

7. 72
hours of Videos
every Minute

8. 400
Million Tweets
Sent each Day

9. Voice Paradox
the more people become empowered and claim their voices through social media
participation, the more drowned out individual voices become

10. Voice Paradox
the more people become empowered and claim their voices through social media
participation, the more drowned out individual voices become

11. .3%
Reach More than 10,000
Views in one month
65%: 50 views

12. You have better odds playing the lottery than
of becoming a viral video sensation

13. Visibility Work

15. Google Search:
Uses algorithm to determine results
Google PageRank: interprets a link
from page A to page B as a vote, by page
A, for page B. Looks at more than the
sheer volume of votes, or links a page
receives; it also analyzes the page that
casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that
are themselves "important" weigh more
heavily and help to make other pages
"important".

16. Black Hat SEO Organic SEO
• deceptive • legitimate
• link schemes • optimize keywords
• JC Penney example • optimize titles & tags
• optimize meta tags
• attract links with
good web content

17. “ The penalty for getting
caught is a pair of virtual
concrete shoes: the
company sinks in
Google’s results ”
- New York Times

18. “ The penalty for getting
caught is a pair of virtual
concrete shoes: the
company sinks in
Google’s results ”
- New York Times

19. Optimizing blogs
1. Narrow your topic
2. Identify keywords
3. Integrate keywords into:
•titles/headlines
•meta tags
•blog tags

20. Engagement Work
Two-way communication

21. 1. Narrow your topic
2. Identify keywords
visibility work
3. Integrate keywords into:
• titles/headlines
• meta tags
• blog tags
4. Attract links by:
engagement
• publishing frequently
work
• publishing valuable info
• actively engaging others

22. HURDLES
to social media empowerment
• growing competition in an attention-economy
• slim odds of standing out amidst millions of
competing voices
• specialized technical
knowledge required to
achieve visibility
• time demands of visibility
and engagement work

23. A New
DIGI Tal
DIV IDE

24. A New
DIGI Growing gap
between social Tal
DIV IDE
media power
users and social
media dabblers

25. Credits:
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D.
Associate Prof. of Communication
St. Edward’s University
@corinnew
Copy of this paper:
http://socialmediaprclass.pbworks.com/w/file/
64603833/Empowerment.pdf