In the class of last week Martijn Stevens spoke among other things about mediation and how people profile in the digital world. Many people use the internet to get attention or to profile themselves in a certain way. For example people who make films of themselves and put the films on Youtube so everybody can see them. These films are only put on the internet to get attention, to get noticed. And it works, often these films have lots of viewers and are widespread.

For example the Numa numa guy. What do we have to think about this?  Is it good that people make fun of other people. Because that is what happened, people laugh because it is so funny that the boy is acting so weird. In this manner the boy has become an image on the internet. But is it a good image? Can we perhaps speak of a form of bad publicity?

Publicity and thereby visibility are very important by creating a reputation or brand awareness. Social media like Youtube, Twitter, Facebook are more and more used for this purpose. We can create a reputation, but how do we create the image of ourselves we want that other people have of us? You can get a reputation in a good or in a bad way. We often see this happen in politics, where politicians make sure they are in the news during the election. But we can also name an example closer to home. For example; today’s elections on our own university.

This year there is a new student-party on our university, Asap. This new student-party has to get a place next to the two other student-partys Akkuraatd and Siam. Asap has to get noticed to get votes. One way Asap is trying to get attention by the use of social media. They have there own facebook page, twitter account and of course a website. When they behave normally on the internet, it’s all good publicity. But what if someone of the Asap will do something that isn’t aloud. The name of Asap will then be all over the local news and everybody would know the existence of Asap. But the question is; how will people see Asap when something like that would happen? Would it be a positive or a negative view? I think that without being aware of it, the name Asap will be stored in our brain and when we have to vote and see the name again, we will recognise the name and people are often more inclined to chose for something that is familiar.

You have an expression that says: bad publicity is also publicity. So if we want to get attention it seems like it doesn’t matter in which way. More important is that we are visible, one way or another.

By Kiyara Venner