Tag: Twitter

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Trends

Delhi Pollution: It’s all social media is talking about

Social media is abuzz with discussions and opinions on the New Delhi pollution issue, with Twitter chatter being the loudest.
by Meltwater India

Voted as one of the most populated cities in the world for several consecutive years, New Delhi, India’s bustling capital, is facing some serious health risks too. Due to over-population and severe pollution, the city’s atmosphere is often hazy with smoke and fog.

This month, though, the air pollution has reached a point of severity that is out of the ordinary. On Tuesday, The Indian Medical Association (IMA) declared a public health emergency. They have advised schools to be shut, and for the public to avoid walking or running outside, as the air pollution is said to be hazardous.

In November last year, one million school children were forced to stay home from school, thousands of workers reported sick and long queues formed outside shops selling face masks as the Indian capital struggled with its worst pollution level in two decades.

2017 is showing similar degrees of danger, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) sitting on an average level of 400 and reaching over 700 in the early morning and during most afternoons. To put it in perspective, anything over 100 is considered dangerous, and 500 is the maximum AQI level. This means that even healthy people are at a high risk of developing serious respiratory problems.

Meltwater, the global leader in media intelligence, took to the (virtual) streets to listen to what the public is saying on social media about the health emergency.

Mapping the chatter

In a week, since November 1, the terms “New Delhi” and “pollution” have appeared together 1,965 times on online editorial media in India alone, and has received 2, 339 mentions across social media.

92% of the mentions were from Twitter, where the sentiment was 50% negative (only 2% positive and the rest neutral). “Risk,” “dangerous” and “health” were among the most used words when discussing the New Delhi pollution problem. Some citizens spoke about having a “scratchy throat” and “sore eyes” specifically since Diwali, held this year on 19 October.

“Runners” was also a hot topic being spoken about across social media platforms with 177 mentions this week.

The India Medical Association urged the iconic New Delhi Half Marathon, due to take place on 19 November, to be called off in order to protect runners, marshals and spectators from exposure to the thin and low-quality air. With even healthy people being warned not to walk outdoors, it’s been advised that it would be too dangerous to allow the runners to over-exert themselves, and urged the race to be cancelled for the safety of all.

Today, social media is an opportunity to gauge public opinion and sentiment. Meltwater believes that companies and individuals can benefit from these insights to better understand needs, contextualise them and then to improve company strategy.

This refers to a wide range of possibilities. IMA is an example of how governments can use social insights as a guide to making more informed decisions. Event sponsorships is an example of how companies can use this data for better, more informed decisions to benefit the public.

Media intelligence lets companies, organisations or individuals use social insights to gather external data to make better internal decisions. There is an abundance of data out there, and millions of online conversations happening at any given minute. Meltwater helps you to make sense of it all.

(Picture courtesy The Weather Network)

Categories
Overdose

Do din se ‘Like’ nahin mila hai, sahab…

What prompts this crazy obsession with our virtual selves, where we are begging Likes and Shares from all and sundry?
Jatin Sharmaby Jatin Sharma

It’s no secret that our virtual lives are overpowering our real ones. People are so submerged in the wave of social networks and gadgets that slowly and steadily, we will replace our real emotions with emoticons forever. It is very easy to find a family that is sitting in an urban living room, with all four of them engaged with their gadgets. This is the ‘virtual bonding’ that is becoming more important than emotional bonding for many of us. And it’s also a nice way to cheat your mind – you can say that you were ‘spending time with your family’ when actually, you were having a conversation with seven other people on Whatsapp.

This kind of behaviour has made us so sick mentally that gradually, we have all started to believe that our standing in the virtual world is way more important than out standing in reality.

Imagine this. Earlier, people used to take photographs and post them to Facebook. If that picture got a few likes and comments, it was all good. But now, people have actually started begging for ‘Likes’. I kid you not: this tribe of ‘virtual beggars’ is growing by the day. A simple conversation between friends is now:
“Hey, did you see my party pics?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How can you have?”
“I did!”
“Then why didn’t you Like them?”

I have personally experienced my friends forcefully extorting ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’ on their posts in lieu of my loyalty to them 😐

Some people have reached an advanced stage of virtual begging, where they tag people and then even message them on the phone to ensure that there are maximum Likes and Shares received. This is going on all around us. I suspect Mumbai will soon become the capital of Internet-beggars.

What amazes me is that the accumulating of these Likes and Comments going “Aww…” and “Woww!” make the world a happier, shinier place for certain people. And the animosity that is being reflected when someone expresses an honest opinion, is quite disheartening. Socially, such behaviour is just going to contribute to the rise in fake feelings and words that have no emotions attached to them. The senses of individuals are now being switched continuously towards appeasing a certain FB friend or a Twitter follower.

There are some individuals who also take great pride when their Tweets are retweeted. Sure, it may be a minor achievement of sorts, because you got others to agree with you. But the problem starts when you take your retweets so seriously that you go on an anshan when your friends or followers don’t retweet you. It has become so serious, that from being an idea board, Twitter has now evolved into this space where people mould their thoughts according to the most retweetable idea. And again, to push the whole thing further, some people adopt the strategy of asking others to retweet their tweets from office.

I think that those inventing Twitter and Facebook came up with these social networking platforms to create an enriching experience. But these social network websites have just created a parallel world peopled with virtual beggars. This is a world whose inhabitants have no qualms begging for a Like, Share, Comment, Retweet and Favourite. Dear All, please remember: begging is against the law. Sure it won’t get you arrested in the virtual world, but do shun begging there too.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else. ‘Overdose’ is his weekly take on Mumbai’s quirks and quibbles.

(Picture courtesy techcrunch.com)

Categories
Tech

Coming soon: A digital explosion

The Internet is truly set to explode, with number of connections in India expected to surpass 380 million by 2017.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Our country is truly a haven for Internet service providers. Not only do we have a staggering number of existing connections, we are set to have about 35 per cent more in four years.

As per a report compiled by YES Bank in association with ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India) titled Driving Growth in New Media, “Growing at a compounded annual growth rate of about 35 per cent, the total number of Internet connections in India is expected to surpass 380 million by year 2017, from the current level of 168 million.”

The report attributes this phenomenon to “the mobile revolution [that] is being spearheaded by increasing sales of mobile devices and smartphones, as well as the rapid adoption of Android and 3G services.  Soon to be launched technologies such as 4G will allow mobile phone users to surf the Internet, video conference, download music, video and other content at a rate several times faster than 3G services.  It will offer services such as high-definition mobile TV and video conferencing, super-fast access to high definition (HD) video streaming, multiple chatting, instant uploading of photos and much more – all of which should further fuel the growth of mobile adoption and media consumption.”

The study further reveals that wireless connections will comprise nearly 90 per cent of all connections added over 2012-17.  “There are over 1 billion users worldwide on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+.  As per the data, the number of social media users in urban India reached 62 million by December 2012, and it is estimated to reach 66 million by June 2013,” the study says.

These audiences largely consist of the youth segment and it is no surprise then, that digital advertising is capturing a larger share of ad spends.  Given the cost effectiveness of this medium in reaching the target segment and the increased measurability offered – companies are allocating increasing amounts of their ad budgets for the digital medium, points out the study.

The recent explosion of social media platforms has been their gradual adoption by content creators. Social Media is fast being recognised as a powerful brand management tool for targeted engagements with the consumer and is an essential marketing tool which provides valuable feedback mechanisms.

With its low cost and increasing adoption by the youth, content creators can engage and develop relationships with the younger audience while marketing content more effectively. These innovative content delivery mechanisms enable content to generate incremental digital revenue streams.

Additionally, a lot of popular film songs and scenes are now released first over the Internet medium as a teaser campaign. “Content creators are leveraging upon the interest garnered from pre-release social media campaigns to not only generate word-of-mouth publicity but also to use the traction and hype generated as a bargaining tool for better realisations from music, satellite, distribution and other ancillary revenues streams,” adds the study.

(Picture courtesy crackingtipsntricks.blogspot.com) 

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Patrakar types

“You paid media dogs!”

It is the age of the instant response – and the age of the crudest name-calling against mediapersons and celebrities. We are so quick to take offence at the media commenting on things that affect us, that we resort to shooting the messenger instead of debating the message.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Two days ago, we ran a story on how traders in Thane and Pune had all but called off their agitation against the LBT after Sharad Pawar’s intervention, and how traders in Mumbai were about to follow suit. See the story here.

We’d got quotes from Viren Shah, President of the FRTWA, who was part of the delegation that met Sharad Pawar on Sunday at the latter’s residence. We had excerpts from the press note that the FRTWA later issued, outlining the points discussed. Viren Shah even went on record to say that, “The FRTWA is against the LBT but our retailers will not down shutters. Business will go on as usual while the protest is on.” The story went live on Sunday evening, and Monday’s newspapers carried the same news with varying degrees of detail.

But on Twitter, at least five tweeters called us several names, the substance of their remarks being that we, like other media outlets in the country, were “paid media dogs” who were bribed by the Congress to spread rumours. “Pls do not spread rumours. Do u have a signed letter to confirm this?” asked one, the mildest of the lot, while another tweeted, “chal jhota, congress ne paisa diya hai kya rumours felane ka? #PAIDMEDIA #LBT” with an entertaining cartoon showing the Congress scamming everyone in sight. A little digging by our social media team found that this latter guy had been on a name-calling spree all afternoon, tweeting at every mediaperson on Twitter and calling them all #PAIDMEDIA. Some of these luminaries included journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt.

I wonder if people really understand what this ‘paid media’ thing really is, though all and sundry use this phrase as freely as they use public streets as their personal dustbin. I always imagine this paid media business to be a situation where somebody comes to a media office with bags of money, plonks them on the editor’s desk and says, “There, I paid you. Now write nice things about me.”

I’m not saying things don’t necessarily pan out like that, either.

In recent times, we’ve been seeing a growing tendency in the country to take offence at everything. And, not content to merely take offence, we’re outraging all day about things that, in hindsight, were meant as a joke, albeit a not so funny one. Some of us are so outraged, we form packs of similarly-outraged persons and attack the offender all day.

Recently, a sarcastic tweet from stand-up comic Rohan Joshi, who was responding to a self-proclaimed feminist who’d accused him of being a male chauvinist, took up the Twitterati’s time for an entire day. And he wasn’t even being a chauvinist. A Firstpost.com article about how a new initiative to provide leftover food from one’s lunchbox to starving slum and street children was most likely a sham, prompted all and sundry to address the article’s writer with every possible swear word known to mankind, even as they jeered at his cynicism and asked how much money he’d been paid to write that piece.

And there’s no point responding, if you’re the writer of a particularly controversial piece, to such name-calling and trying to explain your point of view. Any such attempt only results in a bigger barrage of insults.

We didn’t know this a few years ago, safely insulated as we were in our print media offices and our TV channel stations, how much hatred there was out there. Then the media’s working changed, to the extent that every bit of news and information put out there is compatible on all forums, most significantly, the web. And the Internet doesn’t do a very good job protecting us from instant, biting feedback the way other media can. Sure, there are such things as comment moderation tools, but what does one do when an article also has Facebook-enabled comments? Who’s going to disable Facebook?

Does this hate stem from the genuine fury consumers feel at seemingly important issues not being covered by the news media? The LBT strike, for instance, is over 25 days old, but apart from snippets on how closed shops are inconveniencing the public, has there been an in-depth piece on the issue by the electronic media? Even on Sunday, as trader organisations decided to suspend hostilities for a few days, news channels continued screaming headlines about one more player arrested in the IPL spot-fixing scam. Not a single LBT-related story surfaced at all that evening.

Or could a part of this hate be attributed to the clout the big media players enjoy, of being able to function well despite its consumers not liking most of the content they put out there daily? In another business, for example, if people don’t like your product, you’re going to either take their feedback on board or shut shop. This doesn’t happen with say, The Times of India, which gets roundly criticised every single day for having more ads than news, or for biased reporting, or for peddling advertorials as news items. The TOI continues to function, and function well. Is that enough to make people so resentful that they start calling the TOI names and tell it to go to jump off a cliff?

Or is it as simple as a lack of manners, of good breeding? Sensible people, when debating a point, argue with the person’s point of view. They don’t tell the person to his face that he is a jackass, or worse. In my eyes, you have to be totally moronic to say a person is a prostitute who sleeps around with Congress politicians and writes against the BJP, when what you really wanted to say was that the writer’s views had hurt their own and they begged to differ. Say what you wanted to say, don’t get into needless side issues about a person’s parentage or background or tendency to take bribes. Apart from being moronic, it is an unnecessary exercise in wasting time when, instead of debating the message, we shoot the messenger over and over again. Tell people they are wrong, certainly, but remember that you don’t really have the right to do so. A point of view is never right or wrong; it may be contrary or controversial.

And besides, how brave would you be if you had to say half those things to the mediaperson’s face, and not from behind your computer or phone’s screen?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so. 

(Pictures courtesy blogs.reuters.com, mag.bewakoof.com, pastorchrisowens.wordpress.com, www.sodahead.com)

Categories
Overdose

Feel the like

Jatin Sharma writes about how social networking has helped us endlessly ‘connect’ to virtual worlds while ignoring the real one.

We are the Internet generation. We are the generation of gadgets, of tablets and social networking sites. We are the Facebookers and the Twitterati. We are the people who are lost in the virtual world.

The world is closing in and our emotions are shutting down. Thanks to the virtual world, we have changed the basic definition of emotion. Earlier, an emotion used to be a feeling, now it has become a message on the wall. Earlier, birthdays used to be a celebration, now they have become a reminder of an event in our phones. Earlier, the world and being social in it was a real activity, now it has turned into one big facade.

Look at photographs; how they were all about memories and capturing a particular time. Now, photographs are judged on the basis of whether they are FB-worthy or whether they will get minimum 50 likes. The human mind is now full of unnecessary information as we have started demeaning our lives. We are becoming slaves to technology and our emotions, or the showing of them, have become a formality.

It seems quite funny to me when people prefer to Skype or chat on FB for about 10 years, and tell each other that they have been in constant ‘touch’ for so long. Ipso facto they may have met just once. Even when it comes to relationships and love affairs, people like to announce them as their relationship status. One fight and the status becomes complicated; and if the matter gets more serious, the boyfriend or the girlfriend gets to know of it on Facebook where the girl’s/boy’s friends have like the update of ‘XYZ changed their relationship status from ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘Single’.

Our emotions have become so frail in today’s times. People form an opinion, then mentally compose a clever line in order to be able to tweet about a trending topic and get as many retweets as possible. Our speech is no more about putting our thoughts into words, it’s all about getting ‘likes’ and retweets and being ‘favourited’.

We are so engrossed in this virtual world that even when we are out with our friends, we are glued to our smart phones. We are becoming ‘virtual Mayors’ of markets and restaurants, and are Whatsapping and putting out our current activities as our status messages. The whole joy of socialising is not about meeting people anymore. In fact, social networking sites should also get a Nobel Peace Prize, for the outcome of most of our fights is now decided by ‘unfriending’ or ‘blocking’ or ‘unfollowing’ a person. These are now considered to be a very fierce punishments in social networking.

Our minds are completely lost in this virtual jungle. And we are not realising that this is slowly and steadily going to ruin our basic human interactions. We all need to feel, touch and hear words in order to survive. Depression is on the rise in the world and I strongly feel that the Internet is responsible for it. The little joys of life are the ones where you can actually feel them. Don’t dedicate yourself to social networking sites. Life is much more than that which exists inside your phone or computer. For once, try to liberate yourself and be a human being. Meet people, don’t ‘poke’ them. Spend some quality time, don’t get hynotised by your phone screen. Feel like a human being. Speak, don’t just type. Feel the like, don’t just click on LIKE.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

Categories
Patrakar types

The Internet as therapist

Why are we increasingly seeking validation for our actions from strangers online? Whatever happened to dealing with personal crises, personally?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Early this week, Twitter users in Mumbai were outraged and astounded by the story of a Mumbai-based writer who blogged about physical abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. The post went viral in minutes, and several Twitter users rallied around the girl and heaped suitable abuse and condemnation on the perpetrator of the beatings, punchings and head-on-wall slammings that the girl said she had been subjected to. For five days, the story played out on Twitter over and over again, with almost all the junta saluting the girl’s courage for speaking out against abuse, and several more promising support and help.

She did not go to the police for personal reasons.  Meanwhile, the boyfriend suspended his Facebook account and went silent on Twitter. There were a few who felt that the matter should not have been aired on a public platform like Twitter at all – that it was a matter to be solved between two adults, privately. Those who expressed this opinion were quickly attacked by the outraged majority, with such analogies as, ‘That is like saying murder should be solved between the murderer and the victim’.

A friend of mine was telling me about a woman she barely knows, who uploads a new picture of herself every day on Facebook, and who recently took an opinion poll on whether her FB ‘friends’ would like to see pictures of her actually giving birth to her son. My friend and I took respective mini Twitter and Facebook sanyaas with these goings-on, moving on to solving our little crises on our own, without a lot of strangers looking in and offering support and encouragement.

It’s not like I don’t want support, it’s just that I don’t need it from a bunch of people I don’t know.

I’m not trivialising anybody’s crises, least of all domestic abuse – it is a sad evil that must be spoken against and more importantly, acted upon – and I’m not getting into the whole ‘Haw! How can he beat?’ debate either. I actually couldn’t care less because I don’t know either the beater or the beatee. Yes, the issue bothers me, just like paedophilia and marital rape bother me. But I am surprised that we are increasingly turning to our computer screens for solutions to our problems.

We are buoyed by retweets from perfect strangers. We are excited by glowing reviews of a new pic we just uploaded on FB. It thrills us to know that complete strangers are recommending our blog posts, tweets and status messages to the world. If we break up with our partners, we tell the virtual world about it and wait for commiserations. We even live tweet the births of our babies (and open Twitter accounts for them). And when people we don’t even know write back to us saying, “I know just how you feel…” we are quietly proud of how someone out there ‘gets’ us.

It seems that we are increasingly looking for validation from an unknown mass of people, and what’s more, looking to be liked. Criticism from unknown quarters stings us. The virtual unknown is important to us, sometimes to the exclusion of family and friends. We’re having dinner with our families, but not participating in the discussion happening over our heads because we’re tweeting about what a good time we’re having at our family dinner. We’re out drinking with friends, but we want to offer immediate proof of what a good time we’re having, so we put up pictures of us pulling monkey faces while we show our drink glasses to the camera. Then the next morning, we explain how those pics were not supposed to be uploaded, that we didn’t know what we were doing because we were so drunk, lolz.

It seems to me that while we’re reaching a lot of people today than we used to, we’re actually unloading on the virtual world a bit more than we used to as well. We’re so connected, the lines between personal and private are not lines any more, but mere specks. Everything is up for evaluation – our personal crises, our major and minor tragedies, our trivialities and successes. And though our world view is much wider in scope as well, we’re expecting strangers to agree with us, to hold our hands through our decisions, to tell us what to do.

I don’t know about you, but if I need help, praise or support, I’ll get it from people I know. The Internet is too creepy a therapist.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

 

 

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