Starting a blog with concern was not my first intention, but one Facebook post caught my attention and I really want to raise the awareness.
It is obvious how The internet is bringing us together. It is a great, rapid and cheap place for sharing of information. We so much enjoy tremendous benefits and continuous possibilities, even beyond our current imagination; it is opening a chance of new thread to us as well.
The person posted a commercial video on his Facebook. The vdo shows stereotyping of a homeless man and how he is being mistreated by the shop owner. In the end, the shop owner learned that his prejudice kept him knowing the real person inside that homeless man; he learned that the homeless man was trying to protect his house and it cost him his life. This story gave a powerful emotional impact and speak out for negative stereotype of homelessness.
What’s wrong?
This VDO was posted and used as a fundraising tool by a politician in another country due to its emotional impact; even this vdo is originally from Thailand.
Despite the political campaign, my concern is the number of people who viewed this post, hit the ‘Like’ button and gave honoring comments to post owner. They may not aware that the video does not reflect the real situation happen in the country that the campaign is taken place. Even worse, from the point of marketing, the authentic purpose of the message is now changed.
Imagine you and the owner who devoted time creating this video. You tried your best coming up with content and story line, linking them to your product or services, then someone took your idea and change them to benefit themselves; even worse — changing the original objective you have set.
As we are now swimming in the river of information and growing social networking site, it is worth giving a second thought about the information we are consuming and sharing. One may interpret a different message from the same source of information, however, the purpose of the information must be aware of. Doing more research, checking with the source, friends, comments will help us gain full understanding with unfamiliar topics, decreasing a chance of being unconsciously manipulated and avoid social media misuse as well as protect us from liability.
I am still wondering have the owner of the video noticed that their own creation was used for another purpose.
Do you have any experience about social media misuse? How do you deal with them and justify the information?
Click here, if you want to see the ads, Commercial video
WowVdoTH (2015) Thai Commercial 34 – Homeless Blind Truth / Vizer cctv. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-EM1QKYyhY [Accessed Oct 9, 2015]
DigitalSwift 
I think we can see examples of media misuse everyday. The news channels integrated a “tweets section” in their space. We see anchors picking their subject from them and expanding it. They are making that content theirs without even mentioning the owner of the publication.
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What I normally do is not sharing to the world if I can’t tell if it’s true or not. Often I checked with friends and find out from the other comments. I’m still finding more info about this.
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We usually just leave a comment quickly from our background without thinking over. It may cost lots of time for doing some research before any comment. but this a good point ,you’re right! The social network people should be aware of these and response to any of liability
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Doing research on certain information that we are not familiar with would be useful to ensure that we truly understand its situation and content before reusing them. This will help create your own creditability for the user as well.
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Personally, this sounds more serious than a social media misused. It sounds like there gotta be some copyright issues here.
Anyway, back to your point, I agree with you that there is a lot of information floating around on the internet at the moment. Many of them are not reliable, sometimes even came out of nowhere. It’s really hard to track whether it’s trustable or not. So now, whenever I come across some surprising facts or news, I just read them, but not sharing out because I don’t know what I’m sharing out, really. However, if it’s some concern or warning, I think it’s nice to give our love ones a head up, but not to freak them out.
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Thanks for the idea!! I also not sharing to anyone but sharing with friends for comments. Reaching person with certain background/knowledge will also help me evaluate the info.
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Nice issue to point out!
Really, when I worked as a marketer in Thailand. This is the main issue we were trying to avoid every time we doing media.
Marketers need to work really hard on which way messages from the media we make could turn into cause the last thing we want is consumers misunderstand it. I think individual’s mind is sensitive we never know what our consumers have been through in their life that could affect on what they would think, especially with those emotional content.
🙂
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Hi Pasinee,
When you were working on the media content, do you also have chance to use secondary information and material as a social media tool? Would you briefly share what are the criteria or main focus when choosing the material?
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I am not quite sure what do you mean by secondary info. and material, however, we always stick to the objective of what we want our consumers to know and creat the relevant content. Also, we cannot forget to include a vibe of customers insight in the content, so it attracts their interests and maybe they would stop doing what they’re doing to pay attention to our media. Is that make sense?
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I have the idea of what you did now. So basically you create the content, not by re-using the information created by others. Thank you.
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I totally agree with you that there are many people took someone’s idea and adapted it to benefit themselves. On a social network, there are some people using one of my friend’s image and represent to themselves to create a shopping network about cream and lotion.
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That’s horrible. What did you friend do?
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She reported to the Facebook help center and wait for 1-2 day, the fake shopping network will shut down.
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Meetip, I don’t know why I can’t see your blog.
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Can you open my blog again, please.
I just fixed it 🙂
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this video advertising was really touchy to me. I understand clearly what they want to present their product. In other hand, this video seem to violent and can impact to country’s image that might be not pleased to any foreigners who come and see this.
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