Employer, Social Media, and Privacy

The general gist of Mayo Clinic’s policies for their employees and students who participate in social media includes the following:
-Confidential information about Mayo Clinic must be maintained using patient privacy, and you must be sure to be speaking on your own behalf and not on Mayo Clinic’s.
-If you openly say you’re affiliated with Mayo Clinic, you must remember to uphold a professional appearance and must disclose your connection with Mayo if communicating on the public internet.
-Use good online judgement and behavior while also ensuring that your social networks don’t interfere with work commitments.
-“Friending” of patients on social media sites is discouraged, as is management/supervisors initiating requests with employees.

I think that these guidelines are highly appropriate and necessary for the Mayo Clinic to keep its name out of the negative limelight of social media. It’s hard for companies to create such guidelines which employees and employers will follow in order to keep their personal lives out of their career lives, but Mayo makes it very clear as to what will and will not be tolerated when it comes to media. I think it’s nice that they still allow their employees to share that they are associated with Mayo Clinic, as long as they keep a professional and appropriate online appearance while doing so.

Indep. Study – Post 2

This week I mainly focused on creating and finishing a poster for Interactive Media which would effectively convey The Greater Good. Next week I plan to start an illustration similar to the ones which I previously did in the graphic design course last year.

Independent Study-Post 1

For the past two weeks, I have been working on a logo design for a children’s public playground which is in the process of being built outside of my church. The creator of the park asked me to make a simple design, and besides that, gave little imput on anything specific that they were looking for in a logo. I think my design is definitely simple, yet it is symbolic enough to represent both the religious aspect of the park and the obvious nature which the park has to offer.

I was also asked in Interactive Media to design a logo for “The Greater Good” which would symbolize equality and the community feel of our awareness campaign. After the class has seen and discussed their reactions to the logo, it may be subject to some revisions.

Product Review

The item that I chose to write my product review on is the Apple 4th generation iPod touch. Since I own this iPod and use it quite frequently every day, I figured it would be beneficial to learn more about the product that I didn’t already know. The iPod touch is very similar to the iPhone, except it is unable to  make calls and needs wireless connection in order to use the internet. Besides those two factors, the iPod is able to do virtually anything the iPhone can..without the high monthly bills for its use every month.
I have had my iPod touch for almost a year now, and I believe it’s one of the best gifts that I have been given. This is because now that most public places that I go to offer free wifi-connection, I am able to access all of my favorite social networking sites (without having to pay a fee each month like you would with an expensive smart phone). I personally can’t really find much to complain about with this product, besides a little bit of lagging once you’ve taken up a certain amount of memory space.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/mp3-players/1279933/apple-ipod-touch-32gb-4th-generation/2

Political Infographic

Survey Results

Out of the 7 responses to my political survey, all but 2 of the survey takers were 17 or younger. Therefore, all responded that they had not participated in any presidential elections but one person. The majority of people polled were Republican, and most commonly said they would vote for Mitt Romney or another candidate besides Barack Obama. I found the results of the question regarding whether social media is important in raising candidate awareness to be particularly interesting. This is because 3 out of 7 individuals only ranked media’s importance a 3 out of 5. I expected nearly all of those who took my survey to rank social media’s importance either a 4 or a 5. Considering only 7 people out of over 300 billion American citizens took my survey about political opinions, I don’t think this was a good representation of the overall national stances.

Campaign Site Findings

After reviewing several candidate’s campaign sites, most of them seem to be linked to multiple social media sites. Most commonly, the candidates all seemed to have links to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This is probably due to the large majority of those who view these campaign pages being a member of one or more of these sites. Choosing to use these platforms could greatly benefit these candidates – as they are all aware that without links or updates available from these social media sites, people won’t be as interested in this individual as they would be with a candidate who meets these expectations. Having links to these sites is definitely an attempt at “keep with the times,” as I’m sure the vast majority of these older candidates wouldn’t even dream of using this type of social media if it wasn’t for trying to win votes for themselves.

Election Survey

2012 Presidential Debate

I found that watching the presidential debate made me really wish that I personally could have been there to feel the tense atmosphere between our 2012 presidential candidates. I think the debate was informative yet also heated up at times, as both candidates were quick on their toes. Once one candidate made their statement, the other was ready to respond in order to try to sway the audience to their viewpoint/stance. Now that social media is involved, the questions asked and answers given have become increasingly important. This is because people now have the opportunity to research something which the candidate has said in order to verify it. After watching the debate on YouTube with an abundance of lag, I can see why many people would much rather view the debate from TV.

Voter Turnout Findings

When looking at a chart found online of the voter turnouts of past presidential elections, there are noticeable changes. In 1996, voter turnouts reached 96,456,345 whereas in 2008 the turnouts were 132,618,580. In the more recent elections numbers have exponentially increased as opposed to earlier years which only slowly increased. These figures don’t necessarily mean that more people are voting now as opposed to years ago, and you have to take into consideration that some of the population are still unable to vote.

Social media has played one of the leading roles in this trend. As campaigns and advertisements are being viewed and shared by countless individuals over the internet, more people of all ages are now exposed to often biased articles which tend to sway their thinking in a certain direction. Therefore, whether or not social media has made this into a popularity contest, a bigger majority of the population is now more aware due to the media.

A lot of younger people who are now able to vote are extremely uninformed about the candidates and what they stand for. Too many of these young people are forming their opinions solely based on lies and accusations which they see over the media. Before voting, every young person needs to do extensive research so they are able to form their own opinion.