Mediaboss Marketing

Rocker John Mayer struggles to control his use of social media because he considers himself a "recovering ego addict".

The Your Body Is a Wonderland singer admits he let his behaviour get out of control early on in his career because he used to feed off all of the praise and adoration he received from fans online, but it wasn't until his candid 2010 interview with Playboy magazine, in which he dished on all of his celebrity ex-girlfriends and famously described Jessica Simpson as "sexual napalm", that he realised he needed to take a step back from the limelight.

He quit Twitter and moved from Los Angeles to Montana, where he has since refocused his attention on his music, and Mayer is adamant he is nothing like the man he once was.

Discussing the moment he realised he had hit rock bottom, he tells U.S. newsman Ronan Farrow, "I went, 'All right, dude, you did a couple interviews where you were out of touch and you were being a ham, and you were basically break dancing into a nitroglycerin plant, right?'"

Mayer, who is reportedly dating Katy Perry, claims he was never the playboy he was portrayed to be in the press, but he played up his wild behaviour to fit the part - because he thought that's what fans wanted to see.

Asked if he considers himself a womaniser, he replies, "No. Absolutely not. But when you're crafty and you're clever and you go, 'Well, I'm just going to be as strange as they think I am,' then you lose (yourself). Number one: You're not playing music anymore. Number two: You're not feeling anything honestly. And number three: You're not saying anything honestly."

He returned to Twitter last year (14), but Mayer admits he has to remind himself every day not to get too drawn in to social media.

He says, "I'm a recovered ego addict and the only way that I can be sure that I don't relapse is to admit that I constantly have this ego addiction every day. So I do the Grammys and then I go home, because if I stay I get high again (on the approval).

"You've already looked through Twitter, everyone says it's great, and then you get low again because you can't stop looking, so I'm a recovered ego addict."

See original here:
John Mayer: 'I'm A Recovering Ego Addict'

Supporters of Islamic State could control as many as 90,000 Twitter accounts worldwide, a new study suggests.

The jihadist group is able to "exert an outsized impact on how the world perceives it" because of its use of social media and number of online followers, according to the Washington-based Brookings Institute report.

It recommends governments and social media companies work together to find new ways to tackle the problem of accounts supporting the Islamists, who have posted gruesome pictures and videos purporting to be of executions in Iraq and Syria online, as well as propaganda rhetoric.

It argues the problem also applies to other social networks and extremist groups such as far-right racist organisations.

The report, by Brookings academic JM Berger and technologist Jonathon Morgan, says: "While we do not believe that any mainstream social media platform wishes to see its services used to further acts of horrific violence, we also suspect some would rather not be bothered with the challenge of crafting a broad and coherent response to the issue.

"While we can sympathise with the challenges and dilemmas such a response would entail, it is clear that social media companies do feel an obligation to respond to some social standards and illegal uses of their services.

"Extremism, while raising thornier issues, merits attention, especially when faced with a rising challenge of violent groups who manipulate platforms to reap the rewards of spreading images of their cruelty."

The study of IS-linked accounts between September and December estimated there were between 46,000 and 70,000 IS-supporting Twitter accounts. The researchers believe the true figure was towards the lower end of this scale but setting an absolute maximum at 90,000.

Only a small number of the accounts were able to have their locations identified, as most had this function switched off. But of those that could be located, the vast majority were in the Middle East and North Africa. Other were found in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Australia, but these numbers were in single figures, the report found.

They noted that platforms including Facebook and YouTube have already introduced changes aimed at tackling extremist material.

Here is the original post:
IS has 90,000 Twitter supporters: report

Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication Lecture by Bilge Yesil
February 12, 2015, "Bypassing or Manipulating Democracy: Media Control and Resistance in China, Russia, and Turkey." Guest lecture by Bilge Yesil, Marina Rep...

By: annenbergschool

More here:
Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication Lecture by Bilge Yesil - Video

Last week's revelations of close relations between journalists and corporate houses will have underlined commonly held suspicions that, for the media, ethics are breached more often than not. The guilt or otherwise of those involved in this latest episode is still open to debate. But the broad facts add to concern that journalists are increasingly careless and amoral when it comes to relations with corporate houses. To be sure, the corporate-journalist nexus is no novelty. But the current developments suggest that the malaise is becoming institutional. Recent scandals over "paid news" highlighted a practice that several media organisations sought to legitimise at the start of the millennium. More recently, the notorious tapes involving conversations between senior journalists and a corporate lobbyist representing some of India's largest and most powerful corporations further shot the media's reputation.

Should this matter? Yes, as much for practical reasons as broader ones of principle. Indians take great pride in the freedom of the press; and, on balance, warts and all, it is hard to deny that it has mostly worked to the good in this vast and chaotic democracy. It is a value that cannot be overemphasised when India is compared with countries like Russia or those in West Asia where censorship is the handmaiden of oppression and worse. But the other side of press freedom is independence. By definition, it is an enterprise that demands certain internal standards. This is admittedly a difficult tenet to follow when there are bills to be paid. But there is no dearth of examples of news businesses surviving without compromising their ethics, globally and in India. Since the 1990s, however, India has seen this system stutter somewhat. Partly this was due to pragmatism on behalf of media companies - they may have believed it was better to harvest gains institutionally rather than leaving them to some individual journalists. Competition also has driven this change, so that revenues from subscriptions, whether to print or broadcast, have scarcely risen, forcing a disproportionate reliance on advertising.

But an unfortunate result of these trends has been a steady erosion of media brand equity with more and more questionable practices in both reporting standards and media behaviour. This, in turn, is encouraging successive governments to toy with the idea of media control. Ministers in the previous United Progressive Alliance had periodically raised the issue and the current government has, too - all in the name of that nebulous value called "national interest". That is why it is becoming urgent for the media to pause and look at some practical self-regulation. As the late judge J S Verma bluntly put it at a conference, "The media needs to start regulating itself because the government is dying to do it." With a strong government in power at the Centre, the time to start is now.

See the original post:
The virtue of self-control

It's very heartening to see the media turn up in huge numbers and try to support us

I think the media has a responsible way of taking cricket back home in a responsible fashion

Ravichandran Ashwin during a press conference. Photograph: Vipin Pawar/Solaris Images

Amid the furore generated by Virat Kohli's abusive behaviour with an Indian journalist, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin tried to defuse the tension by lauding the fourth estate for its support and for taking cricket back to the country.

Don't Miss! The Rediff Cricket Show

The World Cup, as never before onRediff.com

Although Ashwin refrained from making any comments on the 'Virat Kohli abuse episode' but it did look like he tried his best in his damage control act.

"Media here are here to support us. It's very heartening to see the media turn up in huge numbers and try to support us. But I mean, this is my take on it. I think the media has a responsible way of taking cricket back home in a responsible fashion, taking cricket to the public in the way it needs to be taken," Ashwin said answering a specific question on what's his take on the media in general.

Should BCCI censure Virat Kohli?

Read more here:
Ashwin tries to defuse tension between media and cricketers