A Social Media Awakening

Why charities are now starting to campaign against people 'Liking' them on social media

Throughout my PhD topic of analysing charitable marketing on social media,  I have passionately held the opinion that measuring social media pages and content using measures of popularity such as likes or followers is severely limited and represents something far more like slacktivism than real charitable activism. In the last couple of months, I have come across a couple of campaigns by charities that are acknowledging this, and are directly targeted against people simply Liking posts on Facebook.

Digital Revolutions Summer School

This week I've been in Oxford at the RCUK's DTC/CDT Summer Meeting: "Digital Revolutions". This was a 2-day event comprising of a mix of keynote talks, facilitated group sandpits and networking.

The first thing that hit me upon arriving at my table in the rather large tent in which the main part of the event was situated was the number of DTCs/CDTs (Centres for Doctoral Training) that were attending. Perhaps rather naïvely I had only ever thought there were a handful, but it seems there were many more than I expected. The Digital Economy is going to get a lot of very talented PhDs coming through in the next few years, ready to lead and innovate in the cutting edge areas that the DTCs cover.