I came across two pictures that currently matter to me:
This Venn diagram is from a great Slate article on the similarities and differences between Occupy Wall Street and the Team Party movements. Why this matters? After the head scratching three-hour brainstrom session in which I tried to narrow my research choices, I found inspiration in the latest news cycles. Seeing as I’m supposed to either believe that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are a bunch of rude, dirt-encrusted ne’er-do-wells who just want to rob the rich or they’re the noble, progressive alternative to the crass and crotchety Tea Party, I decided on a textual analysis of the media coverage both groups received in the first 30 days. After presenting in class, I feel secure that this is simple enough to be manageable but could still be expanded upon in the future.
Personally, I would love to explore the lack of minority representation in both of these movements. As a black woman solidly within the demographic fit of the Occupy Wall Street protesters (middle class, college educated, etc.) I and several people I know like me is not going to spend precious time camping out in public to hold up signs and be a spectacle for media searching for a story. I’d rather be looking for a job and interviewing (if that was my issue like some of the protesters) or networking or anything other than standing still.
The second image that is of interest to me has to do with my industry.
According to the 2011 IBM Global Chief Marketing Officer Study (via Marketing Profs), there is a significant gap between the number of executives who report an high expected “level of complexity” in marketing and the actual number of those executives who feel prepared for this complexity. As the graph handily points out, this is a 31 percent gap. The rest of the report details the following slightly troublesome data:
- 82 percent of CMOs plan to increase the use of social media but 68 percent of CMOs reporting unpreparedness for social media. I wonder how they plan to get past this 14 percent deficit between those who recognize the need for more social media and those who are not prepared to do just that.
- Some communication folks may be tired of the “content is king” trope but it appears to be true. Categorized as “data explosion” and explained as “the increasing volume, variety, and velocity of data available from new digital sources such as social networks,” 71 percent of respondents indicated this as an area of unpreparedness (seeing a pattern here?).