Social Media Personal Blog

Literature Review: What is the importance and impact of the social media phenomena #TrashTag challenge?  From eating tide pods to jumping out of moving cars, internet challenges have been, at best, extremely silly and at worst, extremely dangerous. In today’s day and age, really anything can be brought to life through the use of social media and most times, these phenomenons spread like wildfire through the use of virtual platforms. However, the latest one – the #trashtag challenge – is getting people to clean up littered public and natural spaces. As evidence of their efforts, participants post before and after pictures on social media, then nominate another person to clean up a space, letting the process continue and flourish on. The Eco-Media Magic of the #TrashTag Although the #trashtag has been around since 2015, when it was part of a campaign by the outdoor pursuits brand UCO , it recently blew up as a result of a post on the community discussion forum Reddit – wh...

So like with every research project, gathering data is key and the more I search upon this #trashtag social media phenomina, the more information I find that helps me both sort and understand the impact of what this challenge has stirred upon the population. Recently, I came across a video that highlighted some of the top 10 locations that have been impacted by those individuals participating in the challenge and it's some of the greatest pictures and video coverage that shows sites before and after being hit by the #trashtag. These are larger locations that show piles and piles of trash built up over beaches, rivers, parks, etc. More importantly, you can physically see the impact on the wildlife with the overall amount of garbage that infests these locations and see just how much of a difference there was.  I was also able to find out the origin of the challenge. Although the #trashtag challenge has been around since 2015, when it was part of a campaign by the outdoor p...

Data Blog Post (pt. 1) TRENDS NOTICED A Younger Participation Rate According to the #trashtag challenge analytics, I can see that the “Trash Tag Challenge” is mostly being discussed by the 18-25 age range. Social insight on this data reveals that the youth are bringing the most awareness around the challenge. It was initially targeted towards young adults, and they seem to be receiving the message well by promoting positive social action across social media.  This connects to the recent uprise of climate awareness as it is now a huge topic of debate that has arisen from the newer, more younger generations. This could be because of two reasons, either: 1) youth are bringing the most awareness towards climate awareness or 2) younger individuals are more active with social media platforms. Of coarse there are the small handful of older adults that participated in the challenge as well, but the figures of participation are significantly lower than the youth population. Po...

Hello everyone! As finals approach, it's only natural that in my Social Media class, we have a Final Project as well. So, in regards to this, I have been assigned to pick a research project on whatever social media phenomenon that I find interesting and as wanting to look on the more positive powers of media platforms, I chose to focus on the #TrashTag challenge that has swept across the globe and influenced individuals of all ages to clean up trash from public areas and help promote a cleaner, healthier Earth. In my research project, I want to find out why the challenge became so successful and how it encourages people to get active in cleaning up their environments. Here is my proposed method section: First, I searched Twitter by searching for both the #TrashTag as well as #TrashChallenge as they both seem to correspond with each other and people freely switch between the two. In regards to when I will search, I can quite literally search any day at any time because it is a...