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dobranocka · 3 years ago

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Anyways, this will be ranty post, but... I don’t get what it is with promoting anti-intelectuallism on social media lately. To give a real life example - I’ve been following a pop culture blogger for a few years now, and it’s been fine, because I do enjoy hearing people’s analysis of Marvel movies or popular TV series. And yes, there is nothing wrong with enjoying these things. But then she started posting things like “programs to increase readership are ableist, because not everyone is able to/has time/can afford reading” (which - yes, I don’t think everyone has to love reading. But also yes, I do think that the fact that most people over the age of 18 don’t read even in one year is something to be worried about, and programs that aim to make reading more accessible are good, actually). And then she ranted about how she mostly reads YA and how amazing these books are and just promotes them endlessly and I... This person is over thirty. She also makes a living talking about culture. Like, I’m sorry, but saying that you’re only limiting your reading to one genre is... not a good look.

To be fair: I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with enjoying YA, or erotica, or fantasy, or whatever else you like to read - or watch, or what games you like to play, if reading isn’t your thing. But I do think there is something deeply wrong with how the promoted mode of interacting with culture is just choosing one piece of media you like and sticking with it - you like Marvel movies? Great, there are next twenty coming out! You enjoyed GoT? Here’s five TV series just like it! You liked Suzanne Collins? Here are twenty other books that are just like the Hunger Games, with differently named characters.

So here’s what I think: if the only thing you do after finishing education is WORK - ENGAGE WITH THE SAME MEDIA OVER AND OVER - SLEEP - REPEAT, then you are basically closing yourself in one box and declaring it done. Or, if you prefer, failing to provide your brain with appropriate enrichment. And I get that this is what is easy, and convenient, and it’s nicer to choose something that you know will bring you pleasure than actually risking something that will make your brain tired and require more reflection - but that’s why we should do that. We should read the books that we don’t understand, or don’t yet understand, or never read anything like it before. We should seek out authors that have different backgrounds than ours, came from different places in the world, write different genres. And there is so much to choose from! Like you don’t have to read Tolstoy or Shakespeare or Calderon just for cookie points - I mean, you could, if you want, but you don’t have to. There are so many books from contemporary authors - fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, whatever you want... Last month I read a twenty century coming of age novel from a Danish author I’ve never heard of before, and I was stuck how her description of a young women trying to escape from poverty, being limited by her gender, class and background, but at the same time missing the completely un-idyllic childhood were relevant to me, a person born a century later, in a different country, with completely different background.

And that’s what great about books - they give you a key to a life completely different than yours. I really do think literature - telling stories - is one of the most basic things humans do and most complete way we can relate to one another. And if you choose to listen to only one kind of stories, you will never learn anything new. And I don’t know how this can be considered a good thing.

#rant #personal #reading #literature #life choices #i guess #ok do you know what makes this even funnier #like the blogger i mentioned is always complaining about the lack of represantation in books #which can be a fair point #but like girl #you are the one who is choosing to read/promote only books from mainstream american authors #do you know how you can get more representation?#read authors who arent from USA #they do exist i promise

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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I was hoping you would be able to help me form a response when my family says they're sick of hearing of systemic racism and white privilege because THEY have had to work for everything and believe nothing got handed to them (true in the way they're thinking, but you know what I mean).

Welp. First, I applaud you for taking the initiative to engage in difficult conversations with your family, since the only way embedded racist ideas are going to get confronted in white society is if racist white people hear it from their friends and family. They are going to cheerily ignore protestors, academics, newsreaders, popular culture, and certainly politicians who say anything to the contrary, but it’s harder to ignore and brush aside when it’s coming from people who are directly within your own family group. They can still then ignore it, but at least you’re trying to do something that is not at all fun but which is deeply necessary, and good for you.

First, there are a few things for you to consider. Is this a case where they actually don’t know the difference, but are willing to learn, or is this essentially sealioning (where they act like they don’t know the difference, but they absolutely do, and put the emotional labor on you to extensively define and explain and educate while never intending to change their stances on anything). If it’s the former, then there is some point in engaging in dialogue with them. If it’s the latter, it’s a giant emotional trap that you are within your rights not to engage with until they signal that they’re willing to engage productively. You don’t have to educate someone who is categorically unwilling to be educated (especially when it’s often deliberate ignorance). As people like to say, Google is free, and it’s their responsibility to take the first steps to change. You can continue to talk with them, but yes, that is contingent on them actually standing a chance of listening to you and not just you wearing yourself out on something that they don’t want to actually hear (because it threatens them and makes them feel Personally Wrong, and white people don’t like that).

There have been various books written on why it’s so hard to talk to white people about racism, which you may be interested in checking out, not least the book "Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Renni Eddo-Lodge. Ibram X. Kendi has also written “How to Be An Antiracist,” one of the bestselling books of this summer, either of which would be useful either in shaping your own arguments or (if they’re receptive) giving to your family. Once again, this is contingent on them signalling that they’re actually willing to listen, and not just to make you do pointless emotional labor. These books are probably available from your public library (though there’s probably a waitlist) or in other easily available formats.

Next, it’s a basic tenet of an anti-racist education that white people have never had to do this kind of reckoning, and thus get whiny, defensive, guilt-tripping, and “it’s not about ME I’m a GOOD PERSON” when it comes up. This also rests on the damaging and deeply intertwined effects of racism and classism, which has to be understood if you’re going to talk about it. One of the greatest tricks that racist capitalism ever pulled is convincing poor white people that they had more in common with their filthy rich white masters (people whose way of life will never in a thousand years be anything like each other’s) simply because they shared the inherent racial “purity” of being white. There have been political studies written on how poor/undereducated/working class white people have become such a reliably Republican constituency, because they have been successfully manipulated to believe that the white overlords are their “people” and they will constantly vote against their own economic, social, and cultural interests in favor of enriching amoral white demagogues who beat the populist xenophobic drum. Then they blame black and brown people for society’s ills and for the reason that they stay poor, rather than the rampaging oligarchs awarding themselves massive tax breaks and billion-dollar bailouts and refusing to extend unemployment benefits in case people “make too much money” from not working, just to name the most recent example. They are so poisoned on populist politics and white supremacy, which assures them that they’re better than anyone else by virtue of being white, that they actively attack politicians and policy platforms and other social welfare initiatives that would materially improve their own lives as “un-American.” This is maddening and sometimes baffling, but it’s how it works. Whiteness trumps all, currently literally thanks to the Orange Fuhrer. Problems in life are the fault of the Other.

This isn’t to say that poor white people are “dumb” and just unable to realize it, because they’re caught in a system that has done this literally from the start of America. In the early 17th century, indentured laborers and slaves in the American colonies were in fact more likely to be white. (The word “slave” comes from “Slav,” since that was the predominant ethnicity of slaves in medieval Europe; i.e. white eastern Europeans.) But even despite the fact that they were unpaid laborers, they were still white and thus recognized as human by their white masters, and thus when slave ships began arriving, it was easier for everybody to simply outright demonize and dehumanize the black African slaves. The poor white indentured servants got to feel better than the black slaves simply for the fact of their whiteness. Their lives obviously sucked, but their whiteness was in fact a mitigating factor in the suckiness that it involved once it was easier to use “animalistic” black people. And we wonder why America can’t ever confront its racist history properly. As Kendi calls it in his other book, it is stamped from the beginning.

As it has been put before, white people can and often do have difficult lives, because late-stage capitalism devours its workers no matter what color they are, but their whiteness isn’t a factor in why their lives are difficult. They will never encounter racial prejudice, race-based hate crime, discrimination for housing, education, employment, bank loans, daily microaggressions and identity erasure, constantly racist tropes in the media, politicians fingering them as everything wrong with America/the world, casual prejudices or assumptions even from close friends, assumed criminality based just on their race -- etc etc. The list goes on and on. Just because you have a hardscrabble economic background does not mean that your life has been made harder by your race -- because if you’re white, it hasn’t. (And as noted, poor white people have consistently voted for megalomaniac white men who don’t give a shit about them but promise them that everything is fine or should be better for them because of their whiteness, and then blame minorities for being the source of their problems.)

I honestly wonder if racism would still be such a problem in America if we had a remotely more equitable economic system, because when you’re well off and have your basic needs consistently met and don’t need to worry that you’re one paycheck away from disaster, it’s harder to constantly be paranoid that your differently colored neighbors are stealing everything from you and the cause of all society’s ills. The historian Patrick Hyder Patterson wrote a very interesting book on material culture in Yugoslavia in the 20th century, where he basically argued that despite the spectacular collapse of the federation into the Yugoslavian wars of the 90s, things didn’t really go to hell until after the economy crashed following Josip Broz Tito’s death in 1980. While there were obviously ethnic fault lines and conflicts between Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Albanians, etc, when there wasn’t any money and any jobs and everyone thought everyone else was to blame, THAT is when the whole thing blew up into a genocidal civil war clusterfuck. Food for thought.

This is why people talk about economic justice and racial justice as going hand in hand. When there is a scarcity of resources and no social safety net, people are obviously more inclined to look for scapegoats and to blame someone for taking their entitlement (while still somehow refusing to blame the billionaires and corporate oligarch who are ACTUALLY stealing from them). They indeed actively resist any attempts to make their own lives better as being “socialist” or “un-American” and take pride in the fact that there’s absolutely jacksquat nothing (until of course, something like the coronavirus pandemic hits and it’s revealed just how many of us were always one missed paycheck away from disaster). Then when they need government assistance (while disdaining the government as tyrannical the rest of the time, unless it’s Trump’s actively tyrannical lot, but hey, we don’t have time to unpack all that) it’s still shameful and something they shouldn’t be using, instead of their basic entitlement to a decent life.

This country is poisoned on a lot of toxic beliefs, but this is one of the deepest-running one, and which will always get in the way of poor white people dealing with racism: their lives suck, but they have ALWAYS been told that despite that, they’re still better just for being white, which is their consolation prize for supporting white populists who actively rob them, and they haven’t even always consciously registered that. They just feel that if they’re “fine,” even if they’re not fine, then black people are just malcontents and criminals who can’t hack it. In 2016, there was a lot of ink spilled over how poor white people felt a sense of economic grievance and being left behind, which was why they voted for Trump, but... Trump was never going to do a damn thing about that??? He doesn’t actually do anything for his supporters except feed them his jingoistic Orange Nazi stump speeches. They voted for Trump to feel vindicated, not to actually improve their lives, and it’s damn clear by now that not only has he NOT improved their lives, he has no desire to do so. He just wants them to cheer for him and feed his ego, not fix any problems.

Basically, racism and capitalism and the American political system intersect in multiple deeply toxic ways to do precisely what you’re talking about; producing poor white people who feel that they shouldn’t be included in the reckoning with racism because if THEY worked hard and they don’t live in a mansion, somehow racism is fake and black people should just shut up and get a job etc etc. This is because poor white people have been systematically conditioned to support white supremacy at the direct expense of their own economic and social interests; it’s terrible, but that’s how it functions. They will never in a million years have anything in common with the (white) ruling class, but they still instinctively identify with them rather than people in their own deprived economic class who are different races or colors or religions. That is how white supremacy has supported the hyper-inequality of the industrial age, and vice verse, and it is one of capitalism’s best functions for survival, so it’s in the interests of the overlords to maintain it. Stop the workers from recognizing pan-racial solidarity based on economic grievance, and compete with each other and blame each other rather than the overarching system, easy!

Anyway. Once again, this is long. But in short, the attitudes your family are exemplifying are a direct result of both racism and classism as they have been deliberately cultivated in the American social and political system, and the interlocking causes and symptoms of both have to be recognized (and acknowledged) before they can get to dealing with that. I don’t know how that will go, and I don’t have an easy shortcut. But I’m glad you’re trying. Good luck.

#politics for ts #history of racism #long post #anonymous #ask

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socialjusticein2019-blog · 5 years ago

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Recently there has been a lot of attention given to the stagnate rate of Newstart payments to jobseekers in Australia. In the 2019 Australian Federal election there was some discussion around working wages and rates of government benefits remaining unmoved over the last decade, and that debate is presently ongoing. Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has been advocating for vulnerable people living in remote rural communities who are unable to access convenient amenities including hospitals and supermarkets. This article came as a surprise to me, as the National Party typically follow the Liberal party agenda, which has been to encourage all Newstart recipients to get a job. This article importantly gave a voice to those people who live typically don’t have their voices represented in mainstream media, which is what resonated with me.

“hegemonic ideologies give prominence to the dominant culture who seek to create a common sense view of the world, which serves their own interests.” (Rutherford, 2016)

Access to education, work, healthcare and knowledge are all key indicators to how successful people will be. Colonialism, as much as compulsory education from the 1900’s, has had significant influence on how the history of human experiences are taught (Rudolph, Sriprakash, Gerrard, 2018). Powerful knowledge, as opposed to ‘knowledge of the powerful’, allows access to knowledge that reflects the experience of the reader who has been outside of the dominant culture (Rutherford, 2016). Powerful knowledge for a portion of people on the Newstart allowance would allow them access to tertiary education, and the benefits that is connected to that; status, wealth, self-worth.

“Countries like Australia and Canada work through their colonial processes to reaffirm and reproduce possessiveness through indigenous dispossession and refusing sovereignty” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Indigenous Australians inhabit a large part of regional Australia, and thus they are vulnerable to the colonial systems of work and welfare that has been placed on them. The argument from Scott Morrison “the best form of welfare is a job” is drawn from hegemonic ideologies which serves the interests of those who are in a position to make sense of the world through their lens. Mr. Morrison’s view is consistent with the normal measurements of success in education, where everyone is placed on the bell curve, measured against ‘normal’ development.

Rather than suggesting everyone fits into the one goal of having a job, Mr. Morrison could seek to understand why and how these people find it so hard to get a job. People in power value particular characteristics, be that business acumen or marketing skills, as they are interested in designing society in a particular way, thus determining the value of all people (Rutherford, 2016). Those people who have desirable skills are encouraged and supported through our public and private institutions. In education there is a large cohort of young people who are being brought into the norm (inclusive mainstream education) as we are valuing the normal over the abnormal. Young and colleagues suggest, for instance, that specialisation is a means to consider ‘the features of the particular knowledge itself that is included in the curriculum and what it can do for those who have access to it’” (Young, Lambert, Roberts, 2014). Mr. Morrison and his colleagues could look to some of the examples of specialist education being run across the country as a guide for differentiating programs and offering access to everyone.

San Francisco has been at the heart of social change in America for the past 100 years. Berkeley University was an institution that became known as a destination for young people looking to be a part of social justice changes across the USA. This article explains that the tech industry takeover in San Francisco has left long term residents of San Francisco vulnerable to homelessness and displacement. As of January 2015, the average apartment rent within ten miles of San Francisco is $3,469, even higher than New York City (Welsh, 2015). Small businesses are also under pressure to survive in a climate that is more interested in consumables that are sought after by the wealthy. This is leading many to comment that the tech companies are dispossessing long term residents of San Francisco (Welsh, 2015). The producers of the cultural experience that has made the area so sought after are now unable to survive in an environment where the mainstream has identified the area as offering them an enriching and fulfilling experience as consumers.

Gentrification is a common experience for developed western countries, as people with disposable incomes seek a fulfilling cultural experience within some of the world’s most enticing cities. These cities - Berlin, Melbourne and San Francisco – are known for their fun, modern and ‘anything goes’ mentality, and that is why they are so attractive to people. But where is the benefit for long term residents of those cities? There is an expectation that local governments will maintain the fabrics of their community, while looking to the future in partnership with public and private interests (Glow, Johanson & Kershaw. 2004). Disadvantage is directly related to the number, and existence, of people who are advantaged (Schacht, 2001). Those who are disadvantaged as a result of gentrification are forced to become victims of a problem that they had not part in creating, there is no social justice for them.

In Melbourne, gentrification has impacted on the immigrants and young people who have made Footscray the exciting suburb it is today. Increasing rates of rental accommodation are a sign that housing is less affordable than it was previously, which is the case for most suburbs in the greater Melbourne area. As part of the More Yuppy Stuff Coming Soon: Gentrification, cultural policy, social inclusion and the arts paper, residents of Footscray were interviewed about their experience of gentrification, and one person made this comment:

It is usually seen that as the arts and multicultural (population] move out, yuppies move in. But it doesn’t matter who they are, they are still people who live in Maribyrnong. One thing that needs to be uncovered is ... how you can connect the gentrified people. The yuppies need to get out and engage with other people in the community. (Focus Group 2011) p503

Footscray has a large population of residents from EAL backgrounds, and their priorities are more aligned with accessing jobs and quality education for their children. They are not concerned with buying the newest Nike shoes, or spending $12 for a beer at a restaurant. As these residents are priced out of their communities, they will move to new areas with different schools, different communities and different job opportunities. These families have been excluded from their communities, and therefore excluded from opportunities to work and be educate in a familiar and well supported environment. Access to education may then be restricted to where they live, as their ability to travel to and from school may be limited by their income as well. These challenges for families from EAL backgrounds is a shared experience of many migrants living in large Australian cities like Sydney and Melbourne.

Emma Husar has just settled with Buzzfeed, out of court, in response to an article written on the online website Buzzfeed by journalist Alice Workman. Emma launched a defamation lawsuit late last year after an online article appeared when a confidential Labour party letter was leaked to Buzzfeed. The proceeding article from Alice Workman labelled Emma as “a slut who boasts about who she has had sex with, which includes other members of parliament and members of her staff” (McGowan, 2019). Emma alleges that she was ‘slut shamed’ in the article, and this lead to her ultimately being unable to successful contest her seat of Lindsay in the 2019 Federal election.

As a public figure, this incident instantly made the national media headlines, initially being reported on The Guardian online paper on Wednesday August 29, 2018. This caught the attention of the nation as it featured a story about a woman who was in a position of power and used that to her advantage. Over the past one and a half years, the #Metoo movement has given a platform to women who have been victims of men abusing their positions of power. This movement sprang into effect after the New York Times published the allegations against Harvey Weinstein on October 5, 2017. The Emma Husar story garnered national attention one year into the #Metoo movement, and it was the first allegation of a female Australian politician abusing her power.

Emma was not given a chance to respond to the leaked letter before the article was written, thus leaving her open to being judged by the general public. Social justice for women is always compared to those same justices being given to men, who are considered to be the dominant group within our established hegemonic structure. Schacht (2001) outlined 25 elements of daily life that demonstrated the negative advantages white middle class men have over their female counterparts. One of those elements included the labelling of women as ‘sluts’ and men as ‘studs’ when members of each sex engage in promiscuous, or even regular, sex (Schacht, 2001). Schacht’s list was created in response to the list compiled by Peggy Mcintosh (1989). A negative advantage is an unearned advantage and conferred dominance which subjects women to the dominant hierarchical structures which places their important and influence below a man’s (McIntosh, 2000).

Our schools are an environment where boys and girls can discuss gender roles, dominant cultural structures and how they view their place within those spaces. Since 2013 there has been talk of introducing a Safe Schools program for all students in Australian Schools to create safe and supportive schools for same sex-attracted, gender diverse and intersex young people. The Liberal and Labour parties cannot agree on how this should look in our Schools, so there has been a cut to the Federal funding for this program. The Victorian government has agreed to fund the program themselves, in a sign of their policy to promote inclusive practices with Schools. Emma Husar was the victim of unsubstantiated reporting as a result of a leaker letter. Our young people are open to exploitation as a result of their exposure to social media and online forums. A united national program aimed at addressing the negative advantages of white male privilege would equip our young people with the confidence to challenge the hegemonic structures laid before them.

Dylan Alcott is a celebrated Australian personality known for his individual sporting accomplishments, as well as his recent Logie award for ‘Best Newcomer’. These Instagram posts show the spaces that Dylan is working in as official ambassador for the rights of people with disabilities. Dylan is a campaigner for change as the leader of the Dylan Alcott foundation, and this puts him into contact with the most influential members of Western society, the Royal family. These posts are not linked to his sporting achievements, nor is there any mention of his sponsorship deals, but his determination to succeed in the sporting arena has given him the chance to access these spaces. I chose these images as they show how an individual can use their social status to advocate for change tirelessly, while also navigating the political and social media platforms that are in front of him.

The ‘Remove the Barrier’ campaign is specifically dedicated to changing the experiences of disabled people in the workplace. Dylan is using the language of the hegemonic culture (Rutherford, 2016); “disability”, as this conversation is happening within the dominant culture, and his audience is not yet open to Threshold concepts (Rutherford, 2016) around disabilities. The language used by Dylan supports deficit assumptions (Barton, 2003), but this says more about the hegemonic culture we live in as opposed to Dylan’s own views on the subject. Dylan has been through transformative critical consciousness where he has “political clarity in understanding the social and political relations that drive oppression and the structure of their own life” (Gonsalves, 2007, p. 16).

Dylan is aiming to open the discussion around social justice for people who have been excluded from mainstream society by physical and psychological barriers, and his actions will create a space for people within the hegemonic culture to go through the troublesome stage (Rutherford, 2016) of the threshold concept. In this space the individual will accept and understand new concepts and social inequities, which will hopefully lead them to a change in practice or understanding. Dylan has commented on his initial experiences as a young man with a disability;

“I've been in a wheelchair my whole life. I hated it. One of the reasons I hated it was because when I turned on the TV I never saw anybody like me.”

This experience motivated him to create his own narrative, separate from the labels and experiences that have come before him. As an educator of students with an ASD diagnosis, I work with people who are defined by something they were born in to. The labels that they have been given should not dictate their experience as human beings, and this can be supported by using positive role models in the classroom for them to draw inspiration from. The DET has spent a lot of time developing the Careers Curriculum framework, and this is a useful tool for educators in specialist settings to draw from when thinking about the continuum of learning for our young people.

Brexit is a political issue that has divided Great Britain over the past 2 years. This issue has been one of the biggest global stories coming from the UK in recent years. This meme is suggesting that the Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage has promised everyone something from their wildest dreams in exchange for their trust in him to deliver a successful departure from the European Union. This meme was able to succinctly tell me that the referendum was won by the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign not because of their superior planning and integrity, but because of the false promises they made to the general public. Social justice can be described as an ideal way to judge how we all should live (Greene, 2008). By this description, it is primarily the job of governments and the courts to judge what is deemed ideal or appropriate.

British citizens will be affected once they have left the European Union. European retailers including ASDA and ALDI will be subject to changes in tariffs and taxes for goods, and this will impact on how much food will cost for those customers who choose to shop there. Local agreements between Britain and European countries regarding visas will be affected as well. While the promises were made to the average blue collar worker that they could “dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom” (BBC, 2016). While it is true that everyone was invited to take part in the decision making process, through a referendum, was the campaigning from both sides accurate and honest?

“Personally chosen moral principles are also principles of justice, the principles any member of a society would choose for the society if he had not known what his position was to be in that society” (1973, p208)

Many arguments could be made to highlight the importance of national governments looking after the interests of their citizens, but many arguments could also be made to expect that we should all move beyond self-interest to consider our responsibility as global citizens (Greene, 2008). Self-efficacy is essential for there to be collective efficacy in a large group.

Victorian teachers are supported to teach all students across the identified learning areas - maths, literacy, personal social capabilities, critical and creative thinking and humanities. Teachers also need to make time to teach students that we should be living in a fair, balanced and equitable society. All teachers have a responsibility to parents, students, schools and the department of education to deliver a fulfilling and meaningful educational program for all students, so we should reflect on the real life examples of social justice when forming connections with our students and families (Greene, 2008). My teaching practice continues to grow over time as I am looking to create authentic connections with my students, even though we come from different suburbs, countries, religions and socio-economic backgrounds. Schools are the perfect environment for people to come together and discuss issues of significance for them (Habernas, 1979).

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maritzaerwin · 5 years ago

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Why Should You Join More MOOCs?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were once seen as a compromise on the quality of education in academic circles and employers. But as more and more schools and colleges have closed down because of the coronavirus pandemic, they have become a necessity.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the education’s digital divide like never before. It has also become the largest experiment in online learning worldwide. Online education has become the only means to instruct children and youth now.

Here, we will discuss why everyone should explore MOOCs as a way to enrich themselves during these stressful times:

Choose What to Study, When to Study, and How to Study

edX, the popular MOOC platform, is a consortium led by top universities of the world like Harvard and MIT. It released its first MOOC on ‘Circuits and Electronics’ (6.002x) in March 2012. The researchers analyzed 155,000 students who registered for the online course and made many interesting revelations.

Source: flickr.com

The MOOC included a set of lecture sequences that were less than 10 minutes long on average. These lectures were released every week and included illustrations, text, and equations. After each lecture video, the MOOC included an online exercise to quickly practice the concept discussed in the video.

The course also included:

tutorials (akin to small-group recitations),

a textbook in electronic form,

a discussion forum for students, and

a Wiki with additional resources.

A MOOC student had to earn grades through completing:

homework assignments,

online laboratory assignments,

a midterm exam, and

a final exam.

The researchers found that while students used instructional resources (like textbooks, video lectures, and online exercises) more on weekends, they did their assignments just ahead of the deadline. After each exam, a drop was noted in the use of the electronic textbook.

Weekends are the time when students have more spare time. Assignment submission deadlines set a state of emergency to disrupt procrastination in students. 90% of students just viewed the threads on the discussion forum or delved into discussions while solving homework problems.

Researchers noted that while solving assignments, students relied more on lecture videos and discussions. But when taking an exam (which is open-source in a MOOC and allows you to view all available resources), they relied more on the textbook.

The study reveals that MOOCs give more flexibility to students to decide:

when and where they want to study,

which resources to use, and

in which order these resources should be used.

MOOCs Make Education Accessible to Everyone

In the digital economy, new-age skills, practices, and innovations have become even more relevant. Our information systems, including new, media, and academia, have become more accessible. They have also become more open and individualized. As McAuley et al. noted in their paper ‘The MOOC Model for Digital Practice‘:

‘The MOOC is open and invitational. No one who wishes to participate is excluded.’

The paper also points out since MOOCs have several hundred to several thousand participants at once, they are a great way to find someone with specific expertise and similar interests. Individuals can use a range of collaborative software environments to share and collaborate with such people.

Another research published last year confirmed that the key advantages of MOOCs for university students were:

wide offerings,

open access to everyone,

free access to audiovisual materials, and

networking opportunities for participating students.

MOOCs are a Great Way of Continuous Learning

One can never stop learning – whether it is about personal development or professional environment. Today, when technology is changing at such a rapid rate, adding new skills to your portfolio has become even more relevant.

Online courses allow you to join the course of your choice from the best mentors or trainers worldwide as well as from the best universities in the world for free at a very affordable price. These courses can translate to more opportunities for you in the job market.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

MOOCs also pave your way to career advancement. If you are already working somewhere, you can enroll in a massive open online course of your choice, upgrade your skills and knowledge, and increases your chances of landing a promotion.

Helen Eagleton, in her article, ‘5 important reasons to invest in Lifelong Learning‘ advises that a step as simple as learning a foreign language can spark curiosity in you about the associated culture and people. It not only helps you communicate effectively across cultures and dead with foreign clientele but also makes you more engaged and less prejudiced.

New Skills Can Help You in Professional Development

Today, employers demand advanced computer and project management skills irrespective of which profession you choose.

For example, a finance specialist who can program trading systems or develop machine learning programming codes to fine-tune predictive analytics available in the market will naturally have an advantage over his/her competitors. MOOC platforms like edX and Coursera many programs free of cost. Other platforms that offer paid online courses (like Udemy) also offer courses that are high in demand.

Ellie has rightly mentioned in her article that excellent language skills go a long way in increasing your employability. If you are a foreign student and English is your foreign language, you can take online courses to master the language. Or you can learn other languages in your free time online and be more relevant to employers with businesses or trade links in other parts of the world.

Other courses that one can learn online to fast-track their career path may include:

3D Printing.

Artificial Intelligence.

Big Data.

Blockchain Technology.

Extended Reality Robotics.

Internet of Things.

Unlock Your Destiny by Improving Your Emotional Intelligence

The co-founder of GoAssignmentHelp, says, “Emotional intelligence is what sets high performers apart from their peers.” Harvard Business Review also agrees that you need to have the ability to understand and manage your emotions as well as of those around you to be a good leader. MOOCs that can teach you collaboration, negotiation skills, how to manage stress, how to coach teams, and how to give feedback go a long way in paving your success path for you.

Many popular MOOC platforms offer leadership courses. EdX offers a course on ‘Empathy and Emotional Intelligence at Work’.

FutureLearn offers a MOOC on ‘Developing Cultural Intelligence for Leadership’.

The University of Pennsylvania offers a ‘Foundation of Positive Psychology‘ at Coursera. All these courses can help you in overcoming personality flaws that may be acting as a barrier to your professional as well as personal happiness.

Creativity is also an aspect of your personality that can help you solve problems and exploit opportunities. And it is not something reserved for the highly gifted. There are proven ways to help you become more creative and innovative at work. ‘Creativity, Innovation, and Change‘ is a very popular course on Coursera.

More than 200,000 people from more than 190 countries have already attended it. 67% of them got a tangible career benefit from it while 25% got a promotion or a pay raise due to it.

The University of Queensland is offering ‘Design Thinking and Creativity for Innovation’ on edX. It is meant for everyone – from teachers to entrepreneurs to managers in small or large organizations. This course aims to help people use their creativity and design thinking skills to find opportunities for innovation and how to build organizations to support such creative and innovative thinking.

If you are in quarantine, use this opportunity to reflect on your shortcomings and find MOOCs to turn them into your strengths.

Become a Global Citizen by Mastering Intercultural Communication

Many businesses are operating in many countries these days. Their workforce is divided – online and offline. Communicating with each other across borders has become easy and fast with the help of technology. Still, interactions become complicated between people of different cultures.

MOOCs on Intercultural Communication can help you understand the dynamics and dimensions of intercultural interactions that can lead to conflict. When you understand communication styles, stereotypes, and generalizations in different countries, it becomes easier to plan successful intercultural communication strategies and orientations to help your organization work with cross-border talent and attract new markets easily.

Taking online courses on intercultural communication can help you understand the personal, social, cultural, institutional, and professional aspects of communication in different contexts. They also help you have a better grasp of the history and psychology of the country you focus on. It can help build your confidence and increase your adaptability in cross-cultural environments.

It can also help you professionally by making you more suitable for leadership positions in cross-cultural work teams or in situations where you have to deal with partners and clients across borders.

Whether you dream to study abroad or travel around the world, intercultural communication courses can help you learn and experience the world and its people more.

Be Fit With MOOCs – Yes! That’s Possible

Mary Beth Kavanagh offers you a course on ‘Designing Your Personal Weight Loss Plan‘ on Coursera. Starting from April 17, 2020, one can enroll in this course for free. This 5-week course offers you all the tools you need to design an individualized evidence-based weight loss program.

Many other MOOCs can help you achieve your fitness goals during this Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown without stepping out of your homes. Some help you dispel myths about diet and nutrition. Others focus on exercising hacks to make you fit and strong in less time.

Stanford University is offering an online course called ‘Staying Fit’ meant for adults interested in learning more about:

healthy eating.

exercise, and

sleep habits.

This course provides students with evidence-based, affordable, and easily accessible tools to lead a healthy and happy life in the long term.

Other popular fitness MOOCs are related to:

science of exercise.

understanding our vital signs.

understanding psychology fundamentals, and

how to improve our brain health.

You can also find bodybuilding classes online for beginners. They can help you shed fat, build muscles, and get ripped. These courses offer you nutrition plans, workout plans, and motivation to help you achieve your body goals easily.

Online Degrees Are More Acceptable in the Job Market Today

Until the last decade, many employers used to wonder about the credibility and authenticity of online degrees. They used to wonder if a candidate cheated during his or her online exam. But online exam proctoring through webcam, mic, and access to the students’ screen has pushed such worries aside. Now, students from a remote location take an online proctored test.

San Jose mentions three ways in which proctoring is done in an online exam:

Live Online Proctoring — Here, the invigilator can monitor up to 16 or 32 candidates live at a time through the screen share feeds and audio-video feeds of students. They can authenticate students and keep an eye on any suspicious activities that may signal to cheat. This process is a bit expensive and not scalable to cover hundreds of online students though.

Recorded Proctoring — Here, no real-time invigilator is required. The audio-video and screen share feeds of all candidates taking the test are recorded. They are played by proctors at 3-20 times the speed of the recording to check out for any red flags. While recorded proctoring saves time, we still need humans here.

Advanced Automated Proctoring— In this method, the system uses advanced audio and video analytics to raise a red flag when it spots any suspicious activity while recording the candidates’ audio-video and screen share feeds. Some of the things that it focuses on are:

enough light in the room to record suspicious objects or voice activity in the background,

face recognition for student authentication,

limit candidate’s login to a specific IP address,

blocking students’ access of the device to access other applications or use copy-paste options, and

the focus of students on the test screen during the duration of the test.

Such advanced systems help strengthen the trust of employers in online degrees one acquires.

So, whether you are a graduate looking to add more skills to your kitty or a worker who wants a chance at a better career, MOOCs offer you new hope and open up new opportunities for you.

The post Why Should You Join More MOOCs? appeared first on CareerMetis.com.

Why Should You Join More MOOCs? published first on https://skillsireweb.tumblr.com/

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otisoverturf · 6 years ago

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National identity is dead: how should brands react?

In a time plagued by social media and polarised politics, millennial consumers are increasingly connecting with their interests rather than their nationalities. Focused on finding their tribe, Gen Z are leading a global transformation and reimagining the way in which we live. More people are identifying with their home cities rather than their home countries, but perhaps this shouldn’t cause concern for marketers?

In the national identity is dead: how should brands react? panel discussion, held in partnership with Vizeum Globalisation and hosted by The Drum’s founder Gordon Young during Cannes Lions, a debate ensued among panellists questioning what effect these new identities will have on cities, how people communicate and preparing brands for the inevitable change ahead.

Emergence of platform-society

“We’re moving into the platform-based revolution,” said Thomas Le Thierry, global president at Vizeum. “Everybody talked about the digital era - which was a means to an end - but this transformation isn’t about going from analogue to digital. We’re moving from a linear world where everything was linear - production lines, industrial lines, political lines and editorial lines - into a platform-based environment.”

Le Thierry thinks that as population numbers increase, with an estimated world figure of 11bn people expected to inhabit the planet by the turn of the century, mainly in urban areas, this will pave the way for the emergence of mega cities. Predicting that 100 million people could live in one single city by 2100, he thinks that platform-focused societies could act as the solution to mega cities and help to keep people connected.

Spotify’s global executive creative director, Alex Bodman, agrees: “Gen Z are not really associating themselves with a particular nationality; instead they’re a generation that’s more diverse and interested in finding their tribes, which makes sense because they’ve got an online connected culture, with access to platforms like ours that give them diverse points of view and ways of connection.”

But knowing how to tap into these communities is important and while many assume that it’s through online means alone, Bodman assures marketers that they shouldn’t underestimate the power of traditional methods. Spotify, thanks to data collected on their customers, decided to amplify their message using none other than out of home medium; billboards, citing it as a relevant and highly efficient way of reaching people locally. Using the example of the Justin Bieber’s hit song Sorry, which was plastered across billboards in Williamsburg as it was the neighbourhood’s most popular song of the year in 2016, Bodman revealed that the campaign’s success actually succeeded in translating internationally.

“The campaign was a big hit in New York but the interesting thing was that it then spread,” said Bodman. “It’s not about nations gathering nationalities any more. Bieber posted about it on twitter, then hundreds of thousands of people posted about it. It was on that success that we had the confidence to post more in OOH the year after. That talks to what mega cities are developing for brands and creativity; it also talks to the kind of data and platforms and the power it can leverage when used in the right way.”

Fluid identities

While Gen Z may identify with more fluid nationalities and strive to find their ‘tribes’ instead, brands can tap into these emerging communities and interests. “Obviously from a business and creative point of view, we spend a lot of time thinking about Gen Z,” said Bodman. “Not just thinking about them, but connecting with them and providing them with the music and culture they love.”

Le Thierry agrees, “Cities should reflect culture and create an environment where clients can create meaningful connections with young consumers. They’re looking for new communities and points of view and in that respect, data becomes the genesis of our business. You have to think about what’s relevant to that individual; it might not be important to big city culture.”

Le Thierry understands why Gen Z are moving away from this sense of a national identity. He’s noticed that people living in big cities are getting increasingly impatient. “They’re reacting against something,” he said. “Often they don’t think that politicians are getting to the agenda quick enough. It’s an opportunity for brands to understand what this transformation of the world means and to move into the space once occupied by big cities.”

Where do brands fit in?

Beyond connection, brands can also offer Gen Z solutions to improve their way of life and make their lives easier. Posterscope’s chief client officer Gill Huber said: “We are seeing smart city infinitives emerge. They need to enrich the lives of the citizens living there, so it’s about understanding how we move from slow to fast; from cumbersome ways of moving around the city to a more mobile approach; high energy consumption to low energy. The point about platforms is really interesting because it means that existing start-up brands can begin to take over this space.”

Huber cites Uber as a prime example. The globally-used brand currently acts as a local taxi service, but she suggests that there’s scope for it to evolve and even revolutionise its industry – could it offer a rental service instead?

“We’re lucky because the data we have tells us how people are moving about in cities, what their needs are and what they are doing at different times,” she said. “As consumers, we want what we want when we want it and the context is only going to get more important. Brands that can make life easier for citizens of those cities, on different platforms will do best.”

Bodman agrees: “There’s a huge opportunity if brands realise the incredible dichotomy between local and global consumers as a result of the nation state going away and tribes emerging. Take music for instance, there’s huge global tribes built around musicians who identify with each other more strongly than someone with the same nationality. There’s a really interesting thing about our need to be local; that connection, knowing where we came from and our sense of place. But there’s a huge global opportunity coming out of this Gen Z tribal mentality where you can connect seamlessly with people that you never could before.”

Thinking long-term

But knowing how to marry a brand’s intent while appealing to a consumer’s tribal interest is key. Consumers are becoming increasingly interested in the full life cycle of a product – wanting to see brands think everything through sustainably, from conception to the end of its life, otherwise marketers may face culpability.

“Brands will find it very self-serving if they meet the needs of future audiences and if their brand is actually going to resonate,” said Bodman. “It’s important to show them that they’re doing something to invest in their future.”

As megacities continue to evolve, the panellists recognise that it’s a dual responsibility they hold with the mega cities to ensure that these questions are met and dealt with in a way that is suitable for consumers. Some companies, like Disney adds Bodman, are already being ousted from working in some countries based on changes to legislation. This means that if they don’t change their practices going forward, they’re likely to fall behind.

“For brands to be involved in cities and the lives of its citizens, they need to create better experiences and engage better,” said Huber. “Otherwise they risk getting it wrong or doing very linear changes and expecting to make a difference. Just doing one thing rather than look at the consequences of that action could have dire repercussions.”

The post National identity is dead: how should brands react? appeared first on Social Juicebox.

Source: https://socialjuicebox.com/ National identity is dead: how should brands react? published first on https://socialjuicebox.com/

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simplemlmsponsoring · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/7-efficiency-boosting-martech-tools-platform-features-b2b-marketers-need-to-consider/

7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider

Back in 2011, roughly 150 marketing technology solutions were on the market. Today, the growth of this sector and it’s options are staggering. In fact, according to Scott Brinker, the mastermind behind the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, the martech landscape has grown an impressive 27% in 2018 to include nearly 7,000 solutions. Of course, B2B are rejoicing at the increased number of solutions at their disposal. Many have been steadily adding new tools and solutions to their martech stacks as the need arises to help streamline operations, automate the mundane, quickly gain new insights, track campaigns, and generate greater results. In other words, these tools offer big efficiency gains, giving you the time, insights, or resources to make better marketing decisions. But whether your martech stack seems sturdy or you’re actively on the hunt for new tools, you may not be keeping up with the latest and greatest tools that you have yet to tap into. Or perhaps you’re missing out on some of the great features that your current go-to tools offer. So, to help you get the most out of your martech stack and add to its effectiveness, below we highlight a handful of martech tools and platform features that you maybe haven’t thought of or haven’t heard of to drive efficiency (that can drive better results). 3 Tools That Might Be Under Your Radar #1 – Nimble Today, 91% of organizations with over 10 employees have a CRM system. And for B2B companies, a CRM is often a basic essential. But are you leveraging it to execute account-based marketing (ABM) programs or build relationships with your audience over social? With traditional CRM systems, this becomes hard to do as there usually isn’t a social selling or marketing function. Nimble, a social selling and marketing CRM provider that’s been improving and iterating on its product since 2009, promises to change that. After integrating with your email, Nimble identifies the contacts that need to be entered into the CRM system and matches them with social profiles. This enriches your contact information to much more than just a name, title, and email address. In addition, this social integration allows you to track how your customers are interacting with your brand over social, as well as enables you to scour social networks for potential prospects. You can also segment your customers in Nimble and send them customized email messages, increasing the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns and saving you time. Image credit: Nimble #2 – FeedOtter* Content marketing is no longer a shiny new object. It’s core to B2B marketing strategies. In fact, Content Marketing Institute (CMI) stopped asking marketers whether or not they use it in their most recent research report. But as a result of wide adoption, it’s a well-known fact that brands have content and lots of it—and cutting through the clutter and making meaningful connections with your audience can be a big pain point. This often requires a healthy, smart mix of email marketing campaigns, on-page optimization, social media amplification, paid social/search, and more. FeedOtter has one of the easiest and most efficient ways to consistently get your content out there, and you don’t even have to think twice about it. Through an integration with your marketing automation platform (Pardot or Marketo), FeedOtter is able to automate RSS email and send it through your ESP or marketing automation software. The tool takes your RSS content and curates it automatically into a beautiful, templated email campaign. And for a more customized approach, you can pick and choose which pieces of content you want to include in your emails to create a personalized blog digest or newsletter. Image credit: Medium * FeedOtter is a TopRank Marketing Client #3 – RivalIQ Competitive research is a routine task for any B2B marketer. But knowing what your competitors are publishing, how they’re interacting with customers, what their customers are saying about them, and more takes an incredible amount of time and research. However, there’s a tool that can help eliminate the need for extensive manual research. Since 2013, RivalIQ has provided competitive social media analytics that allow you to see exactly where you stand in relation to your competitors. You can see how quickly they’re gaining followers, how often they post over social, what their top messages were, what their average engagement rate is, and more. In fact, you can even see which of your competitor’s posts were paid promotions, giving you insight into their social media strategy. With this information on hand, you can see if you’re moving ahead or lagging behind in performance, allowing you to make adjustments to your social strategy on the fly. Image credit: RivalIQ 4 Underutilized Features From Your Favorite Tools #1 – BuzzSumo’s Question Analyzer According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 Report, 55% of marketers say that content creation is their top priority. Cranking out content is easier said than done, however. You can’t just put out content for content’s sake, you need to make sure your content actually answers a customer question or solves a buyer’s pain point—something we often refer to as best-answer content. BuzzSumo has been around for a while, but their Question Analyzer was just released in 2017 and it can help you ensure that the content you’re creating serves a real, specific need. Just enter in a keyword you want to target, and BuzzSumo will scour online forums, social media, Amazon, and Q&A sites to surface the most popular questions people ask using that term or phrase. As a B2B marketer, this is critical information to have that can help shape your content marketing strategy and monitor the topics and questions your buying audience is asking. And this feature can help you gather intel quickly. Image credit: BuzzSumo #2 – SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool SEMRush is easily one of our favorite search marketing tools here at TopRank Marketing. Why? They’re constantly releasing new features that help us create better content and make more effective optimizations. One such feature is the Keyword Magic Tool in their SEO Toolkit. The Keyword Magic Tool has been around for the past couple of years, however, SEMRush has been expanding the tool to make it bigger and badder than ever before. The tool’s database is now home to 7.7 billion keywords, which the company says is the largest in the world. There are now 118 country databases, too. The tool is one of our go-to resources for informing our SEO strategies or coming up with new content ideas, saving time and providing meaningful insights. Instead of having to search each individual keyword we could target, a single search in the Keyword Magic Tool will gather all of the related keywords, their monthly search volumes, their competition scores, and even filter them based on categories and questions. Image credit: SEMRush #3 – Google Analytics’ Custom Dashboards Google Analytics (GA) is included in nearly every marketer’s toolkit in order to track their website performance, engagement, and so on. But GA is loaded with features and tools that can help you be more productive—and you might not even be leveraging them. For example, a top GA pain point can be the time it takes time to navigate through the platform to find the results you’re looking for. Plus, the reports take time to customize, load, and integrate with other data sources. This is where GA’s custom dashboards come in handy as they allow you to aggregate the data you actually care about and put it into one easy table. You don’t need to dig into several different reports to find what you’re looking for. Instead, you can create a dashboard with all of the information you need on a single page. And you can create several of them, allowing you to create segmented and tailored reports based on your specific KPIs. If you’re already using custom dashboards, you should be asking yourself if you have an opportunity to do more. For example, at TopRank Marketing we have custom dashboards for each of our core services areas. #4 – Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker To grow your site’s organic traffic, increasing the quantity and quality of your rankings are a top KPI. But with rankings changing each and every day, your ranking performance is hard to track without a tool to do it with. Now, well-known SEO tool, Ahrefs, can track your rankings and historical rankings for you. Just last year, Ahrefs released their new Rank Tracker to help you keep tabs on your rankings and the rankings of your competitors—without an immense time commitment. This tool is especially helpful as it allows you to see your all-time historical rankings for each page of your site and even allows you to segment your rankings based on keyword group, position, SERP type, and more. Want to know how many featured snippets you have? The Rank Tracker can tell you that, too. Image credit: Ahrefs Stacking Up Your MarTech Tools New marketing tools and features are being constantly released, and it’s up to you to evaluate them to see if they’re a good fit for your team and your overall marketing goals. To help spare you from having to do all of the work yourself, the above tools and features are some of the most helpful that we’ve come across. For more new technologies that can help improve your marketing productivity, check out our list of 54 Artificial Intelligence Powered Marketing Tools. What emerging marketing tools or new features for old favorites have caught your eye recently? Tell us in the comments section below.

The post 7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

Read more: toprankblog.com

#content #features #help #social #their #time #tool #tools #your #COPYWRITING

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samuelpboswell · 6 years ago

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7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider

3 Tools That Might Be Under Your Radar

#1 - Nimble

Today, 91% of organizations with over 10 employees have a CRM system. And for B2B companies, a CRM is often a basic essential. But are you leveraging it to execute account-based marketing (ABM) programs or build relationships with your audience over social? With traditional CRM systems, this becomes hard to do as there usually isn’t a social selling or marketing function. Nimble, a social selling and marketing CRM provider that’s been improving and iterating on its product since 2009, promises to change that. After integrating with your email, Nimble identifies the contacts that need to be entered into the CRM system and matches them with social profiles. This enriches your contact information to much more than just a name, title, and email address. In addition, this social integration allows you to track how your customers are interacting with your brand over social, as well as enables you to scour social networks for potential prospects. You can also segment your customers in Nimble and send them customized email messages, increasing the effectiveness of your ABM campaigns and saving you time. Image credit: Nimble

#2 - FeedOtter*

Content marketing is no longer a shiny new object. It’s core to B2B marketing strategies. In fact, Content Marketing Institute (CMI) stopped asking marketers whether or not they use it in their most recent research report. But as a result of wide adoption, it’s a well-known fact that brands have content and lots of it—and cutting through the clutter and making meaningful connections with your audience can be a big pain point. This often requires a healthy, smart mix of email marketing campaigns, on-page optimization, social media amplification, paid social/search, and more. FeedOtter has one of the easiest and most efficient ways to consistently get your content out there, and you don’t even have to think twice about it. Through an integration with your marketing automation platform (Pardot or Marketo), FeedOtter is able to automate RSS email and send it through your ESP or marketing automation software. The tool takes your RSS content and curates it automatically into a beautiful, templated email campaign. And for a more customized approach, you can pick and choose which pieces of content you want to include in your emails to create a personalized blog digest or newsletter. Image credit: Medium * FeedOtter is a TopRank Marketing Client

#3 - RivalIQ

Competitive research is a routine task for any B2B marketer. But knowing what your competitors are publishing, how they’re interacting with customers, what their customers are saying about them, and more takes an incredible amount of time and research. However, there’s a tool that can help eliminate the need for extensive manual research. Since 2013, RivalIQ has provided competitive social media analytics that allow you to see exactly where you stand in relation to your competitors. You can see how quickly they’re gaining followers, how often they post over social, what their top messages were, what their average engagement rate is, and more. In fact, you can even see which of your competitor's posts were paid promotions, giving you insight into their social media strategy. With this information on hand, you can see if you’re moving ahead or lagging behind in performance, allowing you to make adjustments to your social strategy on the fly. Image credit: RivalIQ

4 Underutilized Features From Your Favorite Tools

#1 - BuzzSumo’s Question Analyzer

According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 Report, 55% of marketers say that content creation is their top priority. Cranking out content is easier said than done, however. You can’t just put out content for content’s sake, you need to make sure your content actually answers a customer question or solves a buyer's pain point—something we often refer to as best-answer content. BuzzSumo has been around for a while, but their Question Analyzer was just released in 2017 and it can help you ensure that the content you’re creating serves a real, specific need. Just enter in a keyword you want to target, and BuzzSumo will scour online forums, social media, Amazon, and Q&A sites to surface the most popular questions people ask using that term or phrase. As a B2B marketer, this is critical information to have that can help shape your content marketing strategy and monitor the topics and questions your buying audience is asking. And this feature can help you gather intel quickly. Image credit: BuzzSumo

#2 - SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool

SEMRush is easily one of our favorite search marketing tools here at TopRank Marketing. Why? They’re constantly releasing new features that help us create better content and make more effective optimizations. One such feature is the Keyword Magic Tool in their SEO Toolkit. The Keyword Magic Tool has been around for the past couple of years, however, SEMRush has been expanding the tool to make it bigger and badder than ever before. The tool’s database is now home to 7.7 billion keywords, which the company says is the largest in the world. There are now 118 country databases, too. The tool is one of our go-to resources for informing our SEO strategies or coming up with new content ideas, saving time and providing meaningful insights. Instead of having to search each individual keyword we could target, a single search in the Keyword Magic Tool will gather all of the related keywords, their monthly search volumes, their competition scores, and even filter them based on categories and questions. Image credit: SEMRush

#3 - Google Analytics’ Custom Dashboards

Google Analytics (GA) is included in nearly every marketer's toolkit in order to track their website performance, engagement, and so on. But GA is loaded with features and tools that can help you be more productive—and you might not even be leveraging them. For example, a top GA pain point can be the time it takes time to navigate through the platform to find the results you’re looking for. Plus, the reports take time to customize, load, and integrate with other data sources. This is where GA’s custom dashboards come in handy as they allow you to aggregate the data you actually care about and put it into one easy table. You don’t need to dig into several different reports to find what you’re looking for. Instead, you can create a dashboard with all of the information you need on a single page. And you can create several of them, allowing you to create segmented and tailored reports based on your specific KPIs. If you're already using custom dashboards, you should be asking yourself if you have an opportunity to do more. For example, at TopRank Marketing we have custom dashboards for each of our core services areas.

#4 - Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker

To grow your site’s organic traffic, increasing the quantity and quality of your rankings are a top KPI. But with rankings changing each and every day, your ranking performance is hard to track without a tool to do it with. Now, well-known SEO tool, Ahrefs, can track your rankings and historical rankings for you. Just last year, Ahrefs released their new Rank Tracker to help you keep tabs on your rankings and the rankings of your competitors—without an immense time commitment. This tool is especially helpful as it allows you to see your all-time historical rankings for each page of your site and even allows you to segment your rankings based on keyword group, position, SERP type, and more. Want to know how many featured snippets you have? The Rank Tracker can tell you that, too. Image credit: Ahrefs

Stacking Up Your MarTech Tools

New marketing tools and features are being constantly released, and it’s up to you to evaluate them to see if they’re a good fit for your team and your overall marketing goals. To help spare you from having to do all of the work yourself, the above tools and features are some of the most helpful that we’ve come across. For more new technologies that can help improve your marketing productivity, check out our list of 54 Artificial Intelligence Powered Marketing Tools. What emerging marketing tools or new features for old favorites have caught your eye recently? Tell us in the comments section below.

The post 7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2018/12/martech-efficiency-tools/

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christopheruearle · 6 years ago

Text

7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider

3 Tools That Might Be Under Your Radar

#1 - Nimble

#2 - FeedOtter*

#3 - RivalIQ

4 Underutilized Features From Your Favorite Tools

#1 - BuzzSumo’s Question Analyzer

#2 - SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool

#3 - Google Analytics’ Custom Dashboards

#4 - Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker

Stacking Up Your MarTech Tools

The post 7 Efficiency-Boosting Martech Tools & Platform Features B2B Marketers Need to Consider appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

0 notes

citizentruth-blog · 6 years ago

Text

The Hidden Tribes of America, the Cultural Revolution Underway, and Why We’re Not as Divided as You Think We Are

I first realized something in America was changing back in November 2015. My family was on vacation in New Zealand to visit my sister who was studying abroad there. A Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump, was gaining in popularity on the right. Politics came up. I defended the Donald and I came under attack from my sibling. I became far too defensive. Things got heated and personal and have in the intermittent months since then. We haven’t talked politics for quite some time now. With Trump’s rise to the White House, things appear to have gotten only more divisive. At least on the surface. I hope you made it through Thanksgiving without any uncomfortable conversations over dinner. But with everything coming back to politics these days, I’m sure many of you were unable to avoid it. The nation feels more polarized than ever and we were already trending in that direction prior to Trump. He has accelerated the division and the hatred of left vs. right. The personalization of politics and the emotional state Americans have been getting in over politics has become unhealthy. I think it peaked during the Kavanaugh confirmation process, but who knows, things are likely to get worse from here as we are entering into the dreaded 2020 presidential race already (one more time for Hillary?). I contend that the division is likely manufactured and a solid majority of Americans have much more in common than many of us believe is possible. Still, it is impossible to ignore the rise of divisive rhetoric and actions in the country’s political discourse over the last few years. Political violence especially has gotten out of control. Politicians are being harassed at their homes and out at restaurants. Trump supporters are beaten and attacked for wearing a red hat. Senators are confronted in hallways and elevators for adhering to the standard of an accuser being innocent before proven guilty. Civility appears to be out the window today, prompting some to call for a disbanding of the union. Doug Casey, an investor and best-selling author, recently said, “The United States, for one, is way too big to be a single country at this point. I’m pretty confident that over the next couple generations, the U.S. is going to break up into several different countries.” I don’t think that is going to happen. We are different in many ways but that is what makes us great as a country. I’ll get into more on that later. Back in 2010, well before Trump came onto the scene, Pete Warden, CTO of Jetpac Inc and author of multiple books on data and mapping, wrote a piece analyzing Facebook data from 210 million profiles, the patterns that emerged, and how we can split the country up six ways. “Looking at the network of US cities, it’s been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the cluster,” Warden wrote. “For example Columbus, OH and Charleston, WV are nearby as the crow flies, but share few connections, with Columbus clearly part of the North, and Charleston tied to the South.”

Just for fun, I’ll briefly summarize the six regions that could form new countries if we decided to disband the union and give up on the great American experiment that is the United States. Stayathomia: New York to Minnesota. People live near most of their friends and they don’t move far. God is low on the list of fan pages. Sports and beer pages are much more prevalent. Would be a solidly liberal country with New York City at its center. Dixie: the Old South. Atlanta is the hub of this network, but South Florida has some connections to New York. God is regularly in the top spot on fan pages. Definitely the most conservative country, even with the inclusion of Florida. Greater Texas: a big radius around Dallas. Ties between Texans and residents of Oklahoma and Arkansas put those two neighboring states into Greater Teas as opposed to Dixie. God is near the top of the list, below the Dallas Cowboys and other sports teams. A very red country, but becoming more Hispanic (on track to be largest group in Texas by 2022). Mormonia: Utah and a part of Eastern Idaho. Communities are very interwoven and unlikely to have many friends outside the region. Mormons make up more than 62 percent of Utah’s population. A pretty red country. Nomadic West: much of the western half of the U.S., outside of Utah, California, and much of Washington. Inhabitants tend to move around the country quite a lot. Residents in Boise, Bend, and Phoenix all have a wide range of connections, much more than what you’d expect from towns of their size. A mix of red and blue, but mostly red. Socalistan: LA, not San Francisco, is the center of this region. Almost everywhere in California and Nevada has links to LA. This is a tight clustered region with Californians connected to other Californians, outside of the two large megacities in the north and south of the state. God is not of much concern to many residents and Barack Obama is on top. A highly populated coastal country of mostly liberals. Pacifica: “the most boring of the clusters,” according to Warden, “the area around Seattle is disappointingly average.” These people are also tightly connected to each other and are not big travelers. When I lived up there it did seem a bit cliquey to me. Just 8 percent of Seattle voted for Trump. Uber-liberal country to say the least. The United States is devolving into a cultural revolution. People take politics far too seriously and way too personally. People increasingly believe political violence is acceptable. People treat others a certain way based on the other person’s political beliefs. Singles increasingly will only date people based on the others’ views of the current president. Families continue to move to locales that are more in line with their political philosophies. It’s all become too much. We need to be peaceful and tolerant of other people. We need to agree to disagree without hating the other side. We need to remember that we are all Americans and have much more in common with each other than we think. The mainstream media continues to stoke the fires of division. They highlight acts of violence and ignore the hopeful stories of unity despite our many differences. We do not need to retreat to our political camps and fight against each other for supremacy in DC. We need to remember that human beings, by nature, are tribal. Nonetheless, we are all of the same culture and creed: that of America. More in Common released a groundbreaking project on America’s current tribalistic tendencies in October, titled, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape.” A new international initiative created “to build societies and communities that are stronger, more united, and more resilient to the increasing threats of polarization and social division,” More in Common surveyed the views of more than 8,000 American citizens including six hour-long focus groups and 30 one-on-one interviews with people across seven different population segments. The main takeaway from Hidden Tribes is the fact that today’s supposed division is brought upon us by the radical fringes of both ends of the political spectrum. The media has played an integral part in all of this. They would have you believe that our country is a 50-50 society, divided by two political tribes eternally in conflict. But we all know that Democrats and Republicans claim to fight one another and work for their constituents, all while enriching themselves and growing the size of government in perpetuity. The media’s misinformation and increased politicization has only furthered the apparent divide between the left and the right. Therefore, people think we are more divided today than ever before. More in Common’s research found a different reality, “one that probes underneath the issues that polarize Americans,” finding seven groups or tribes, “that are defined by their core beliefs, rather than by their political opinions, race, class or gender.” From Facebook feeds to the family dinner table, bitter political debates appear to be omnipresent. Most Americans are fed up with this tired “us-versus-them” mindset and are desperate to find common ground for the betterment of the entire country. We hold many different views on a wide range of topics, but more than three in four Americans (77%) also believe that our differences are not so far apart that we cannot work together. We are not a country of Democrats and Republicans. We are a country of seven distinct groups. We are bound together by what we believe, not by whose “team” we are on. These are the Hidden Tribes of America: Progressive Activists (8% of America): “are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media.” Traditional Liberals (11% of America): “tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.” Passive Liberals (15% of America): “tend to feel isolated from their communities. They are insecure in their beliefs and try to avoid political conversations. They have a fatalistic view of politics and feel that the circumstances of their lives are beyond their control.” The Politically Disengaged (26% of America): “are untrusting, suspicious about external threats, conspiratorially minded, and pessimistic about progress. They tend to be patriotic yet detached from politics.” Moderates (15% of America): “are engaged in their communities, well informed, and civic-minded. Their faith is often an important part of their lives. They shy away from extremism of any sort.” Traditional Conservatives (19% of America): “tend to be religious, patriotic, and highly moralistic. They believe deeply in personal responsibility and self-reliance.” Devoted Conservatives (6% of America): “are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat.” If you want to see what tribe you fall under, take the short quiz here.

The two far wings of these tribes of America have hijacked the political discussion and receive an inordinate amount of media attention. Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives make up just 14 percent of the population, but they have taken over the national conversation. Along with Traditional Conservatives, who value much of what Devoted Conservatives do, these three tribes or wings of the Hidden Tribes make up just one-third of the population. These groups’ distrust and fear of the other side has created the polarized environment we have today. This divisive environment is important to keep in perspective, however, as two-thirds of the country are in the “Exhausted Majority.” Americans in the majority are much less certain about their views and hold a wider range of beliefs. They are also much more open to compromise and change while holding a much less hateful view toward those they disagree with. The wings dominate the conversation because the mainstream media has learned how to monetize divisive politics. News outlets have given up trying to be objective and are now pushing a political agenda to get more views, clicks, and likes. It’s all about politics these days because that is what sells. Fox News throws red meat to its viewers and doesn’t care about liberals’ point of view. CNN and MSNBC have become the anti-Trump networks and even late night talk shows have now become extremely political and anti-Republican. With this media climate, the most extreme and strident voices get the most airtime. Talking heads refuse to concede points to the other side or even attempt to see where the opposing viewpoint is coming from. “All this can make entertaining television and viral social media content,” More in Common writes. “But it is distorting how we see each other, fracturing our society, and adding to distortions in our political system that give undue weight to the most extreme views.”

Even though members of the Exhausted Majority hold views down the middle on average, most members of the majority are not political centrists or moderates. They hold a wide range of different views, but are also united in a number of ways: They have had enough of the polarization tearing our country apart They are often overlooked in the public discourse as the radical wings gain the most attention are are heard from the most They are flexible in their viewpoints and willing to endorse different policies depending on the situation, rather than remaining dead set on a particular issue They believe in compromise and think we can find common ground “While partisans argue and score political points, members of the Exhausted Majority are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely, ceding the floor to more strident voices.” This despondent attitude is especially prevalent in the Politically Disengaged and Passive Liberals tribes, while Traditional Liberals and Moderates remain engaged no matter how troubled they are with the current direction of the country. Most importantly, the Exhausted Majority is not extreme or ideological and does not dismiss the other side as evil, bigoted, racist, or ignorant simply because they hold differing political views. “They want to talk and to find a path forward.”

Long story, short, we have much more in common than we think. While it might be hard to identify with the other side sometimes, we all want what is best for our country and our families. Though we have different ways of achieving that, we can all do a better job of working together and paring back the divisive rhetoric that is bringing us closer to a cultural civil war. Some examples of common ground: 81 percent of the population agree that racism continues to be at least somewhat of a problem in the U.S. 72 percent of Americans think we should end birthright citizenship, according to a C-SPAN Washington Journal poll Three-quarters of Americans believe Dreamers should be provided a pathway to citizenship if they serve in the military or go to college Four out of five Americans believe political correctness has gone too far in America In its November-released Midterms Update, Hidden Tribes stated that 86 percent of Americans felt exhausted by division in politics Here’s my final plea. We are all Americans. We cannot continue to be divided by the media, the two political party establishments, and our radical ideologues on separate ends of the political spectrum. We need to learn to come together and fight for America instead of fighting against each other. We need to learn to have open and productive debates about the many serious issues facing our country. We need to be open to compromise and willing to change our viewpoints so we can move forward as a country. And finally, we need to stop the acts of political violence before someone gets killed. Read the full article

#democrats #Division #elections #media #politics #Republicans #Tribalism #Unity

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tonantzinagainsttrafficking · 6 years ago

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“A nation's culture is not for sale. These are not souvenirs to be bought and sold. Each one is a national treasure.”

Anthony Mangione, special agent-in-charge with Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Investigations in Miami in 2008 (The Guardian).

Diego Herrera, Director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology, and U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta peer at recovered antiquities in Miami on July 8, 2008. (Image source: https://nbcnews.to/2Oeh7v3)

In 2008, the United States repatriated 60 ancient artifacts to Colombia. This followed an ICE investigation of Italian collector Ugo Bagnato, who worked and resided in Miami. Undercover agents purchased pieces Bagnato priced at $2,500, but for Diego Herrera, director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology:

The value of these artefacts is not monetary. It's historical, cultural and symbolic value. . These pieces are indeed part of the history, part of the identity of Colombia. (The Guardian)

The items, including terra cotta pottery, figurines, gold nose rings, gemstones, and other cultural treasures, are believed to be plundered from graves on the Peruvian coastline, some dated at over 2,000 years (The Guardian). Bagnato was storing them in a warehouse in Broward county and Winnebago van in Pembroke Pines (Lush). ICE special agent Mangione describes the careless storage of the items as “tossed in as if they were headed to a flea market” (The Guardian). According to Carol Damian, an expert in art history at Florida International University, "He had absolute callous disregard for what they were. . .He was only interested in money” (Lush).

Bagnato served 17 months in a federal prison after pleading guilty to the sale and receipt of stolen goods. He was deported to Italy in July 2007 after serving his sentence (The Guardian).

10 years later, Colombia has been able to recover more of its stolen cultural patrimony from the hands of another collector, though this time the circumstances were quite different.

(Image source: https://bit.ly/2OXEf6c)

Earlier this month, Oct. 12, 2018, 38 ancient Colombian artifacts from the Tayrona, Sinú and Quimbaya cultures were repatriated in two ceremonies: one featuring Colombian officials with representatives of the FBI and U.S. State Department at the Colombian Embassy Washington, D.C. (presided over by Colombian Ambassador Francisco Santos), as well as one at the National Museum in Bogotá featuring Colombia’s Minister of Culture, Carmen Vásquez, and Aleisha Woodward, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Cultural and Educational Affairs of the United States Department of State. (CPN;TCP).

Ambassador Santos holds one of the repatriated items (Photo credit: Jim Watson, AFP. Image source: https://bit.ly/2RrWL3C)

The seizure and repatriation of these items caused some controversy based on the popularity of the collector, Donald Miller, in his community. Miller was a businessman, missionary (known for his work building churches in Colombia & Haiti), WWII veteran, and amateur archaeologist that often traveled to partake in excavations around the world. He displayed his collection of thousands of pieces from over 200 countries in his home, which he transformed into a personal museum that he often opened to his community in Indiana (CPN).

Top: Miller building a church in Port au Prince, Haiti (Image source: https://bit.ly/2Ju4I5w). Bottom: There is much discourse regarding the ties between missionary work and colonialism. This tweet was published this July and as of October has nearly 30,000 likes. (Follow the conversation here: https://bit.ly/2ET7tyG)

In 2014, 100 armed federal agents surrounded his home in Rush County, Indiana, seizing much of his collection under suspicions from an anonymous phone tip that it contained stolen objects (CPN; EFE). Locals expressed outrage over the raid, citing his advanced age and contributions to the enrichment of the community. Neighbor Andi Essex expressed her surprise and disappointment by asking, “Why? Leave him alone! He’s done so much for people.” Fellow resident Pat Montgomery stated, “He’s just an ordinary guy. He just loves collecting things. His house looks like something you’ve never been in. It’s just beautiful” (CPN). Supporters of Miller also contended that he had never attempted to keep his collection a secret, even offering to donate it to a local museum (which refused the donation for reasons unknown) and opening his doors to federal agents without resistance. A year after the seizure of his collection, Miller passed away at the age of 91, never having been charged with a crime (CPN).

You might remember in our blog about the November Collection at MFA Boston, the author of collector John Fulling’s obituary compared him to Indiana Jones:

Donald Miller has been compared to the infamous fictional character as well. Amid protests that the 90-year old collector was simply providing a service to community by displaying his collection from various missionary trips around the world, Colombian Ambassador Francisco Santos told reporters during a ceremony at the Colombian Embassy:

This collector was a modern-day Indiana Jones. Remember that what Indiana Jones did was to steal all manners of cultural patrimony from other countries. His hobby was to travel around the world picking up these pieces and literally stealing the cultural heritage. (France-Presse)

Miller with artifacts from his WWII collection; Indiana Jones snatches an artifact (Image sources: https://bit.ly/2Ju4I5w and https://bit.ly/2PvejhH)

Santos calls out the image of a beloved “adventurer” in American cinema and questions the viability of our reverence of him. Santos emphasizes that, like conquistadors such as Christopher Columbus & modern-day archaeology buffs like Miller, the Indiana Jones character is not someone that simply makes “discoveries” but strips them from their place of origin. He is not someone to aspire to be, and is in fact a poor example of what outside engagement with cultural patrimony should look like (Note: I personally am not really familiar with the plot points of the Indiana Jones movies, though I’ve seen most or all of them at some point in my life when I was less conscious of these issues. If you disagree with Santos’ perception of Indiana Jones, let us know!).

(Photo credit: Jim Watson, AFP. Image source: https://bit.ly/2RrWL3C)

The repatriation of part of Miller’s collection to Colombia this month is another momentous event in the restoration of indigenous heritage items in Latin America. “The items returned today are part of the largest collection of art and cultural property ever recovered by the FBI in the course of a single investigation," stated FBI Special Agent Maxwell Marker (France-Presse).

(Image source: https://bit.ly/2OZ41au)

Additionally, Ambassador Santos and Minister of Culture Vásquez spoke to the items’ significance as cultural patrimony, noting the loss of valuable cultural knowledge that accompanies these objects in their proper context when they are physically removed. “With so many sites looted and items lost, “We lose the ability to physically appreciate our heritage," Santos said. Minister of Culture Vásquez made similar remarks, stating,

The illicit trafficking of cultural heritage is a serious problem that affects all nations and undermines the identity of peoples. . .When patrimony is trafficked illegally, it undermines the possibility of building memory.” (TCP)

(Image source: https://bit.ly/2OZ41au)

Jennifer Galt, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, stated, "Although we cannot return these items to their original context and recover that lost information, I am very pleased that the United States can return them to Colombia” (France-Presse).

Ambassador Santos taking receipt of the repatriated objects in Washigton, D.C. (Photo credit: Jim Watson, AFP. Image source: https://bit.ly/2RrWL3C)

_________________________________________________________

Conventions, Laws, and Agreements Regarding the Export of Antiquities From Colombia to the United States:

According to the U.S government official Aleisha Woodward, “Colombia continues to be an excellent partner with bilateral agreements that benefit the preservation of cultural heritage and which contributes to building the historical value of the nation” (TCP).

UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970)

A request from the Government of the Republic of Colombia “to participate in a concerted international effort to determine and to carry out the necessary concrete measures, including the control of exports and imports and international commerce in the specific materials concerned” in Article 9 laid the foundation for the eventual MOU between the U.S. and Colombia in 2006 (p. 4).

https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/unesco01.pdf

Pre-Columbian Monumental or Architectural Sculpture or Murals Statute: Public Law No. 92-587, 19 U.S.C (1972)

This law was passed in the U.S. due to the boom in trafficking of precolonial monuments, sculptures, and murals from Latin America at this time; unforeseen to lawmakers, however, was how it would redirect illicit interest to precolonial pottery and ceramics.

https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/92-587.pdf

Colombia’s General Law For Culture: Law 397 (1997)

”Assets illegally removed or illegally exported shall be seized and placed at Ministry of Culture’s disposal. In the same way, the Ministry of Culture and other public institutions shall undertake all efforts geared towards repatriating assets of cultural interest that may have been removed illegally from the Colombian territory.” (p. 7)

http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/colombia/colombia_ley397_engtof.pdf

Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the United States and the Government of the Republic of Colombia Concerning the Imposition of Import Restrictions on Archaeological Materials from the Pre-Columbian Cultures and Certain Ecclesiastical Material From the Colonial Period of Colombia (2006)

imposes import restrictions on certain categories of archaeological and Colonial antiquities from Colombia in order to reduce the incentive for pillage and trafficking of cultural objects. These items may only enter the U.S with a valid export permit issued by Colombia, or with proof that they left Colombia before the agreement was reached on March 17, 2006. The MOU has been extended and amended twice, in 2011 and in 2016.

The original: https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/co2006mou.pdf

Extended & amended in 2011: https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/combinedusandcodipnotes_2011extension.pdf

Extended & amended in 2016: https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/combinedusandcodipnotes_2016extension.pdf

For more information on these laws and agreements, visit:

https://eca.state.gov/cultural-heritage-center/cultural-property-protection/bilateral-agreements/colombia

_________________________________________________________

Works Cited

Cultural Property News (CPN) https://culturalpropertynews.org/plundered-artifacts-from-aged-missionarys-collection-go-to-colombia/

EFE https://www.efe.com/efe/english/life/us-returns-29-plundered-relics-to-colombia/50000263-3777344

France-Presse http://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2018/10/11/us-returns-plundered-artifacts-to-colombia.html

Lush http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25590478/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/plundered-artifacts-be-returned-colombia/#.W9TqsMdOmhA

The City Paper (TCP) https://thecitypaperbogota.com/culture/colombia-recovers-stolen-cultural-patrimony-during-an-fbi-raid-in-indiana/20793

The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/09/colombia.usa

#cultural heritage #repatriation #colombia #indigenous art #art crime #precolonial art #artifacts #antiquities #antiquities trafficking #cultural heritage policy #cultural heritage protection

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thefeedpost · 7 years ago

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Market research firm GlobalWebIndex takes first VC with $40M Series A

Market research firm GlobalWebIndex, which provides consumer insight data for marketing purposes for customers including Google, Spotify, WPP, IPG and Omnicom Group, has closed a $40 million Series A round. The funding is its first VC raise, almost a decade after the business was founded.

The investment comes from New York-based growth fund Stripes Group, along with a number of other unnamed data, software and consumer technology companies. GWI says it will be used to accelerate product development and for international expansion, including in the U.S. and Asia.

The company is based in London but has recently opened offices in New York City and Los Angeles, as well as having technology hubs in locations across Europe.

With the new funding it says it’s planning to open more international offices across the Americas and Asia Pacific to support a client base which spans more than 80 countries.

But why take VC now? “After nine years with no funding and seeing phenomenal growth and expansion, we are still seeing an increasing demand for our data, especially from companies that we haven’t traditionally sold to,” says CEO Tom Smith.

“The new funding will support our product development and hiring efforts so we can establish ourselves as the go to platform for digital consumer insights for the marketing industry.”

The company believes it’s positioned itself on the right side of digital history, having chosen an opt-in, survey-based route for gathering a chunk of its consumer data for market research purposes — putting detailed questions to its global panel of 22 million web users from whom it’s gaining up front consent to their data being processed.

Europe’s new data protection framework, GDPR, is explicit on the need for consent to be informed, specific and freely given if that’s your legal basis for processing people’s personal data.

On the product development front, GWI says it’s working to develop new ways of collecting consumer data — having developed a proprietary, device-agnostic “messenger-style survey tool” which Smith says allows respondents to “answer questions at times and in formats which suit them”.

“It’s about putting the consumer first — not just in how their data is used, but how you run the survey itself. With this new approach we hope to be able to return survey results faster to our clients, so they can make quick business decisions based on insights retrieved from our tried and tested methodology,” he adds.

“Years before GDPR, we wanted to be respectful to those who take one of our surveys, meaning that they see consumer-centric privacy and consent notices which use easy-to-understand language to outline what we do, why it’s important to our clients, and what their responses will be used for.”

“We ask our respondents a wide range of questions relating to their digital lives and lifestyles,” he continues. “This covers everything from their social media, device, media consumption and online behaviors to their interactions with brands, their attitudes and their daily life. For us, it’s key to understand not just what people are doing online, but the attitudes, motivations and beliefs which drive this.”

GWI’s primary product offering is its core study — which is fielded in 44 countries, and which it says contains 25,000 data points on 22M+ “connected consumers”.

“Each year we interview hundreds of thousands of representative individuals about their digital lives. The aggregated results of this are made available on our industry-leading platform on a syndicated basis, where clients can build and then analyze any audience they like. For example, you could look at Older vs Younger Millennials, Mums vs Dads, Instagrammers vs Snapchatters — in each case, understanding which behaviors and attitudes are unique to each group,” explains Smith.

It also offers a range of custom services to supplement that core survey-based market intelligence data.

“Many clients use this offering to ask follow-up questions to our respondents, allowing them to overlay the answers to their bespoke questions with the 25,000 data points contained in the core data set,” he says, adding: “We also offer a wide range of other research solutions such as brand tracking, path to purchase journey, ad-effectiveness, concept testing, website analytics and more. Here the sheer scale of our panel — currently at 22M consumers — is a real differentiator.”

All survey respondents are compensated for their time, according to Smith — in different ways, depending on the market, but including via monetary payments, vouchers, loyalty points, charitable donations etc.

One thing to note is that GWI does also use cookie-based tracking to gather data less directly — including by working with partners. So it is also reliant on third parties obtaining consent to data processing, and must therefore rely on those partners to cleanly and fairly obtain consent for this portion of its market intelligence activity.

“In some instances, the cookies we use as part of our research are dropped by the research panels we work with, rather than by GlobalWebIndex itself. In these instances, all such panels are required to obtain consent in GDPR-compliant manners,” says Smith on this.

The company tells TechCrunch it uses cookie tracking to enrich its core survey data, and only uses cookies to track the behaviors of its panelists — and only those who have actively opted in to this type of tracking.

“Our analytics technology connects the data we collect through surveys to the behaviors of our panel on client websites and connected properties, as well as their exposure to digital advertising campaigns. In this way, we can leverage the 25,000+ data points we collect through panelist interviews to their browsing behaviors and online activities, providing a unique connection between brand engagement and the attributes, motivations and interests of our clients’ target audiences.”

“The GDPR was welcome validation of the approach we have always adopted, whereby respect for the consumer is central,” adds Smith. “Given that we have a direct relationship with the individuals who complete our surveys, we have an amazing opportunity to outline there and then what we want to do with their responses, and to gain their explicit consent for the use of cookies.

“The nature of survey-based market research also means that the consumers know which types of data they are providing, and can decline to answer certain questions if they so choose.”

So why does a company like Google — which has access to vast, global consumer data stores of its own, gathered from its own products and via a network of online tracking cookies and pixels — need GWI’s market intelligence?

“Many of our clients have their own proprietary sources of consumer data but turn to GlobalWebIndex because of the robust, global, independent view it offers on consumer behaviors,” Smith responds on this. “Our ability to give a 360-degree view on the consumer is particularly valuable, with our data providing a unique cross-device, cross-platform perspective.”

On the competition front, he names the likes of Nielsen, YouGov, Comscore, Kantar, GfK and Simmons. “We provide a global view which is consistent across countries, unlike some alternatives which operate different surveys at different times and then patch them together,” he argues.

He also touts the “incredibly rich view of the consumer’s digital life” the GWI consumer panel is able to generate, given the number of data points it’s gathering.

“We have this depth on all of our respondents, whereas some other sources will only have small pockets of data on each individual,” he claims. “We track behaviours and attitudes from the consumer’s perspective. There are no inferences, no modeling, no assumptions based on browsing. This is how the consumer acts and feels from their own point of view.

“We provide up-to-the minute data which tells you what people are doing in the here and now. Our quarterly releases will soon move to monthly, and from there we’ll develop a real-time version of our data set.”

“Our ability to re-interview our respondents is hugely important for clients, as it allows them to sync their bespoke questions with the 25,000 data points from the core study. It’s a hugely quick and efficient way to gain a rich understanding of your target audience,” he adds.