Exercise 2: Start Managing Your Own Audiences

My most frequently used social media platform is Facebook. Although I have 1,180 facebook friends, I can't say with confidence that they are my audience. With different options and settings, one can easily avoid seeing content from a particular individual or choose to closely follow an individual. Also, many facebook accounts could no longer be in use or even if the facebook account is very active, the timeline could display newsfeed only for a close circle of friends.

Therefore, I have yet to manage my audience because I don't have a complete grasp of who my audience is. Sometimes, friends that I haven't seen in years randomly like my posts while friends that I interact with everyday do not. I do not know who is seeing my posts. For example, when interacting with people in person, they mention seeing my post but they did not leave any traces in likes or comments so I had no idea that they  had  seen my post. Also, reminiscing upon past years, facebook used to be "Just for friends" where individuals could only see the content uploaded by their friends. However, now facebook forces people to see advertisements, posts that friends are seeing, etc. and have created an entertainment overload. Instead of acquiring an account to keep in touch with friends, one could have zero friends but facebook surf for hours. People that I don't even know could be my audience.

In conclusion, although it is essential to know who your audience, it is difficult to determine who my audience is. Therefore learning audience measurement in social media and the psychology of digital media audiences later on in the semester would be immensely helpful.