{"id":846,"date":"2020-02-14T13:34:36","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T10:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/?p=846"},"modified":"2022-10-13T16:10:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:10:48","slug":"black-friday-2019-how-did-social-media-and-traditional-media-differ-in-their-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/2020\/02\/14\/black-friday-2019-how-did-social-media-and-traditional-media-differ-in-their-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday 2019: How Did Social Media and Traditional Media Differ in Their Coverage?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ville Vehmanen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As our understanding of the looming ecological crisis has increased, consumption has become, at least ideologically, more and more problematic. Before and during Black Friday in 2019, in addition to all the advertising, opposing opinions were also heard. Moreover, there were an increasing number of retailers who chose to close their shops<\/a>, donate to charity<\/a>, or simply encourage their customers to refrain from superfluous spending. But where does journalism stand in all of this? What did newspapers write? And could social media, such as Twitter really expose how people think and behave?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the sake of framing, I decided\nto concentrate on The New York Times<\/em>\nand Twitter. I did a search on the New\nYork Times<\/em> website to see what they wrote this year about Black Friday and\nsearched Twitter for tweets with the hashtag #BlackFriday and more than 1000 likes.\nThis allowed me to focus on the tweets that had gotten most recognition. My\nhypothesis? I would imagine that traditional media, like The New York Times<\/em>, would embrace the ethos of consumption and that\nthe anti-movements would operate on social media. Let\u2019s see what I discovered!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly, the articles on The New York Times<\/em> were mostly critical\ntowards the holiday and at best, or worst, offered readers advice on how to\navoid bad products and deals. The newspaper ran a traditional \u201cWhat You Need to\nKnow\u201d type of article that offered the readers an overview of the top items for\nsale and how much people are spending, but also questioned the consumerist\napproach to the post-Thanksgiving period. In the tech section, Brian X. Chen wrote<\/a> about the worst tech gifts he had\nreceived and gave his dos and don\u2019ts of tech shopping. It would be fair to say\nthis article had an environmental undertone to it since buying less but better\nis always better for the environment as well. Probably the most positive\narticle towards shopping was Tammy La Gorce\u2019s piece<\/a> on buying a wedding dress,\nutilizing Black Friday deals. In it, she went through various bridal clothing\nretailers to get a sense of what was available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to these hands-on\narticles, the New York Times<\/em> did publish\na couple of interesting stories that dealt with the hidden side of Black\nFriday. First of all, they wrote about the unsung heroes of this massive\nretail effort<\/a>;\nthe stockroom worker, the social media influencer, the luggage salesman, and\nthe industrious robot. Vanessa Friedman, fashion director of The Times,<\/em> questioned the meaning of\nBlack Friday in her column \u201cWhat Does \u2018Black Friday\u2019 Even Mean\nAnymore?\u201d<\/a>\nBlack Friday has extended from a one-day event to nearly a month of offers, and\nFriedman called for a change. She argued that the shared excitement that used\nto be the core of Black Friday has been lost in the digitized world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about social media? How did the\nTwittersphere react to last year\u2019s Black Friday? The popular tweets can be\ncategorized into three groups: promotion, memes, and awareness. Many celebrities,\nlike Khloe Kardashian<\/a>, Jeffree Star<\/a>, and Elizabeth Hurley<\/a>, took to Twitter to promote their\ngoods and Black Friday deals. As always, social media thrives on humor, so\nvarious memes went viral over the holidays, such as the comedian Trevor Noah\u2019s\nvideo of a man running on a treadmill with a shopping cart, training from Black\nFriday madness.  The top tweet, which\nfalls under this category, was from none other than God:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Twitter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the end, the criticism towards Black Friday and the raising of awareness that I expected were there, but not to the extent I imagined. The English actress Amanda Abbington simply tweeted, \u201cYou don\u2019t need anything\u201d and Muireann O\u2019Connell, the Irish tv show host, tweeted as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Twitter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But to be honest, on a larger scale,\ncriticism towards mass consumption or Black Friday was simply not found on\nTwitter. So, I was wrong with my hypothesis. What could explain this? First of\nall, I might myself live in a social media filter bubble where people I follow\nare against superfluous consumption. Secondly, Black Friday is much larger in\nthe United States than in Finland and its historical roots and its importance\ncan be difficult to understand from our perspective. Thirdly, Twitter, as most\nsocial media platforms, is American, and thus the consensus on consumerism and\nthe importance of Black Friday differs from how we see it in Scandinavia. Finally,\nI simply did a search with one hashtag and focused on the most liked posts, so this\nreally doesn\u2019t give you a realistic understanding of the general conversation.\nYet, it was fun and at least I tried to shed some light on this crazy business!\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ville Vehmanen This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku. As our understanding of the looming ecological crisis has increased, consumption has become, at least ideologically, more and more problematic. Before and during Black Friday in 2019, in addition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}