One of this week’s case study, Reproduction Rights and the Abortion Issue (case 8.2),  caught my interest instantly when I began to read it. I found it interested to read about how the Planned Parenthood organization came about, and how much fighting and effort it took to allow such an organization to exist. While I was reading, I realized that Margaret Sanger, who was an advocate for birth control clinics in the early 1900’s, used public relation tactics to get her message across in many of the same ways that publicists use today. She made pamphlets, wrote articles, and created a publication focusing on the woman’s right to abort a child, and use birth control.  This case is one of the more interesting cases to me that we have read during this class, mainly because I learned a lot about a topic that everyone has heard of but no one knows how it was really established.

An Internet campaign could easily be established by using the theories and concepts from the Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. One of the first aspects of the Tipping Point that Gladwell stresses is that in order to make a trend tip one must make it into an epidemic. The Internet is a quick and effective way to reach whatever audience you are trying to target. What one should do is find a connector who has the same interest as the target audience you desire. The connectors in the Hush Puppy campaign began an epidemic without any intention or idea of what wearing those shoes was creating. All they did was walk around public places with the Hush Puppy shoes, and the trend spread so quickly that the manufacturers didn’t know what hit them. The Internet is so fast paced and interactive that as soon as a message or trend comes along, it could be in 10 different countries in 20 seconds. All you need to do to create a successful internet campaign is to deliver the right message to the right person who will pass it on the right people.

In last week’s class, we discussed the steps in writing a good paper. I found this lesson to be very beneficial, mainly because I am a journalism major, and writing is obviously the key component in this field of study. Most people are convinced that writing a paper is basically common knowledge, but I was unaware of all the steps in revision that should be taking place after a paper is written. I am usually one to read over and double check for mistakes, but after this lesson I learned that there are many more steps into writing a great and efficient paper.