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COURSE TITLE: Foundations of Communication

COURSE IDENTIFICATION: COMM 2000
INTRUCTOR: DR. James Ponder
COURSE COMPLETED: Spring 2015
ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Career Assignment Project
ASSIGNMENT PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Choose a topic which would be
relevant to a career you wish to have once upon graduation. Please go into detail as
to why you choose this topic/career. Be sure to have scholarly articles to back up
the information you provided on topic. You then will present this paper to the class
for your final project.
REFLECTION: I have chosen this piece because the career that I wanted to do
back then is still relevant to what I want to do now. What I think this piece shows
about me is that, once I changed my major to communication, I have stayed with
the same general career I originally wished to have. If I had to do this assignment
again, I would try to go into more detail about how I wish to focus more on the
entertainment industry and a little less on the conflict management aspect.

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Social Media Conflict in the Entertainment Industry

Kaylee M. McLaughlin
Kent State University

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When I was a freshman in college my uncle said to me, do what makes you happy and
what youre good at and the money will just be a bonus. For me, that is communicating with
people. I have been told that I am very good at talking with others and listening to others as well.
I want to use public communications to work in the entertainment industry regarding brand
management with celebrities. My hopes are to help celebrities manage their social media
interactions by advising them on what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Also, to deal
with the conflict and crisis management that may occur between brands and celebrities or
celebrities and social media. It is very important for celebrities to be aware of the potential
effects of their social media habits and how it may influence society since they are always in the
public eye. Also, to help celebrities be aware that they too give into the stigma that media has on
them and how that causes a negative reaction within them.
Brand management is important in the workplace because it is a representation of what
the consumers want. Consumers remember a specific brand by the spokesperson for that
company. Companies must have control over their image through the way the product is being
marketed and who represents the brand (Khan, 2009). Managing what celebrities expose to the
public through social media can help reduce the amount of conflict between company brands and
celebrities. Brands look for ambassadors who are going to represent their company in a positive
influential way and help promote their products. This means, getting these ambassadors to create
a positive image for the brand using their social appearance (Khan, 2009).
Ambassadors who are constantly being viewed, opens opportunity for negative effects on
brands. Celebrities are ordinary people with extraordinary careers who, just like everyone else,

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make mistakes at some point in their life. This brings them to understanding how to maintain
brand representation during a crisis (Bryd, 2012). According to Bryd (2012) executives who
understand the function and responsibilities of the public relations practitioner, also acknowledge
how vital that practitioner is to ensuring the organizations survival through communicative
means (p.244). This means that it is crucial for brands to address each crisis with a way to better
their reputation and repair their image. For companies, you must be able to provide a sense of
trust for them that the ambassador will help customers buy their product and to also trust in the
ambassador that they will execute their side of the contract in a way that it benefits the company.
When the audience hears the truth from the celebrity and feels that the apology is
genuine, it provides a sense of trustworthiness again. According to Benoit (1997), there are
different types of repair methods for companies and individuals. For the companies they will
bring in those of a higher resource level to assist them in the repair process, as opposed to
celebrities who may just make a public statement in attempt to apologize for their actions. Benoit
proposed that the key to understanding repair methods is to take into consideration the nature of
complaints that cause these companies image crisis (1997). These complaints are composed of
two components: The accused is held responsible for an action and that act is considered
offensive (Benoit, 1997). Companies focus on a key concept: perceptions are more important
than reality; this means the audience is not concerned if the business truly committed the
offensive act, but whether it is thought that they committed this act. Companies use the Image
Restoration Theory which focuses on message options; what can a corporation say when a crisis
occurs (Benoit, 1997). Benoit states the five strategies for rebuilding the image of companies are
following: denial of accusation, acknowledging responsibility of their actions, reducing

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offensiveness of the action, providing constructive plans of action, and publicly apologizing for
the offensive action (1997).
By using these methods it will help put the company back into the positive light of
society. These strategies are a very important process that will benefit me while trying to help
celebrities with crisis management and maintaining a positive reputation as being a companys
ambassador.
I officially transferred into the school of communications this semester so I have a lot of
courses yet to take. Although, this spring semester I have taken classes to fulfill the requirements
of my major. My focus is Public Communications and I wish to have a career centered on social
media. In order to understand what Public Communication majors do, Ill be taking Public
Communication in Society. The course description says that this class will focus on the different
issues within mass media in a public setting. This course will help me focus on the influence of
mediated messages by using mass communication. Also, why these influences have an effect on
our society.
One course that I plan on taking is Media Use and Effects. According to the course
description, this class focuses on social media use and what effects it has on society ranging from
the media portrayals to children and television. This course is going to help me by providing a
better understand of media effects on society and possibly why it causes these ambassadors to
have negative actions.
Gender and Communications is a course that I have taken. This course has taught me a lot
about the negative effects mass media places on both men and women. Ive learned that more
women are negatively impacted because of mass media than men are, but men are still effected

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too. This course also discusses how television can cause individuals to act a certain way and
possibly even commit violent acts. Again, this relates back to media issues that may cause
celebrities to retaliate. Celebrities are also the cause of the problem too because they give into
the stigma that social media has placed upon them. I want to change this by assisting them in reconstructing their image and changing these stereotypes, as I will discuss later in the paper.
As a Public Communications major, my goal is to help celebrities re-create and maintain
the image they once had before society negatively impacted their life. These courses that Ill be
taking will hopefully guide me in the right direction of how to rebuild this image based off of the
negative impacts social media has on an individual. I will learn how help the younger
generations focus less on the types of images social media portrays to society and focus more on
what they wish to be and the image they wish to portray for themselves and others. One thing I
tend to have a big focus on is the body image shaming that media does to celebrities and how
that will affect them as a person: cause and effect. Hopefully, I will be able to achieve all of these
things and make the entertainment business a safe and fun environment for celebrities.

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References
Benoit, W. L. (1997). Image Repair Discourse and Crisis Communication. Public Relations
Review, 23(2), 177-186.
Byrd, S. (2012). Incorporating a Stewardship-based Social Media Strategy to Maintain Brand
Reputation during a Crisis. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 17,
No. 3, 241-254. doi: 10.1108/13563281211253502
Khan, S. (2009). Brand Management using Social Media. Simon Fraser University.