Groundswelling the Superbowl
Soooo.. what is the Groundswell? Is the Earth ground swelling up into destruction? Well to explain, the term 'groundswell' is "a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather from traditional institutions like corporations" (Li & Bernoff, 2011, p. 9). To put this into perspective, groundswell has always existed as people have always depended on each other and drawn strength from one another. Now.. with the advent and spread of social technologies and the internet, people and technology have worked hand and hand to organize in favor or against corporations through the world wide web.
To get a sense of what this Groundswell can mean in today's society, we can make references to what has happened last night, in what is a important and glorious day for American Football (NFL) history,
To get a sense of what this Groundswell can mean in today's society, we can make references to what has happened last night, in what is a important and glorious day for American Football (NFL) history,
THE SUPERBOWL!
The Superbowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League, every year different sports team from the United States compete in the sport to be crown champions of the league. The Superbowl has been notorious for its national tradition for Americans to come together and celebrate watching what home city teams will come out on top. As this occurs yearly, the Superbowl has become a marketable tradition for news networks, companies, and celebrities to participate, celebrate, and sponsor the "Big Game", as it receives high viewership.
There has been some backlash on the American celebrity singer Justin Timberlake who has mocked American singer legend Prince in the past for his physical height at the Golden Globes in 2007.
At Superbowl 52, Justin Timberlake performs at the halftime performance game show in Minneapolis, Minnesota where legend Prince was born to be paid tribute to in his honor. There has been a trend or 'groundswell' on social network sites like Twitter that are bashing the celebrity for disobeying what Prince had said in the past about not being hologram. Close friend Sheila E. tells Justin Timberlake on Twitter to not make Prince a hologram as it is "religiously" offensive to the legend. Justin agrees to not hologram the Prince although still makes a appearance in the halftime with paid tribute to Prince with similar representation of a hologram.
(Scroll to 9:05 / 13:51 for performance)
This was shocking to many Prince fans as it was agreed that Justin wouldn't perform a halogram of the Prince. Although for Justin, it was all-around groundswell advantage as he was able to bring the publicity and attention to him as he performs at the halftime show in honor of the Prince whether anyone likes it or not. Justin Timberlake was able to "harness the power of [his] opponent for [his] advantage". (Li & Bernoff, 2011, p. 17). Li and Bernoff mentions there is a way to control the groundswell as it is like jujitsu, takes knowledge, experience, and eventually, enlightenment to get there. Justin was able to recreate his bad rep for good rep as he was able to re-image himself at the Superbowl as he shines to stardom leaving his past to be annoyed.
The Superbowl helped create the groundswell phenomena for Justin as it builds on the collision of three forces: people, technology, and economics. (Li & Bernoff, 2011, p. 10). The event is so marketable that advertisements for the Superbowl are worth over millions of dollars!
Superbowl famous ads like Doritos company have continue year after year putting out funny commercial ads to amuse their audience and continue to have that groundswell phenomena. Most recent Superbowl commercial for Doritos has already been craze over the internet has it includes Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman sponsoring Doritos and Mountain Dew.
Groundswell can happen at any moment and once you have the hang of it for your own personal endeavors, it can be powerful tool!
I like your blog！Congratulations Eagles！Without groundswell，Superbowl can not be so grand.
ReplyDeleteWow, talk about a current example! Nice use of multiple forms of media to make your blog extremely entertaining. Your blog, along with many others seem to focus on the groundswell in relation to Twitter. Do you think that Twitter, as a platform, is more indicative to the groundswell than something like Facebook?
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