Mid-winter is the perfect time to curl up with a good article related to communications measurement. Here’s your measurement reading list for February, the most interesting articles we’ve come across recently.
AI is flunking the interview for your job—or maybe not
AI sales copy insanity: idiocy at scale
Without Bullshit
“AI can write now, but it needs supervision. And failing to supervise it will make you look very stupid.” Includes an absolutely hilarious example of AI-written sales letter spam.
Why Are AI-Generated Hands So Messed Up?
BuzzFeed News
It all comes down to the images AI is learning from.
The Digital Marketing World Reacts to ChatGPT
Digital Third Coast
“To better understand the potential impacts of this new platform, we scraped over 700 posts on Twitter and LinkedIn and spoke with leading industry experts across the field of digital marketing.”
Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future
The New Yorker
“ChatGPT is in the spotlight, but it’s Whisper—OpenAI’s open-source speech-transcription program—that shows us where machine learning is going.”
In case you haven’t tried it yet: Make your own A.I. image right now, from a text prompt
Stable Diffusion Online
Use this to demo the A.I. photo-realistic image construction software, for free, no signup.
The media
This report sees journalistic “bias” less as partisanship and more as relying on too-comfortable habits
NiemanLab
“…a useful check on assumptions [journalists] may not realize they’ve made, moves they didn’t realize they were making.”
Data Roundup: Smaller Newsrooms, San Francisco’s Name, Employers and Political Info
PR News
Lots of interesting data on journalism, influencers, and politics.
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022
Pew Research Center
Want to know what will happen tomorrow? Check out what the kids are up to today. TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens, while the share of teens who use Facebook has fallen sharply.
Working harder to reach audiences where they are
NiemanLab
“…we now have at least three generations — Millennials, Gen Z, and Generation Alpha — whose consumer habits are not being met by a single news organization. That gap presents possibilities.”
Customer insight
Customer-Centric Companies Win in Recessions: How Customer Insight Cushions Downturns and Speeds Recovery
MarketingProfs
“Traditionally, leadership has considered branding, community engagement, advocacy, market research, and customer listening to be fun-but-expensive efforts that aren’t essential to operations nor contributive to the bottom line… Research reveals that thinking to be wrong.”
Trust and disinformation
Trust – And Mistrust – In Advertising, Social Media, News And High Usage: Good News?
MediaPost
”Trust in social media, traditional advertising, and legacy TV news platforms can vary to a great extent. Underneath it all, consumers are doing much more heavy lifting.“
2022 Disinformation in Canada Report
Institute for Public Relations
This report investigates how disinformation — defined as deliberately misleading or biased information — is spread in Canada and includes some comparisons to the U.S. It also explores the perceived breadth of reach and impact of disinformation on trust in society.
Charts tell the story of 2022
33 Cool Charts We Made In 2022
FiveThirtyEight
Some of their most interesting, weird, colorful and complicated charts, covering the midterm elections, the end of Roe v. Wade, and sports stories ranging from the World Cup to changes in Major League Baseball’s pitch timing rules.
2022 in Google Searches
statista
“…a look at the biggest trending Google searches this year can serve as a reminder for some of the events and situations that have shaped our world over the last 12 months.”
Predictions for 2023
We Asked ‘What’s Your PR-Related Wish for 2023?’ Here’s What 30 Communicators Said
PR News
30 heavy hitters make a PR wish.
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Thanks for the photo up top to Josh Applegate on Unsplash.
