This evening saw Gemma Lomas, VP: Welfare and Diversity, lead a drugs Q & A with Swanswell and University representatives. Yik Yak was used for students to send in their own questions to be answered by the panel, but was Yik Yak really the best way to do this?
Yik Yak allows you to send a Yak to people anonymously based on your location. Using Yik Yak meant that only Loughborough students/residents nearby could comment on the #DrugsYak. While this is good in that respect, and allowing people to post anonymously on this type of issue, it still causes some problems.
While there were some people posting serious questions, most weren’t, which is to be expected on a social media outlet like Yik Yak, which meant that some complained that questions weren’t being answered. Some posts were asking what #DrugsYak was all about, and people would send the media.lsu.co.uk link to them. This potentially helped increase the number of people watching the show, and the use of this popular social media channel was a good call in that repsect.
With every type of social media though, there would always be people who don’t use it. So people without Yik Yak were unable to send in the anonymous questions. Also some people may have been unable to watch the discussion live, but hopefully the show or a recap will be posted online soon. Further questions will be answered online afterwards apparently, maybe some of those Yaks weren’t really for air…(see pictured)?
It was nice to see the exec use LSUTV to produce an informative live stream, and it would be great to see more like these as they can help engage the students to participate in other discussions. Yik Yak proved to be useful in some ways, especially being one of the only popular anonymous posting social medias around, it was a good choice compared to the other big names e.g. Facebook or Twitter, due to the nature of the discussion. I hope to see more types of shows soon as it’s a great way to inform students on important matters.
Adam Smith
