About

Hello, my name is Lova Jaros, and Welcome to my amateur blog on emerging media in public health. I hope to share with you my interactions and experiences in how and why emerging media matters in my field, life, and the world today.

MY FIELD: I serve as a Program Manager for West Virginia University’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the newly established School of Public Health by working to increase public safety.  To influence our state, region, and beyond the School of Public Health trains the coming generation of public health practitioners and researchers, and the school identifies and creates solutions to prevent and reduce public health problems.

WORK: I serve as the lead resource over the Zero Tolerance Driving Initiative (ZTDI). The ZTDI is a 5-year research study funded by NIAAA, an agency under the National Institutes of Health, to manage data collection and produce a media campaign in our community through West Virginia University. The specific aims of the research are to implement and evaluate an enforcement-and-publicity program targeting underage drinking drivers and to investigate the sustainability of the intervention.

IMC: The ZTDI led me to The Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) graduate program at WVU’s P.I. Reed School of Journalism. The ZTDI funding source planned to hire an outside media specialist to help create and implement our enforcement and publicity campaign, but instead, I convinced them to let me enroll in the IMC program because of its online setting and learn and apply today approach so I could become the ZTDI’s media specialist.

LIFE: My husband and I just recently purchased a foreclosed home that needs a lot of repairs in Morgantown, West Virginia, which is about two miles from West Virginia University’s Evansdale campus. My husband is from Pittsburgh, plays in a bluegrass band, and is an art teacher at a local junior high. We stay very active and try to enjoy life the most we can with our friends and family.

THE WORLD: The recent transition of mass media into engaging media has merged together various marketing campaign outlets to collaborate with each other and their audiences to reach objectives and goals to influence the world around us.

As a new home owner it is grossly apparent how emerging media has affected the products and services we purchase or utilize.  All of furniture has been purchased through our local Craiglist, Amazon Prime, or through a Google Shopping search engine tool.  If it isn’t cheap, free shipping, and/or have great customer ratings, we won’t consider buying it.

These emerging social media approaches are revolutionizing the media landscape as marketers and consumers learn how to capitalize on their capabilities.  New possibilities are being discovered everyday to make people’s lives more efficient and better connected. It seems the  newest and most exciting sources of engaging media are  primarily taking place through social networking sites and with postings of content in the form of text, photo, and video that allows for easy online sharing opportunities.

The ZTDI is employing social media tactics to reach its target audience of 16-20 year olds in the Morgantown area through Facebook and Twitter  throughout its three wave campaign. Enclosed video is one example of how the ZTDI is trying to use emerging media in its campaign strategy.  The video recordings were taken during a DUI checkpoint where students passed out Mothers Against Drunk Driving brochures (MADD) to random drivers, and the videos were edited by a WVU Journalism student.  The objective is to communicate that the chances of getting busted have increased because police officers are now using the new “Buzzkill Flashlight” technology to detect low levels of alcohol on underage drivers.

I want become more knowledgeable in emerging media to share my interactions and experiences with you, so we can make our humble imprint on society and expand the ways of life.