The idea that Facebook will need 50,000 servers is really interesting to me. They have to pay a lot of money to set up servers so I can do the mindless clicking that was discussed in the Huffington Post article.
I would like to delete my Facebook to give me back all the time I've wasted on it during college, but Facebook also does so much for it. It keeps me in touch with my friends from back home in a way that never would have been possible before Fbook came along. I also talk to friends across the country and the world that I made during my experiences studying abroad. I network with other journalists such as Hannah Allam, the youngest Baghdad bureau chief ever at 25, who I interviewed at the SPJ Conference in August, and Saeed Ahmed, a CNN journalist who comments on my Facebook status when he's working at 3 a.m.
Right now I'm meeting the people I will work with in Teach for America in New Orleans. After I graduate, Facebook will be essential for keeping in touch with my "college" friends.
I was a little confused by the abstractness of the Charlene Li article, social networks are like air. We interact with people in a social context everyday. I do not want my digital social network to become like air. I like to control my digital social network because unlike in public, where I know who's watching me because I can see them and I know who will be where, everyone is everywhere on the Internet. I keep my Facebook very tame. No profanity, no alcohol, no cleavage, etc. You can't really get a sense of who I am through my Facebook page because I do not want people to get to know me through the Internet.
Over the past few weeks, reports have abounded on the Internet about the purchase of Facebook by an outside company such as Yahoo, which will force users to pay for the service. I absolutely love that Facebook users response to the suggestion that they pay for Facebook is the group "We won't pay for Facebook. We are gone if this happens."
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Uses and Gratifications
I use the print media to relax and reduce tension because I love reading the Economist and National Geographic whenever I have a little bit of free time. In terms of other media, I've basically been banned from watching television with my roommates because I always point out the inplausibility of the program whether it is Grey's Anatomy or CSI.
We would like to think that we are not media dependent but in being technological depending we don't realize how much the two are interconnected. While this is only slightly related, I had a minor breakdown when my Google documents weren't loading since my life exists in Google, which I would consider to be part of the media world to some extent.
We have a variety of media outlets available; therefore we would assume that we are less dependent on a single media. However, I realized that I often only visit the same media sites even though I'd like to expose myself to many different opinions and interpretations of the news. I am dependent on certain media Web sites because there is never enough time to read everything I want to.
I also really don't like to read conservative opinions in the news even though I know I should. I always laugh when I get e-mails from David Horowitz, a conservative author and activist, who I interviewed when I was a sophomore. Two years later, I'm still included on mass e-mail lists from the David Horowitz Freedom Center bashing the left and liberal media.
As news editor though I do tend to skim through the Catholic News Service to keep track of Catholic things that we might want to cover for the school newspaper, but I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to for my job. I don't independently seek out this alternative news source.
The common experiences section of the Sunstein article made me think of the one thing almost everyone in my generation and now many in yours do share: Facebook.
In terms of media consumption, my newsfeed is filled with my conservative and liberal friends posting articles from different media outlets that they're read. Whether I disagree with them/would have sought them out myself/have already it, I still see them and sometimes read them.
People keep telling me journalists will just work online and everything will be fine. Yet while news consumption is actually UP meaning more people are reading more news people are reading it all online. This report from Paid Content shows that readers in the UK who report reading newspaper has also slightly increased while circulation is still down.
While the media has many different definitions, the mainstream media particularly the print medium that I love makes me more depressed with every news story I read particularly this one about the closure of the Chicago Tribune Beijing bureau, which I visited when I was in China last year.
We would like to think that we are not media dependent but in being technological depending we don't realize how much the two are interconnected. While this is only slightly related, I had a minor breakdown when my Google documents weren't loading since my life exists in Google, which I would consider to be part of the media world to some extent.
We have a variety of media outlets available; therefore we would assume that we are less dependent on a single media. However, I realized that I often only visit the same media sites even though I'd like to expose myself to many different opinions and interpretations of the news. I am dependent on certain media Web sites because there is never enough time to read everything I want to.
I also really don't like to read conservative opinions in the news even though I know I should. I always laugh when I get e-mails from David Horowitz, a conservative author and activist, who I interviewed when I was a sophomore. Two years later, I'm still included on mass e-mail lists from the David Horowitz Freedom Center bashing the left and liberal media.
As news editor though I do tend to skim through the Catholic News Service to keep track of Catholic things that we might want to cover for the school newspaper, but I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to for my job. I don't independently seek out this alternative news source.
The common experiences section of the Sunstein article made me think of the one thing almost everyone in my generation and now many in yours do share: Facebook.
In terms of media consumption, my newsfeed is filled with my conservative and liberal friends posting articles from different media outlets that they're read. Whether I disagree with them/would have sought them out myself/have already it, I still see them and sometimes read them.
People keep telling me journalists will just work online and everything will be fine. Yet while news consumption is actually UP meaning more people are reading more news people are reading it all online. This report from Paid Content shows that readers in the UK who report reading newspaper has also slightly increased while circulation is still down.
While the media has many different definitions, the mainstream media particularly the print medium that I love makes me more depressed with every news story I read particularly this one about the closure of the Chicago Tribune Beijing bureau, which I visited when I was in China last year.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Agenda Setting
I will be honest and say that I voted for Barack Obama. The mainstream media also seemed to be behind the Democratic candidate even though they struggled to remain objective in their reporting I'm sure it was had to do so as the nation was being swept up in Obamamania.
Was it on the American media's "agenda" to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States? Maybe.
He is Number 44 on the List of Stuff Journalists Like.
The Media Research Center, which bills itself as America's Media Watchdog, was highly critical of the mainstream media during the 2008 presidential election for its praiseful coverage of the presidential candidate.
But if Barack Obama leads this country into an untimely demise (i.e. the economy doesn't recover, there's another terrorist attack or China calls in all those loans) will the media again be criticized for playing the cheerleader role like it was after the Iraq War went poorly?
The Phoenix advisor Bob Herguth and I have this discussion time and time again because I want to tell the story exactly how it happens and he always wants me to play up the most sensational parts. In my opinion, that would be agenda-setting because I'm choosing what's most important for my readers instead of giving them all the information and letting them decide.
I know what it means to pull the most interesting information into my lead to make sure my readers stay engaged in the story, however, I'm torn between playing up the most interesting parts to the point where everything that might be important to readers but I deemed unimportant doesn't even make it into the final draft.
It's a fine line that journalists walk, but if we don't walk that line then both the profession and our viewers lose out.
P.S. (I chose that video because even though I'm already critical of some of Barack Obama's policies it still gives me chills. When LeeAnn covered the event in Grant Park she was dying to write a firsthand report because she was having trouble not cheerleading because the emotion of the election was so high and meant so much you would have to be a robot not to feel it.)
Was it on the American media's "agenda" to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States? Maybe.
He is Number 44 on the List of Stuff Journalists Like.
The Media Research Center, which bills itself as America's Media Watchdog, was highly critical of the mainstream media during the 2008 presidential election for its praiseful coverage of the presidential candidate.
But if Barack Obama leads this country into an untimely demise (i.e. the economy doesn't recover, there's another terrorist attack or China calls in all those loans) will the media again be criticized for playing the cheerleader role like it was after the Iraq War went poorly?
The Phoenix advisor Bob Herguth and I have this discussion time and time again because I want to tell the story exactly how it happens and he always wants me to play up the most sensational parts. In my opinion, that would be agenda-setting because I'm choosing what's most important for my readers instead of giving them all the information and letting them decide.
I know what it means to pull the most interesting information into my lead to make sure my readers stay engaged in the story, however, I'm torn between playing up the most interesting parts to the point where everything that might be important to readers but I deemed unimportant doesn't even make it into the final draft.
It's a fine line that journalists walk, but if we don't walk that line then both the profession and our viewers lose out.
P.S. (I chose that video because even though I'm already critical of some of Barack Obama's policies it still gives me chills. When LeeAnn covered the event in Grant Park she was dying to write a firsthand report because she was having trouble not cheerleading because the emotion of the election was so high and meant so much you would have to be a robot not to feel it.)
Sunday, March 8, 2009
MTV
As a journalist, I understand the need for public relations, but as a field I'm completely opposed to ever joining it because I feel like it's fundamentally dishonest. After reading about Bernays' writings, I think even less of the field because it was founded upon making sure the aristocracy could still rule the masses they just had to make sure the masses understood what was for the common good. "The public claiming the birthright of democratic citizenship and social justice increasingly called upon institutions and people in power to justify themselves and their privileges."
This passage makes it seem like Bernays was actually opposed to a more justice and democratic world, which as an advocate of social justice I strongly disagree.
There's a friendly competition between the public relations and journalism majors. (At least between the chairs of the departments when it comes to recruiting students.) I don't have much interaction with many public relations majors because I'm so involved in journalism field. I think it's important for everyone to know how to market themselves to future employers, but I feel public relations just teaches you to frame whatever product, idea or person in a positive way because you are paid to do so.
If I were forced to go into public relations to pay off my insane student loans, I would have to do PR for a non-profit that had a mission that I actually believed in so that I wouldn't hate myself for selling out.
The PR people I've talked to actually seem to believe what they're telling me even when I can tell they're full of it, but that's their job I suppose.
The midriff section of the video was actually really depressing. I'm not that much older than a teenager and I still remember having to have this type of outfit and do these type of things to be cool, but I went school with the same 200 kids for seven years so all that kind of faded once we were sophomores in high school.
However, I do think that the public perception of young women and women's perceptions of what they should look like dramatically effect the extraordinary rate of eating disorders in this country. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, as many as 10 million women suffer from eating disorders. I can personally attest to an outrageous rate of eating disorders among my college friends.
Yet we are still celebrating the fabricated ideal image that is Barbie 50 years later. This idea has been packaged to women our entire lives. According to this CNN report, Barbie was originally based on a German doll that was a gag gift for men. The Lilli doll was a cartoon character who used sex to get what she wanted so the ideal image of a woman is actually based on a prostitute.
If I ever have children they won't play with Barbies because of the vast disparity between what woman actually look like and what marketing tells us they should look like. If Barbie were a real women, she'd be 7 feet tall, have FF breasts, and she would probably die from malnutrition because her waist is too small to fit the appropriate intestines needed to survive.
This passage makes it seem like Bernays was actually opposed to a more justice and democratic world, which as an advocate of social justice I strongly disagree.
There's a friendly competition between the public relations and journalism majors. (At least between the chairs of the departments when it comes to recruiting students.) I don't have much interaction with many public relations majors because I'm so involved in journalism field. I think it's important for everyone to know how to market themselves to future employers, but I feel public relations just teaches you to frame whatever product, idea or person in a positive way because you are paid to do so.
If I were forced to go into public relations to pay off my insane student loans, I would have to do PR for a non-profit that had a mission that I actually believed in so that I wouldn't hate myself for selling out.
The PR people I've talked to actually seem to believe what they're telling me even when I can tell they're full of it, but that's their job I suppose.
The midriff section of the video was actually really depressing. I'm not that much older than a teenager and I still remember having to have this type of outfit and do these type of things to be cool, but I went school with the same 200 kids for seven years so all that kind of faded once we were sophomores in high school.
However, I do think that the public perception of young women and women's perceptions of what they should look like dramatically effect the extraordinary rate of eating disorders in this country. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, as many as 10 million women suffer from eating disorders. I can personally attest to an outrageous rate of eating disorders among my college friends.
Yet we are still celebrating the fabricated ideal image that is Barbie 50 years later. This idea has been packaged to women our entire lives. According to this CNN report, Barbie was originally based on a German doll that was a gag gift for men. The Lilli doll was a cartoon character who used sex to get what she wanted so the ideal image of a woman is actually based on a prostitute.
If I ever have children they won't play with Barbies because of the vast disparity between what woman actually look like and what marketing tells us they should look like. If Barbie were a real women, she'd be 7 feet tall, have FF breasts, and she would probably die from malnutrition because her waist is too small to fit the appropriate intestines needed to survive.
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