Interested in Online Video Publishing?

Check out Delve Networks!

www.delvenetworks.com

here is an example:
http://blog.delvenetworks.com/2009/01/20/search-inside-obama%E2%80%99s-inaugural-speech/

Keepin’ it simple in order to attract readership.

Okay, so you have constructed your final body of work and now here comes the tough part. Should you  use your wit to attract readership on your blog by using catchy headlines? Or should you be straight-forward so the reader knows exactly what you are talking about right off the bat? That is the struggle that fellow blogger’s and myself alike, deal with everytime we decide to publish our work. Although we all like to showcase our creativity with language choices that will up our egos,  it may be counter-productive when it comes to attracting readership.

According recent article I read on the way Google news is changing the way headlines are being written, it became clear to me just how hard it is to get the RSS feed to pick up your work, no matter how great it may be, without explaining in the headline exactly what it is you are talking about. For example, in a recent blog I posted entitled “Whose thought is it anyways?” which entailed the process of groupthink, I noticed at one point the automatically generated related links that were associated with my piece, held no relevance when it came to my topic, groupthink. Now, who is going to want to read a piece on the process of group think when they were really searching for the results of a gameshow? Not most people. So this got me thinking about that old saying we all have engrained in our minds, “less is more.” Could it be true that the less we rack our minds to create headlines that we deem catchy or creative, the more readership we will attract? Well in a fast-paced world where we want our information instantly, if we can condense our language to be clear and concise then the readership is bound to grow. If only I could have posted my headline as “groupthink” rather than sit at the computer for 15 minutes trying to think of something that would stick maybe I would have gotten more than just 4 views!

-How can bloggers attract readership without forfeiting creativity when it comes to creating headlines?

- When it comes to what makes the cut for the RSS feed, how can bloggers guarentee themselves a spot on the list?

 

To be or not to be ethical? That is the question.

Who holds the power when it comes to deciding what is “ethically correct?” Is there some magical wand that swoops down from the sky and sprinkles fairy dust that distinguishes the good vs. the bad? In life we all have a general consensus. Philanthophy, family, love, kindness….these are all words that we immediately generalize with what is good in the world. Death, taxes, and drugs are all things we can quickly put into the not so good box. But here I am talking about real, tangible life going on right in front of our eyes. But what about when it comes to ethics on the web? Do the same rules apply or is it easier to stray away to the dark side when nobody is looking?

According to a website I encountered that discusses online ethics, the first example of unethical and criminal behavior listed is stealing copyright and credit for intellectual property. Although stealing copyright and credit can happen offline, with the new wave of “doing it all online” it seems like it makes it easier for those who are on the darkside to steal, cheat, and slander. So, when trying to decipher ethical behavior online where do we draw the line and bring about a form of internet police that come to lock up and prosecute all the villians online? Well, if we are all aware of what we are doing and where we are going online then we can all form our own tracking systems to help protect ourselves and make it harder for those unethical folks on the web, because we all know they exist, to attack.

So, although the reailites between the web and real life differ, that doesn’t mean the ethics have to. That is not to say that we need authorities watching our every move, but simply to hold one another responsible for the information being given online.

 

- In regards to ethics on social spaces such as myspace, what can be done to make sure that slandering and verbal abuse do not go on, especially amongst young children and teenagers?

-When it comes to ethics on the web, what rules apply?

In an age where You Tube rules the world.

Where do we go when we want to watch our favorite music videos? How about catch an episode from our favorite television show that we missed? Or to just get a laugh? The one, the only; You Tube. You Tube has become an all encompassing entitity that can make the average day joe famous with one click of the mouse.

Us younger folks, in the good words of my grandma, have the world at our fingertips. Literally. Televisions, we don’t need them. We no longer have to turn on mtv at the right moment to watch the hottest new Britney Spears video that we all hate to admit we can’t wait to see, we don’t need to set our tivo’s or schedule our days around our favorite television programs anymore. We have the power now. Goodbye television networks telling us when we are going to watch our shows, and hello to us watching them at about any time we please! So, this is seemingly wonderful for us but what about for those television programs and music channels that bank on us going to them instead? We no longer have a need for these programs. Although these networks are the catalysts for putting together our favorite programs, with the age of You Tube we don’t need to tune in to watch them any longer.

So the obvious ptoblem in this scenario is that networks are slowly losing their viewship to the mighty power of You Tube. So what comes next? We have now made ourselves into the sensations that we want to be by taking our home videos and posting them online, but in an age where You Tube rules the world I must ask the question: in this world of instant stardom that we ourselves have created have we exposed ourselves to a world of harsh criticism and a depletion of privacy? Or does the price of instant stardom make it all worth while?

 

- What are the benefits of user generated sites? What about the drawbacks?

- What comes after You Tube? In your opinion, what is going to be the next biggest thing to give You Tube a run for its money?

Whose thought is it anyways?

If we were to take an individual and ask them for their predictions on the upcoming presidential election would their opinion be the same as if we took that same individual, stuck him/her in a room full of people with opposing opinions for an hour and then once again asked that individual who they believe the next president is going to be? Maybe not, but probably. Behold the power of group think.

We have all been involved in group think at one point in our lives. Whether we have stayed true to our original ideas and thoughts or followed the masses, we all at some point have been subjected to what happens when a whole bunch of people come together with a whole bunch of different ideas.

So the real question here is, is group think good or bad? Can it overturn the majority’s opinion? Quite possibly. For example, if we as a country think that our healthcare system is unjust, what would happen if we all rallied together and refused to settle until the issue was resolved. Of course we would have to tear down the government, which is no simple feat, until they too realized, “Hey something needs to be done about the healthcare system in our nation.” Although, the government ultimately has the final say, we are a society have the power to force them to get to that point where they are forced to make that decision.

So, when really analyzing how a decision came to be, does it really matter whose thought it is anyways as long as the right one is ultimately made when it comes to benefitting the majority?

 

- In what ways does group think exist in the world of journalism? Do journalists “group think” when it comes to deciding on what stories to report to the media?

- In what ways does group think influence your decisions in your personal life? political beliefs?

Blog or Fiction?

When deciphering what’s credible and what’s not on the Internet, who to read and who not to read, and finally what is fact and what is fiction how does one find a site in which they will become loyal readers? Well, you could go online and sift through the various blogs and discover someone that perks your interest and gets you hooked or you could simply just ask around. Word of mouth is the most powerful tool in the creation of success in most things in life, just as it was for for the journalist Zeyad whose healing Iraq site exploded once word got around. He reported on how Iraq was faring by using extensive detail and honest language in a timely fashion on the blogosphere.

When individuals set out with the intention of using their words to rely a message without the intention of gathering a huge following is that more intriguing to us as the readers? Because we know that the message is not distorted with fluff and the proper politics of “real” journalism. Well, behold the power of the blogosphere. An emerging journalistic faculty that allows for creative writing as well as deliberate message portrayal. We are getting the facts and we are getting them in a way that allows for personal voice to be heard. Which, in my opinion adds to the intrigue of a particular blogger. Opposed to traditional media where we are given visuals but pre disposed scripts that does not allow for any personal voice.

So when deciding what’s a good blog and what’s pure fiction, I have found it helpful to trust the power of the majority’s opinion along with a bloggers’ ability to deliver the message in an informative yet creative way. Witness the power of good bloggers, just as in the case of Zeyad, who was able to portray the raw facts of what was going on in Iraq, in a very raw way that hooked his readers. Buckle up news followers of the world, we have now entered into a journalistic phenomenon, the blogosphere.

 

• How do we make it easier to sort through the fact vs. the fiction in the blogosphere?
• What credentials are required to be considered a credible blogger on the web?

Come blog with me.

Before the days of Facebook, before I knew how to create online photo albums, and even before I could construct an “about me” that let potential friends and readers get an idea of who I am beyond stating all my best friends names along with the phrase “BBF’S” was my one and only mode of online communication with friends. Good old ICQ. For those of you who are unaware, ICQ is an old school form of AIM or MSN messenger, that to this day I believe only people within my hometown of Aberdeen knows even existed.

I bring up ICQ because this past weekend I reflected upon the capabilities of the web from then until now. Just for fun, I googled my own name, and sure enough there I was. I exist as an entity on the famous search engine Google. How cool, but yet how frightening. There I am, for future friends, employers, and just about anyone who comes across my name to look up with one click of the mouse.

Throughout the readings from Blogistan to online articles, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me the power of technology. Do we rule our world? Or has technology come to rule us?

As Professor Gill said last week in class, we are only in the transitional period right now. We are at the tip of the technology takeover and must keep in mind although particular days and instances may not follow us, the world wide web does. So in conclusion, let’s keep our pictures classy and our about me’s insightful, and let’s get together and come blog with me.

• Within the technology takeover that is upon how does one use the internet while still maintaining a sense of privacy?
• In what ways have internet communities such as Facebook and Myspace taken away from the forming of relationships within the world that exists outside of the web? How has it added to it?

Real politics made for real people.

How do you make politics more real to the average citizen? Well, how about by combining public opinion and public radio. That’s exactly what happened in Exeter, New Hampshire. In the article, “Creating a Primary Place for Citizens Online” a local radio station created a website entitled Primary Place Online, as a companion to a year long radio series covering the residents of New Hampshire during the 2008 presidential primary allowing citizens to create a space to communicate with one another about their feelings on the race as well as the candidates.

In the small town of Exeter, with a population of only 15,000 the online space was used for residents to go to and express their thoughts and feelings on the race. By the end of the project there was 187 registered users with 72 of them posting at least once. This gave the followers of the campaign a chance to contribute to the ongoing coverage as well as use it as a supplemental source of traditional media enabling many individuals who do not watch traditional medias to follow the election to be an active participant as well as an opinion leader within the community.

Moving from the grassroots up, Primary Place Online became a respected source of presidential coverage within the community. One individual was quoted as saying he used the website to guide his decision on who to vote for. The project was labeled as a three fold project, reason number one being to show the rest of the voters in the country what goes on during the New Hampshire Primary. Second the give Greenburg (the brains of the operation) insight into what was going on when he wasn’t there documenting the process, and finally to give the residents of Exeter a fuller sense of what it is like to participate in a democratic process. It was designed to give residents to communicate and give feedback with their friends, neighbors, and families to see what was going on within their own points of reference.

The greatest thing that seemingly came out of this project that was quoted over and over again was that it gave real feelings to real people and allowed the primary to be a real process to those who had never had a chance or possibly had an inclination to participate beforehand. People were able to see beyond the perfectly articulated media messages and see the expression of real people, and in short put a face on the politics that are often times obscured by false messages and media fluff.

PPO allowed for people who weren’t necessarily experts to give feedback. Although the initial fear for the general public to lend opinions about an issue they may not be within their “expertise” is to resist and not become active, which many people and organizations did do, PPO also gave others an opportunity to lend their voices and opinions and connect with others within the community to guide or influence decisions.

• Why is their a resistance by some to participate in online groups such as PPO?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of creating a space that relies solely on public opinion? and how do you believe an organization such as PPO would function in the greater Seattle area?

Personalizing our news.

 “I realized I was getting a better overall report than anyone watching television, listening to the radio, or reading a newspaper in the United States. It was more complete, more varied. In effect, I’d rolled my own news.” This quote, that came straight out of the readings for the week from Chapter 2 of We the Media, when discussing the use of the web to help guide what was going on at the time of the 2000 presidential election.

This brought me back to a recent discussion in which myself and another person were discussing in what ways new medias these days can really make or break a person. In a class I took recently, I watched a clip of a politician on You Tube, which I might add was favored to win the election, was caught on a cell phone video camera using a racial slander which was later in the day posted on You Tube. Needless to say, he lost that election. When talking about using the web to “roll your own news” to get a more varied and complex story it’s really true that with our new medias we got the whole story and not just the fluff stuff that the topics of article pieces are discussing. There is no room for mistakes, no time gaps left open for misinterpretation, and one must always be at their best because you never know when a sneaky camera phone is going to be leering behind a corner.

So, with the new phenomenon of “pesonalizing” our news to exactly what we want to see beyond the headlines in papers and edited interviews on television, we must keep in mind there comes a point when we all will say something we didn’t mean, we just were lucky enough that no one cared enough to post us on You Tube!

• How will the major move to internet news lead to the demise of newspapers as we know them at both the local and the national levels?
• In what ways do/does You Tube have the potential to affect our world in world in a negative rather than positive way?

 

 

 

 

 

Moving from the grassroots up.

• Just as words hold no color, as did big media in the mid 1980’s. On the color palette of journalism there was very little room for ethnic publications and broadcasters in the realm of popular media. While thinking about the article, “From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond” the importance of grassroots activism and its role in literally making things happen from the ground up by the people and for the people, it’s interesting to contextualize the world as we live in today and be able to see the importance that one’s opinion and voice can have on a generation. Through grassroots activism, big media began to ethnically diversify. A group of people came together and basically said this is what we demand, and this is what we will achieve. Because we will use our words to educate and influence others to support the cause. It wasn’t based on the political powers of our government, it was simply the political will power of our citizens. Because in the scope of things, the biggest powers behind movements are people talking to people. Educating one another and using word of mouth to get to the nitty gritty details in a more simplistic way than may be presented to us by political authorities. So, just as grassroots activists stand for our wants and needs in our tangible societies, as do blogs in the realm of our virtual societies. Although information technologies such as literature, newspapers, radio, and television have been a major source of information gathering and a space for people to critique and form opinions about the world, blogs have captured it in a way that these sources may not have. Blogs have created a space for citizens to respond in a very immediate way. We now have the freedom to read, analyze, and respond all in one sitting. We can get our information quicker, form our opinions faster, and connect with people who agree and even disagree with us. And so, in partaking in creating social spaces such as blogs we are now be the grassroots activists of the web. Let us all have our voices be heard in a meaningful way and be a positive contribution to the world in which we live in.

·     What direct effect will blogs bring to popular media such as magazines and newspapers that we have yet to see?

·     What role does grassroots activism have in the current presidential election?