Archive for February, 2012
My Slideshow
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012Ethics and Social Media
Friday, February 24th, 2012Social Media expert David McMillan has written How to Ruin Your Life in 14 Minutes: Or Why We Need a Serious Conversation About the Ethics of Social Media in response to two Florida teenagers’ racist youtube rant. Haven’t heard of it? You’re in for a treat.
McMillan responds to this video in a way that more people should have:
“Condemning these two girls seems redundant at this point (the video and the vicious ignorance it displays speak for themselves), and although I’m African-American, I’m not compelled to expend too much energy criticizing their racist remarks. However, as an online content creator, a former YouTube employee during its formative years, and a social media professional and enthusiast, I am compelled to use this incident as a springboard for having a serious discussion about the role of ethics in social media.” -David McMillan
Right on, Dave. These girls don’t need our scrutiny, their lives are over. So, what now?
Now we try to educate future boneheads about social media. These are McMillan’s 5 key points of ethics in social media:
- In social media, there is no difference between public and private.
- Just because you can post something doesn’t mean you should.
- Your online and offline selves might not be identical, but they’re joined at the hip.
- Will what I post cause harm to others?
- Finally, call it the Social Media Golden Rule: post about others as you would have them post about you.
Anything you post online can be seen around the world if it is sought out to be seen. Remember that. When in doubt, ask yourself, “do I want billions of people to see this?”
Yes. Technically, we have the right to say anything (pesky First Amendment.) But there are consequences to our actions. Be prepared for them.
McMillan uses the example of a 3rd grade teacher by day, erotic fiction blogger by night. If found out, would the school fire you even though you keep your blog life extremely separated from your school life? You betcha. The two lives are separate, but both are you.
People feel a sense of security of obscurity in an online world. It can feel like the perfect platform for the ever-popular cyberbullying. Don’t. It’s not cool.
This doesn’t mean be the Miss America of Facebook. You can share your honest opinions and ideas without a sugar coating — just be ready for others to share their opinions, too.
These are of course just a few brief examples of ways to avoid making (the bad kind of) waves on the Internet. There seems to be a lot of common sense involved, no?
Why You Look Like a Tool on Facebook
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012Andy McDonald, comedy writer and blogger for Huffington Post, has compiled a list of The 10 Most Annoying Facebook Status Updates and I think that he should receive a medal for this outstanding contribution to society. This is McDonald’s list along with my thoughts on each subject:
- The “Food I Just Made/Ate Photo” Update
- The “A Friend is Someone Who…” Update
- The “Gym” Update
- The “Tanning” Update
- The “Bet You Won’t Repost This!” Update
- The “Vegas” Update
- The “Why Can’t I Find a Nice Guy?” Update
- The “Will Someone Bring Me (Food Item) to Work?” Update
- The “Something Something With My Besties!” Update
- The “Facebook Game Request” Update
If you made the food yourself, all right, maybe. If you’re just taking pictures of food you’ve ordered in a restaurant — don’t. It never looks as delicious to your audience as it does to you because you’re hungry and we’re not.
Oh thank god I read your status! I missed the friendship month in kindergarten.
I’m glad you claim to be in shape when the rest of the country is not. Kudos. Even if you are a gym rat and are there on a daily basis, why would you think we want to be subjected to your repetitious status updates?
I don’t get it. You’ll die. I feel like knowing that you’re going tanning is like me becoming an accessory to murder.
You’re right. I’m included in the 97 percent of people who won’t repost that. Moving on.
You were in Vegas for a week 5 months ago and you’ve been posting about it on Facebook for the past year. Do the math.
Because you’ve trapped them in the friendzone, dummy.
No, I won’t. I won’t ever. Be productive.
McDonald says that you best be sure there’s a mutual agreement among besties involved at risk of hurting the feelings of other potential besties. Social media etiquette, ladies.
If I receive more than 2 Facebook game invites from you, you will be unfriended. Friends don’t try to get friends to play Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook.
Briggs Chapter 6
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012“Are we using 1,000 words where a picture should be? — Matt Thompson
This Matt Thompson quote begins Chapter 6, and it really made me stop and think. We’ve all heard the cliche a picture is worth 1,000 words a million times — but I’ve never really thought of a picture as a substitute for text.
I think that the digital age has had (some of) the same impact on photographers as it has journalists. There are many parallels that can be drawn between the newsprint business and the print photography business. (Kodak just filed for bankruptcy. Yikes.)
Being able to publish your work globally at the click of a button is fantastic. Journalists can share their stories, photographers can share their photos. The down side? So can everyone else.
This chapter is a beginners guide for the journalist who may be uncomfortable with a camera but still need to add photographs to their stories and do it better than the Average Joe blogger.
This chapter covers:
- An introduction to digital photography
- How to capture solid photographs
- How to edit and manage digital photos on your computer
- How to publish photos
Briggs Chapter 5
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012I remember my first cell phone. It was eleven years ago and it was a Nokia 5165 paperweight. Only good for two things: Snake and Snake. Snake was one of the, like, 3 games that came programmed on the Nokias at the time. It was awesome — and it has left a void in my heart that even my iPhone4 cannot fill.
We’ve come a long way from the Nokia 5165. Briggs lets us know this with the entirety of Chapter 5.
Mobile journalism is just as it sounds. Actually, in America we don’t usually refer to cell phones as “mobiles” so maybe it isn’t just as it sounds. Whatever. Mobile journalism is news gathering, reporting, editing and publishing all from the journalist’s smartphone. (Suck it, Nokia.)
“The cell phone is the world’s most ubiquitous computer.” – John Markoff, NY Times 2009
A smartphone with the following capabilities can take you from a journalist to a mojo:
- A camera that shoots good pictures with flash and video.
- A full QWERTY keyboard.
- Mobile Internet capability
When Brad Klabfeld spoke to our class the other day, he said, “the Internet is primarily a written word medium.” Briggs agrees. “Text is critical and — journalists can be thankful — it’s the easiest to publish.” Microblogging and live blogging are both important methods to keep your audience engaged up to the minute.
Fantastically Pointless Video
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012Minus the fantastically.
I Killed Whitney Houston
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012Okay, I’m lying. I think. Unless God actually does follow me on Twitter.
I’m sure by now, we’ve all heard about Whitney Houston‘s untimely demise over the weekend.
Let me start out by saying, I am not a terrible person. A life ending is a sad thing. I know this. Whitney Houston was a great talent and she will be missed by the millions of fans she left behind. I’m not really going to go into the fact that Ms. Houston was a bit before my time and I didn’t have much of an emotional connection to the singer because that makes me look bad. But she was, and I didn’t.
Now, I will show you why I feel responsible for the death of a legendary musician 3 time zones away:
I sent this tweet Friday night, about 18 hours before Houston’s reported time of death. It was supposed to be a joke. I know, I’m not funny. I also know that God has better things to do than check Twitter (he could procrastinate on social media like the rest of us) so I’m not feeling an overwhelming sense of bone-crunching, gut-wrenching guilt about this coincidence.
But I am going to tweet about winning the lottery next week. Y’know, just in case.
Briggs Chapter 4
Saturday, February 11th, 2012Ah, the microblog. Such a new phenomenon that spell check has underlined it for me, as if to say, “why, what on earth could this be? This isn’t in my dictionary. What is this microblog you speak of?” Not to worry, spell check! You’re not alone in your state of oblivion. Many have yet to fully understand the art of microblogging. I recommend to you and to all of those people, spell check, reading chapter 4 of Briggs’ Journalism Next for a crash course in microblogging 101. Briggs discusses the following in this chapter:
- How and why microblogging became popular
- How microblogging works
- How professional news organizations use Twitter to compliment their existing publishing platforms
- How to build a community of followers
- How individual journalists can make microblogging work for them in their professional lives
The only microblog that I am familiar with is Twitter. Even so, I’ve only been active on Twitter for a few weeks, so I hardly consider myself an expert Tweeter. Learning how journalists benefit from Twitter was informative and inspiring. I’m not saying I don’t care about the history of the microblog. But, it’s already here. With a bang. So while I think it’s great that Twitter was used for alerts and communication during stressful situations once upon a time, I mostly just want to figure out how to get the most out the the damn thing in the here and now.
So, what’d I learn?
- Don’t put Twitter on auto-pilot. It prevents the journalist from engaging with the community.
- For journalists, the benefit of microblogging is learning about your audience.
- The 80-20 rule: 80 percent of your posts should be informative, 20 percent should be personal.
- Quality over quantity.
A growing concern of mine with this whole microblog phenomenon was the role that journalists would play. If everyone is on Twitter spitting out stories, do you really need journalists?
“Even with ordinary citizens Twittering away about breaking news, journalists still play an important role by verifying facts and publishing updates as more information becomes available. People were already turning to news organizations’ Web sites for the latest developments in the news, and now they turn to those organizations’ Twitter feeds for even more immediate information.” – Briggs, pg. 102
Looks like we do still need journalists. Phew.
Santorum: Women in Combat not in ‘best interest’ of Mission
Friday, February 10th, 2012Rick Santorum, Republican presidential candidate, voiced his concerns about the Pentagon’s decision to make more military roles available to women, including positions on the front line.
Maybe he was still reeling from his recent tri-state primary victory, or maybe he just didn’t think any feminists were paying attention to this particular press conference. But when asked by John King of CNN, if, as president, he would support “perhaps opening the door to a broader role for women in combat,” Santorum responded:
“I want to create every opportunity for women to be able to serve this country, and they do so in an amazing and wonderful way and they’re a great addition — and they have been for a long time — to the armed services of our country.”
If only he had stopped there.
“But I do have concerns about women in front-line combat, I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because of other types of emotions that are involved. It already happens, of course, with the camaraderie of men in combat, but I think it would be even more unique if women were in combat, and I think that’s probably not in the best interest of men, women or the mission.”
Santorum has been clear about his traditional military dreams since the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” last year. He believes that openly gay soldiers would wreak havoc on their straight comrades in such “close quarters.” Plus, straight boys wouldn’t volunteer to serve anymore if the chance of meeting a homosexual was involved.
The presence of gay soldiers could have an “adverse effect on retention and recruitment.”
Personally, I believe in civil rights. Treating everyone equally. I think it is absolutely ridiculous to limit women’s military roles because of the assumption that chivalry is programmed into male DNA. If someone, anyone, wants to fight for their country, he or she should be able to. I know I sure as hell don’t want to, so more power to ’em.
The Importance of the Serial Comma
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
