Having never heard of this scandal with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, I was surprised to learn that a senator would still have the audacity to make comments with such racist implications.

At the birthday party for the retiring Senator Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott was quoted saying: “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”

To provide some background context, Strom Thurmond ran his campaign in 1948 based on a pro-Segregationist platform. This meant that Trent Lott was essentially branding himself and his state as pro-Segregationist as well. This statement did not just brand himself as a pro-Segregationist, but also seemed to imply that segregation would be the solution to many current social problems.

Unfortunately for Trent Lott, a young “off-air” reporter for ABC News in Washington, Ed O’Keefe, was in the room when this statement was made. He knew about Strom Thurmond’s campaign and found this statement shocking and offensive. He then brought the story to ABC News in hopes that they would report on it, but they refused to do it because they thought that was no “on-camera action” and the story wouldn’t take off. However, O’Keefe did not give up and posted it on “The Note” which is a blog-like portion of the ABC News website. “The Note” allowed it to be spread to other websites and blogs which provoked a response from the public. This controversy remained on blogs for about a week before mainstream media caught wind of it and the story built up from there ending with the force resignation of Trent Lott.

This story is a prime example of how blogs and other social media can have an effect on politics and mainstream media. When this story was posted on a blog, it allowed for an easier way to share this story and gave way for a bigger audience. Although social media cannot replace national press as a news sources, it can influence which news stories will be reported or will receive more coverage time.

Blogs have the ability to debate, correct, and sift through news, thus further refining the news itself. Although this blog ended the career of a politician, many other campaigns have begun based on social media such as the It Gets Better Project and Occupy Wall Street. Barack Obama actually used social media in a large part of his campaign to win his presidential race. In fact, one of the in-class presenters, Kirk LaPointe, also maintains a blog called The Media Manager which discusses a variety of political topics.

To end this blog post on a lighter note, here is a Madtv spoof of Trent Lott.

Madtv – Reality Check w/ Trent Lott

Have a good reading week everyone!

Salam Pax, real name Salam Abdulmunem, created the blog “Where is Raed” during the invasion of the Iraq war in 2003. With the focus to discuss disappearances of people under the government of Sadam Hussein, Pax created one of the first instances of an individual’s blog having a widespread audience and impact.

Pax, born on in Baghdad in 1973, had an immense amount of international experience through travel. He was educated in Austria and returned to Iraq after his studies.

Originally, Pax had the idea to create his blog after he had been communicating to his friend, Raed, via email. He thought that blogging would be much more effective in keeping in touch with Raed during the war, because instead of getting a new email each time, Raed could just check the blog updates. Pax covered events that mainstream media sources had not; catastrophes that occurred in Baghdad such as bombings, fires and attacks. A sample of his blog can be viewed here:

With the inclusion of hyperlinks and photos, Pax’s blog is an example of new media technology.Because he incorporates his first hand accounts, personal experiences, and a bias view in his blog, Pax demonstrates how citizen journalism is an effective media tool in getting one’s point across. Here is a picture of a building after it was bombed, that mainstream media most likely would not have shown in the news:

With respectful words from Salam Pax himself:

“One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.”

Rubbish… we will always be with you Salam!

-Emma Bratman

Being an American, I will not approach this topic with the standard facts and commentary, but more so with my own authentic voice. The topic of 9/11’s impact on the media is probably one of the more relevant ones today, and looking back there is definitely a visible transformation of media from the day of those attacks and throughout the 10 years since. I read Yahoo! News every day and the headlines are constantly dominated by violent stories usually taking place in the Middle East.  Stories in the European section of Yahoo! are predominantly economically or even athletically concerned, whereas the Middle East section is littered with war stories.  The War On Terror, the ultimate response to the 9/11 attacks, has since made foreign policy (particularly regarding the Middle East) the center of the news.  This takes away from stories on crime and drugs, which I find appalling because local conflicts like these are as much if not more important for any community to hear about.

Yahoo! News – Europe vs. Yahoo! News – Middle East

A sub-topic that is very new to me is the impact on photojournalism.  While I think it would be unfair to attribute the rise of photojournalism entirely to 9/11, I definitely think it got a huge boost from it. From the events themselves to even today, photojournalism based around the event is huge. Even now more and more videos are coming out on YouTube showing civilians getting footage of the World Trade Center in New York that major news networks were not able to show.  It just proves that anyone really can be a journalist, and if you want to be a photojournalist all you need is the crummy little camera on your cell phone.  This type of accessibility was completely under the radar before September 11^th, 2011, so that is certainly something to consider.

Alternative Footage From an Apartment Building

Also, in terms of war bloggers (who really just seem very simply to me as bloggers who happen to talk about war), I think their work is crucially important. Baghdad Burning is a strong example of that.  I also just find it mind-boggling how many blogs there are today compared to a decade ago (under 100 blogs in 1999 versus 50 million in 2006).

Another topic that needs be considered, particularly because it is a topic that bothers me is the connection between post-9/11 journalism and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Since the attacks, scores of people have come out with “evidence” regarding the mysterious ways parts of the World Trade Center fell, the US government’s involvement in the attacks, Mossad’s involvement, and even go as far as to say that 9/11 is part of a greater agenda calling for a New World Order (which gets mixed up in theories regarding the Illuminati and Free Masons). YouTube and Facebook are definitely key locations of 9/11 conspiracy theories and “journalism”.

Canadians on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 

One of the larger 9/11 Conspiracy Facebook groups

Article on 9/11 Truthers Today

Respectfully,

Martin Stillman

For most of us who have seen the 9/11 attacks on the news more than a decade ago, we can clearly  remember the feelings of surprise and horror that we experienced as the catastrophic footages were replayed over and over on screen. The experience would have been even more astounding for the people who witnessed the disaster with their very own eyes. With the aid of cameras and the Internet, those people were able to replicate their moment in time of watching dark flames engulf the Pentagon, or the World Trade Centre collapse into rubble, and transfer those images online to the eyes of the rest of the world.

Photojournalists have played an important role in the coverage of the events of 9/11, and on the other hand, the events had a significant impact on photojournalism communities as well. Iconic images captured at the time included a picture of an American flag being raised above the debris of the World Trade Centre, a man jumping to his death out of the collapsing building, a bird’s eye view photograph of the damage inflicted on the Pentagon, and many more. For many of those photojournalists, the main aim was to capture the atmosphere of the events at the moment, to record history as truthfully as possible. Other photojournalists placed more emphasis on emotive and nationalistic elements, such as images of civilians mourning at the scene, the sun setting behind the rubbles, or the American flag being flown amidst the smoke and dust. Regardless of the photojournalists main purpose for taking those photographs, they had a profound impact on the public opinion regarding 9/11.

Despite the number of photographs taken about the attacks, not all of them managed to get published in print newspapers and magazines. For example, it was rare to see a picture of dying people or people who were severely injured on newspapers, whereas pictures of heroic firefighters and of the fall of the buildings were more likely to be found. The reason for this may have been that at a time of a national disaster, the public wished to see powerful spectacular images rather than desperate images of their own people suffering.

Due to the fact that the 9/11 attacks had a large emotional impact on the American public, a few of the photographs taken became controversial. For example, a photograph taken by photographer Thomas Hoepker depicts a group of New York friends relaxing and having a good time together at a park whilst the World Trade Centre towers burned away in the background. This particular photograph was criticized for portraying Americans deliberately as unpatriotic and insensitive people. Others, however, critiqued the picture from a more modern approach by arguing that the group of people in the photograph are Americans who have chosen to move on from the tragic events.

Since its origin, Wikipedia has dedicated itself to freedom of information, the spread of culture, and the cultivation of world knowledge. You may remember the most recent documentary our CAP stream watched in ASTU, RiP! A Remix Manifesto. Although the documentary focused mainly on the realm of music and video sharing and remixing, what role does this creative media have as information? Is the Wikipedian permitted to use copyrighted and non-free content under the fair use law? What are Wikipedia’s policies on this subject?

Wikipedia’s Policy Page on non-free content states:
“Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project… Non-free material is used only if, in addition to other restrictions, we firmly believe that the use would be deemed fair use if we were taken to court. The Wikimedia Foundation reserves the right to remove non-free copyrighted content at any time. Note that citation sources and external links raise other copyright concerns that are addressed in other policies.”

Now for a bit more context about the origin of the Wiki. The concept for Wiki sites was the brainchild of Ward Cunningham, an American computer programmer that decided he would create a site called WikiWikiWeb back in 1994. This is what it looks like today. It was the first instance of a “website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.” The idea being that users could edit the content posted to the site in the spirit of free information and the spread of knowledge.

Lawrence Lessig,  political activist known for his support of the concepts of Free Culture, free software, and open spectrum keeps his own wiki-style site, LessigWiki, in which “he has encouraged the public to use to document cases of (political) corruption.” Lessig spoke about the ethics of Free Culture at the Wikimania conference in 2006. You can find a crappy recording of his speech here.

You remember, of course, Wikipedia’s SOPA/PIPA protest on January 18th, 2012. The acts seek to “expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.”

 

The Wikimedia foundation made a statement the night of the blackout, saying: “It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.”

Wikipedia has revolutionized the way we get facts today.  The online encyclopaedia has changed the way information is found on the Internet. Wikipedia differs from all other websites in that the public is able to edit it, it is then re-edited by a moderator and come out as a completely “unbiased” information source. Wikipedia’s unconventional way of publishing information has created a universal recognition of the website as a way of finding information.

Wikipedia’s tolerance for anybody to edit the page is not a win-win situation for Wikipedia. Most people I know my age will not question the accuracy of Wikipedia however in the academic world Wikipedia is a laughable source. This double-edged sword creates an interesting phenomenon considering Wikipedia cannot be used as an academic source and yet it’s popularity is unprecedented. Search for anything on the Internet especially on Google and one of the first result will be Wikipedia peer-edited source information. Our own Professor Taylor Owen stated “Do not use Wikipedia as a source.” This inadvertent effect has created a problematic issue for students being that many gain valuable information from this precious website.

Wikipedia also altered the way people get news being that it has such an expansive pool of information many go to Wikipedia for more in depth news. Since many people edit it to the point where the information is pure fact, and unbiased the public pool of information is shared for the benefit of anybody with Internet. Wikipedia also encourages mistakes, a value that is unique to any other aggregator of information. Even though mistakes are made a dedicated group of moderators takes out any biased words or language to ensure that the information presented is solely facts.

In my own experience Wikipedia has helped me finish countless amounts of homework and helped me understand how to complete assignments in my Exercise Science and Christian Vocations classes alike. Although countless teachers have informed me never to use Wikipedia it is still a starting point for gaining the knowledge necessary for any given project or research paper.

Google News was created by Krishna Bharat in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. And the service was launched with 4000 news sources in September, 2002, but was in beta until 2006. It is improving and developing all the time. Now Google news may be our first choice to search for daily news and information.

Actually, Google news is not the first company to tackle news researches. But the competitors, AlltheWeb.com is now a Yahoo! operated site, while the lesser-known Newsseer.com is full of advertisement now. The reason why Google news still exists is that it changes with the society develops. Apparently, difference can be told through a screenshot of AlltheWeb.com below.

What does Google news do? It constantly updates news from 4000 different sources home and abroad. When you open the website, you will see what’s happening in globe. Google news doesn’t host content; it just provides links to publications’ pages. There are no “human” editors – service is offered by computer algorithms without human intervention. It sends e-mail alerts on various keyword topics, too.

What mentioned above are some regular things that a news search engine should do. It is personalization service that makes Google news more individual. “With this service, you pick the story that interests you and then pick the news sources” vs. “pick a source and then pick the story that interests you.” – Marissa Mayer (Google Product Manager). If you don’t want to see news about business, you just need move that tag to trash. Moreover, news is ranked by freshness, credibility of the source, and number of sources publishing a story related to the news. According to most people’s habits – only read the stories on the first page, it is convenient to find what is needed. Besides, they’ve added the +1 function, so you can share the news articles you enjoy with your friends. This function is very useful for social network becomes a gradually dominant role in spreading information nowadays.

“This product is about innovation,” Marissa Mayer said. As she said, Google news changes our approach to news and information in a way, which makes it more convenient for us. There are tons of news on the Internet, but perhaps what you need is only a little. Thus, Google News is your news, your personal news indeed.

Even after a decade 9/11 seems to one of the most controversial topics, Jenny and Emily kept the sensitivity of the topic in mind during their presentation.  September 11, 2001 marked the date when the United States of America suffered a terrorist attack. Two airplanes crashed into the twin towers, one in the pentagon and the last crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers realized the hijacker’s intentions.

Everyone around the world could not believe what had just happened. People wanted details and fast. With this sudden growth of curiosity among the people, the media evolved.

Television, print, and online media transformed. At the time of 9/11, domestic issues were not the main concern of the news. No one had an interest for it; everyone wanted to know what was going on with the war on terror. People concerned themselves with global issues instead of domestic ones. Crime and federal policy was no longer covered in news channels. News channels, blogs, news websites now all covered the topic of the war on terror.

The evening news suffered a major fall. Everyone in the midst of figuring out what happened, wanted immediate detailed updates. The evening news would cover topics that had been unveiled a few hours earlier by news websites. With increasing traffic on the Internet, not everyone was able to access the news. People started to read blogs for faster information even though a lot of it was biased and inaccurate.

9/11 opened the doors for millions to write and share their thoughts with the world on their opinions and interpretations of the attack. Anyone who had a camera or a video of the event was now able to blog and attract readers. If readers disagreed, they could start their own blogs so their views could be read by the world. A significant amount of blogs increased around the time of 9/11.

The western world seemed to unite and fight together against the terrorists and those who contributed to this attack. They left their flags at half-mast signifying sorrow and their determination to fight at the same time.

War bloggers fluttered around the Internet with the invasion of Afghanistan. Civilians in the regions of Afghanistan expressed their views and perspectives on the war on terror. Many videos regarding 9/11 went viral such as  “I miss you daddy” on youtube regarding the tragic loss of America’s loved ones.

The catastrophic attack on 9/11 certainly did kill thousands of innocent people but the war on terror killed many more. We remember 9/11 as the day when thousands of Americans were killed but we forget to remember each day ever since when millions of innocent people were killed in a war against terrorism. What about those children sitting half way across the world missing their daddies too? War bloggers play an important role as they bring to light that the war on terrorism uses terror as its greatest weapon. War bloggers allow readers to look at things from a completely different perspective.

For 24 hours on January 18^th 2012, the world went black. Wikipedia, amongst thousands  of other internet sites, called a complete blackout in protest of the proposed SOPA / PIPA Bill. As much as this probably left thousands of last minute assignments undone, multiple research junkies frustrated and many others confused, this move had a much greater impact: it led to the withdrawal of the SOPA / PIPA Bill (for now, at least). So what’s all the fuss about Wikipedia? Why is it so important? A presentation by Melissa Kuipers and Marko Kundicevic during the 10:00am Journalism class on February 10^th 2012 cleared the waters.

“Wikipedia is a free, collaborative, non-profit website, which was founded by Jimmy Wales and launched on January 15 2001,” they explained, “It is written from a mutual point of view and is openly editable, but only by those within the Wikipedia community- Wikipedians”

According to the Wikipedia History page, the first distinguished proposal for an online encyclopaedia was made in 1993 by Rick Gates.The idea of an open source internet encyclopaedia was proposed by Richard Stallman. Wikipedia was then officially launched on January 15 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, using the ideas and expertise of Ward Cunningham, who founded Wiki.

On Wikipedia’s FAQ page, however, only Jimmy Wales is highlighted as the co-founder. This may therefore be a source of confusion for those doing research about the site, and lead to contradictory findings among peers. It is for reasons such as this that Wikipedia is often criticized as being unreliable and inaccurate, even with the wealth of information that it has to offer to its viewers.

Nevertheless, Wikipedia has come a long way since its establishment. An increase in content, number of editors and general popularity are just but a few of the sites’ accomplishments, with projects such as Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote and Wikitionary adding a little oomph to plain old Wiki. Even the logo has seen quite a considerable amount of change through the years.

So how does this open source online encyclopaedia actually work? Wikipedia uses an open “Wiki” editing model. This means that practically anyone that visits the site could edit and create new articles, which are then added to the database. No article is possessed by its creator or editor, nor is it inspected by any recognized authority. Rather, the articles are agreed upon through consensus. The only problem is that with anyone having the freedom to post up information, how do you know what information is true? The Former Encyclopaedia Britannica editor-in-chief once described this by saying:

“The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.” (Adopted from Wikipedia)

Whereas many critics may discredit Wikipedia and dismiss it as an inaccurate non-academic source, Wikipedia has taught a thing or two about citizen Journalism: we can see the fruits of collaboration; we can see the fruits of free contribution. And even though these fruits may not always be sweet, at least they’re growing.

By Joy Richu.

Sources:

http://www.wikipedia.org/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

     The Google News started by Krishna Bharat. It launched in Sept 2002, but was in beta until Jan 2006.

       At all the time, the readers have got used to pick one kind of publication, (such as Moreover Technologies, alltheweb.com and newsseer) and then found out the topics the might interested in.

       In oder to profit the choose of individuation and difference views for the readers, Google News  makes all the similar news shows up together and basis on what does the individual might  enjoy to read. For example the Google News gives many links about one specific topic so that all you have to do is make sure what kind of articles you are going to read. Also they constantly update news from 4000 different sources, and there is no” human” editors-service is offered by computer algorithms without human intervention. We can also sends e-mail alerts on various keyword topics.

      Now the Google News available in over 40 regions and 19 different languages. I think the Google News is the most easy and convenient  way to get all the news around the world!