The Ocean of Information

This week in class we will be discussing Wikipedia and it's pros and cons. To help us prepare for this discussion we read various articles including A Stand Against Wikipedia by Scott Jaschik. The article discusses how Wikipedia has been infiltrating the school systems more and more and some schools are beginning to ban the use of it. Jaschik talks with several professors about the issue. Most note that Wikipedia does have some value but people are using it incorrectly.

The world of Wikipedia is such a catch 22 due to the fact that there is a plethora of correct information, some even more correct than the printed encyclopedias due to the immediacy that Wikipedia has, but there is also so much room for error in Wikipedia's system.

Here at Butler, all of my professors have told me that it is unacceptable to cite Wikipedia and would result in a lowered grade on a paper. I find this to be a reasonable rule, however that does not mean that I have never used a Wikipedia page for research. I think what people need to realize while researching is that Wikipedia is a good place to start but then take time to cross check your facts. Also, a lot of the time information on Wikipedia has a citation and there are links at the bottom to take you to the original source of the information.

Therefore my stand on Wikipedia is to not write it out of your research and learning overall, but just remember what you are reading and research further than just a single Wikipedia site. Anyone could be writing the article you are reading...

Gender Differences In the Blogosphere

We had to read an article THE GENDERED BLOGOSPHERE: EXAMINING INEQUALITY USING NETWORK AND FEMINIST THEORY which discussed what propotion of political bloggers were women. They took samples over a one year course and found out that a mere 10% of political bloggers were women. The reasons that they gave for this were 1. Women simply don't blog about politics, 2. Women's blogs lack quality and 3. The most popular blogs do not link to women's blogs.

It is pretty obvious that politics has been a "men's world" for as long as we've known it, so it's not very surprising to see a lack of women political bloggers. I personally do not have much of an interest in politics so this doesn't really shock or effect me much.

The second reasoning they give, that women's blogs lack quality, seems a bit absurd. However, I would agree that if women are blogging they tend to add their own opinions and feelings into the blog more often than men do. This may be an off putting thing in a blog if someone is trying to find hard facts about a political issue. The reader would not want to have to wade through 3 paragraphs of the writers personal opinion.

Lastly, the linking hierarchy that has been created by men. As previously discussed, we know that "info snacking" is the new way to surf the web. Therefore, if the most popular blogs are linking to other blogs, those blogs will then get tons of traffic sent to their site. Now if men are only linking to other men, it pushes the women's blogs even further down into the abyss that is the internet. Women can help change this by only linking to other women, however that could greatly affect the quality of their blog.

In the end, perhaps with the times changing and the prospective of more women in politics grows so will the appearance of women political bloggers.

New New Media

New New Media. Yeah, it exists. Most people don't even know that there is a NEW media, let alone a NEW NEW media. This is because media is so rapidly changing it is hard to keep up! Both old and new media use the means of the mass media institutions but new new media is all about you.

Old media is described as newspapers and television. New media is email, websites, and blogs of old media. New new media is Youtube, Twitter, Blogging, Wikipedia, Digg, Myspace, Facebook, Second Life, and Podcasts.

Blogging first started in 1997 and social media grew rapidly from there. If you think about it, the creating of all of this new new media seems a bit invasive and strange but that seems to be the way that our society works. We always complain about not having privacy, yet we insist on knowing the latest celebrity gossip and knowing about every news story the second it hits.

The development of new new media really is for and by the users. Most of these platforms are entirely user based and thrive from millions of people each day getting on their phone or computer and simply talking about themselves to a group of 100s or millions of random people.

Now I myself am a avid user of all things social media, so I'm definitely not knocking the new new media however if you really take yourself outside of your shoes for a minute and look on it it does seem a bit ridiculous. Even more, if you think back to a few years ago when none of this existed, what did we do with our lives!

I see 9 year olds on their twitter and youtube accounts making silly posts and I just think back to what I would've been doing back then (probably running around outside with my friends.) While new new media does have it's obvious advantages we've also got to be sure to use it with caution or it could end up backfiring on us all.

The Internet Is Ruining our Children's Lives

"The Internet is ruining our children's lives." You hear it all the time. People blame the internet for children's problems in today's society. While the internet may definitely add to some problems it is definitely not the source and sole cause of the problem at all.

Outside of class we watched Growing Up Online a Frontline program about a handful of different teenagers and their stories of their lives and how the internet affected them. While the stories told are not the only cases of things like that happening, I'm sure, it still only represents a handful of kids.

One of the stories was about a girl named "Autumn" created a whole online persona for herself completely without the knowledge of her parents and launched a whole new life on the internet. While the internet definitely allows for easier access for something like that, it is not like children were not sneaking off in the middle of the night or lying to their parents before the internet came around.

Honestly, how the internet affects children's lives really lies heavily upon the parents. I'm definitely not saying that parent's should have 24/7 access to everything their child is doing (like Cam's mother in the Frontline story) but they should be involved enough in their child's life to make sure that they are doing alright. Parent's should also make sure in younger children especially to monitor how much time is allowed on the internet and make sure that their kids still get to grow up playing outside and using their imagination rather that staring into a screen all day.