HW 13: Blogs Will Change the World

After reading the chapter Blog Will Change Your Business in Kline and Burstein’s “Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I’ve found it’s hard to decide what is more important: The impact of blogging on business or communication that is not profit related. I’ve come to decide though that the impact of blogging on communication is more important. I used to think that blogging was just a place where teenagers wrote a journal. I didn’t realize that it helped businesses grow and people communicate world wide. But in recent years it’s said that “blogs are what’s causing the Web to grow,” says Jason Goldman, (Kline & Burstein 228). This suggests that without blogs used as a way of communicating world wide there would be no blogs for businesses. Blogs started as a way of communication and soon businesses caught on, started blogging, and to their astonishment helped their businesses grow. These conclusions of blogging being important for communication will have significant applications in the making of more blogs and being able to make the community of blogging even bigger. It’s only quite recently that I’ve learned how huge blogging really is and it’s not just a place where teenagers write about their everyday lives. It’s helping people communicate world wide and everyday thousands more people join the blogging world.

HW 11: Making Global Voices Heard

I chose to view http://nkzone.org/nkzone because I don’t really know about anything going on in North Korea as of right now. The blog though was mainly just event advertisements. With a style of writing easy for anyone to read and understand. The first blog I read by Timothy Savage was letting people know that a Tae Kwon Do team was coming to the states to perform. There were links to more information about the team where you could view photos and clips. I read about six blogs and only one had actual news. Timothy Savage also wrote about nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea. To my surprise the blog is in red, white, and blue. It is neatly organized and at the top is a picture of what seems to be fighting and cheering. Timothy Savage and Michael Rank are the only people who’s blogs are posted on the website.
As Rebecca MacKinnon explained there is bad internet access in North Korea and they are fearful of their own government, therefore there is no blog with firsthand information coming from North Korea. This seems to still be true and I think Timothy Savage and Michael Rank are American journalists who are putting their information on the site to still make it a watch blog. This blog does not really allow global voices to be heard because North Korea’s government is so strict and feared their people cannot voice their opinions or knowledge on blogs.
I agree with Rebecca MacKinnon that this North Korean blog is still a watch blog. Yet some readers may challenge my view that it’s not really a North Korean blog at all because Savage and Rank put up their North Korean information for probably people in the United States. After all many people may already know that North Korea doesn’t have very good internet access. Indeed my own argument that the nkzone blog is a watch blog seems to ignore the fact the North Korean’s cannot put any information on this blog.

HW 10: Punching Holes in Old Faded Mirrors

Between both interviews I read in Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing, Politics, Business, and Culture I could better relate to the interview with Arianna Huffington. She had more opinions to relate to and disagree with than the interview with Ayelet Waldman. I agree with Huffington that blogs have become an important source of media in the past few years, because my experience with this class and making a blog has shown me that blogging is a huge epidemic online now. There is no doubt in my mind that blogging has become important for many people and companies now for support or helping to build a business. “Blogs have made a huge difference because they have broken the monopoly of the mainstream media,” (Kline & Burstein, 344) as Huffington states. Now while I agree with this statement there’s one main thing I disagree with. I think Huffington is mistaken when she says the news on television focus’s only on one story or event. The news we watch on TV has a variety of different stories and they show the bigger stories quite often. When you watch the 6:00, 9:00 and 10:00 news on the same channel most likely the same major story is going to be repeated and gone into detail about. Not overlooked real fast. Any news you can get on TV and in the newspaper I believe you can get in a blog. That’s where blogs get their main information anyway.

HW 7: My So-Called Blog

I agree that parents should not monitor everything that their middle school children write online. Children in middle school are going through an awkward stage in life, and going through a lot of different things. I think being able to talk about what they are going through in school and being able to vent online to absolutely anyone could be a good thing. They do need to be careful though about who they start talking to. But I do think it can be a good thing for children to blog in order to get help, opinions, and maybe even support for something they are going through. In the article “My So-Called Blog” Emily Nussbaum describes a typical middle school blog. “A result of all this self-chronicling is that the private experience of adolescence--a period traditionally marked by seizures of self-consciousness and personal confessions wrapped in layers and hidden in a sock drawer--has been made public. Peer into an online journal, and you find the operatic texture of teenage life with its fits of romantic misery, quick-change moods and sardonic inside jokes,” (Kline and Burstein, 351). Basically, Nussbaum is saying that blogging is a great way for teenagers to safely share their emotions with whomever they chose to share them with. Middle school can be a difficult time for some kids and being able to vent online to anyone and everyone can be helpful. Who needs their parents monitoring everything they’re saying? Middle school is the beginning of freedom for most kids, so blogging is a fun and easy way to start that freedom.

HW: 6 Interest Statement for Semester Project

The social computing technologies I’m interested in now are email, instant messaging, and social networking services. I’m interested in email because it’s an easy way to get in touch with people if you can’t contact them through phone. I like instant message because I can talk to my friends at anytime instantly, and I can talk to more than one person at a time as well. Specific social networking that I like is face book. You can see what your friends have been up to, chat with them, and look at their pictures.
The kinds of empowerment of marginalized groups that I’m most interested in are overcoming racism, because I feel that everyone should be equal, overcoming ageism, just because you’re a senior citizen doesn’t mean they should be treated unequal to younger generations, I think they should be treated with even more respect, and last issues of disabilities or learning differences. I have some friends who have learning problems, but they’re not disabled, and they’re just like everyone else.
I think I’ll start looking at the US and North America for geographical areas.

HW: 5b "I Blog, Therefore I Am"

In Kline’s “I Blog, Therefore I Am” Kline basically argues that the media is making a huge turning point. More people are using the internet and watching TV as a way of getting the latest news. People aren’t reading newspapers like they use to back in the day. Kline reports that newspaper circulation has fallen 11 percent since 1990 (p. 239, Kline) and it’s getting worse every year. Kline also suggests that companies are most likely going to fail if they don’t have a blog to help support their own company. I don’t think I can agree with that. I believe any company can stay alive without a blog. I don’t think blogs are a necessity to keep a company growing. Blogs can destroy a company just as much as it can help it. I would much rather get my news and information in a newspaper than a blog. Anything can be put on the internet, so many things can be untrue in a blog. In a newspaper most articles are guaranteed to be true.

HW 4 Option 2: Toshiba

"The Voice of a Customer" Response

Toshiba Company/Computers

In response to reading “The Voice of the Customer” in Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I thought about what was important to our age group being in college. Our lap top is the big thing we look forward to after graduation, and every graduate should get a computer that promises good quality and a computer that will always work. I own a Toshiba lap top so I figured I would find out what Toshiba is promising me. When you first open the Toshiba website www.toshiba.com they say they are “Innovative just like you.” Their group slogan is “Committed to people, Committed to the future” (http://www.toshiba.com/csrpub/jsp/home/SResponsibility.jsp). I agree that Toshiba is committed to it’s people. I have had my computer for about a month now and I am constantly using it. I have never had a probem with my computer and if I was too I’m sure Toshiba would help me out. I could not find a Toshiba company blog, but I did find postings from other blogs reading that Toshiba lap tops were offering cutting-edge technology to improve your productivity and help you work faster. Toshiba seems to be a promising company and I recommend one of their computers. Toshiba is promising good quality and commitment to their customers and they stay true to their slogan.

HW 3: Toward a More Participatory Democracy

In David Kline’s “In a More Participatory Democracy” I’ve come to learn how important and productive blogs are. It’s almost hard to believe how many blogs there are on the internet and how they are effecting many things, especially politics. I was very surprised to learn how the 2004 Presidential Election was effected so much by blogs considering then I did not even know what a blog was. Another big thing that really surprised me was how much money candidates made off of blogging. They raised more money than ever before through a blog and I thought that was really hard to believe.
On page 7 a Pew Research Center Poll says, “45 percent of Americans said they believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers” (Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture). We all know that news on the TV, radio, internet, newspapers, and magazines can seem a little unreal or far-fetched. But America seems to think that blogs are always correct and they can get real information from them all the time, which I find hard to believe. I think a blog, just like any other form of news on the media can be untrue as well. Blogs have become a significant part of our generation, and they are a good source of getting news, and allowing your voice to be heard, but I think people should still listen to other forms of news on the media to make sure they are getting all the information they can get.

HW 2: Burstein's 12 Key Ideas

Idea 4: Blogs will coexist with other media for a long time to come, and there will be continual interactions and cross-fertilizations.

9/5

Burstein is telling us in this idea that blogging is another form of media. It is like a newspaper or a magazine. People could become journalists or even become famous TV personalities because of their blog. I never realized how big blogging was until this class. To think that people could become famous because of their blog blows me away. I know people who would love to go into the field of journalism, and they will have to go to college and make their chances better in getting a job as a journalist. To me it seems unfair to people that are going to school have the same chance at becoming a journalist as people blogging for fun online. I find it strange that these random bloggers are getting so much attention. I never realized how much useful information was put in to some blogs around the country, and even the world. I’m eager to find out if blogging will become even bigger and turn into the worlds new way of finding out the latest news, instead of having newspapers and magazines mailed to our homes. Blogging will definitely make it easier and cheaper to find out the latest news happening in our world.