Assignment 3

this is my assignment 3.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, these seem to be the only two faces you see anymore on politically connected television networks. It is no surprise why these two presidential candidates have the spotlight on them at all times, not only do they create sparks during debates, they also are two very unusual candidates to see face to face, let alone running for president. This is the sole reason I had chosen these two figures to compare and contrast webpages. In the following paper I will be analyzing each candidate’s website, comparing and contrasting the content available, focusing on form, content and writing style.

 

 First I will examine Barack Obama’s website, who is the junior senator from Illinois. Upon first examining the webpage of Mr. Obama I was expecting to have to enter my information to be able to view his web page. Usually they want to be able to send you information about that candidate via email, but I was surprised when it gave me the option to opt out of the information section and simply hop right into the website. I was not too surprises with the layout of the webpage, its background was blue with shades of light blue throughout, it had a very bold but relaxing tone to it. Most pictures that were offered of Mr. Obama were of him standing tall looking to be in deep thought. The writing style was extremely neat and organized, with a soft and relaxing tone to all of it. It was very user friendly offering a place to watch video, write blogs and jut explore every detail about Barack and his campaign. There were several tabs to select from and I took them and the first tab being the most important to the last being the least important. The first tab was a Learn tab that gave you the option to learn about the candidate, his family, gives facts that when entering are mostly directed against his biggest opponent   Hillary Clinton, in summary declaring here a liar. The next tab is the issues that Barack stands for. The next tab is the media tab, which gives you links to Baracktv, photos, downloads, mobile. The next tab is the action tab where it gives you the option to donate, there is also a place to donate on the main page that is in bold red letters. The next tab is the people tab, which gives you where he had been and where he is going to be.

 

  Hillary Clintons web page was striking similar to the colors of the American flag, just screaming patriotism. It was more cluttered than Baracks webpage, but had striking similarities in the tab options. Not too different than Baracks. The biggest difference was the writing style. It is obvious that Hillary is falling behind in the race and it really shows on her webpage where the majority of the content that is fist viewed is asking for help in ione way or another. Some key words that rang aloud were help, join and find. All related to helping her campaign, or joining her fight and finding supporters for herself. I did not see to may jabs at Senator Obama, much unlike I saw on his page. Maybe it was hidden deeper in the webpage were I had not found or maybe they have backed off that strategy because of a possible backfire. I was also surprised that Hillary did not have the word “Donate” as bold and big as Obama.

 

  Overall I found the two web pages to have striking similarities, but also had much different tomes to each. It seems that Hillary is desperate in her website, where Barack is riding the wave on top and is much more calm and collected. I’m sure if the situation was reversed that they both would be singing different tunes.

group project

through out my search for news organizations websites I found huge amount of resources to choose from. I picked one news organization that I had heard of and one news organization that I had not heard of. This way I could compare and contrast a popular organization to maybe a less favorable one.

the first news organization I chose was the BBC online news website. I first encountered a browser option with categories with news from each continent, then you would click on that option and there would be only a few major news stories, nothing to in depth though. Then on the other side of the page it seemed that there was more effort put into the sports, radio, tv, world news and weather tabs, each individual box was accompanied by a photo and r.s.s. option. I clicked on the r.s.s. tabs and it gave me very up to date(with in 5 min) freshly posted news stories. Overall I was not too impressed with the bbc news site. For being such a mainstream new organization I would expect more effort.

the next website that i explored was www.wn.com. this website even though not the for-runners, for news as far as i knew, did have a lot ore options to choose from. It did not have any rss options that were visible. It had a handy little stock price tracker that I though was a neat addition. It even offered a place for the public to upload pictures and video onto the website. it was offered in twenty different languages and gave the top stories from all over the world. Overall this website was far better than the other. It obviously was more maintained and manicured than other news organizations websites.

READING

I found it to be surpising at first that users of the circuit city web site were posting blogs that were directed to help circuit city smooth out their web page, then I realized that most of the people are avid computer geeks. So this is great and all, but does not work for most webpages. Most of the time if I have dificulties with online services I simply disconnect,. This idea is simmular to what we talked about in lab. So this leeds us to declare that all companies with web bases services should improve their online communication capabilites. the ability for a business to interact with the customer in such an informal way is a surefire way to get true customer feedback. Sure the traditional letter of complaint works from time to time, but using te web(being so acessable and fast) to vent your frustration towards a product or a company is groundbreaking and outright effective. Yes, companies need to get on this track nad pay more attention to what teh customer had to day. Yes, companies need to improve their online communication abilties to be able to recieve and allow all the feedback.

Assignment 2

The title of the Wikipedia page is Podcast. The URL page  can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast. This article discusses the mechanics of podcasting, receiving and using podcast and gives other uses for podcast. The articles original date is October 26 20004 and there are over 500 contributors to this particular article. The reason I chose this article is because if the power of podcasting, being that it is so accessible and simple to create and receive podcast. Upon review of the resources that were provided on the page, I found the article to be creditable enough to use as a resource, but taking a closer look in the discussion page I found the article to be controversial in content that has been removed and added. It seems a man by the name Adam Curry had anonymously edited the podcasting entry on Wikipedia to remove credits from other people and to inflate his role in its creation. Another editor to the Wikipedia podcast page had complained about getting his content removed. He had explained to have found a spectacular way of listening to podcast, but later removed for no reason to be explained.The artilce that I found using proquest was “Podcasting 101,” written in the magazine Strings. This article is very up to date and explains the mechanics of podcasting and its uses, similar to the Wiki article. I found this article to be less creditable than the Wiki article, not only because this article only contained one author, but the content was not as informative on the subject of the mechanics and uses of podcasts. I found the use of multaple authors with the abiltiy to edit, delete and control the content that is published to be much more creditable. References: Podcast, (2008) In Wikipedia: The Free Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 12, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Podcast Charles Laux. Strings. San Anselmo: Mar 2008. Vol. 22, Iss. 8; pg. 26, 3 pgs, retrieved from Proquest Database on feb 15. 

Post Presentation reflection

I had to present my slideshow to the whole class, so it was harder to get feedback directly. I presented a study that claimed that new media such as online news may be fragmenting the audiences and specializing thier webpages to focus on only specific topics that particular demographic may want to hear. Even though there was little research done in this area, I found it intersting. I cant say that I exactly agree with what was said, but I  was simply testing this idea to the class to see how they felt about it. The majority of the feedback that I recieved from the class was mostly in disagreement with the idea of online media being the seeds of fragmetaion. I think If I had presented all the hard data that was presented in the original document I would have been more convincing, but I only had 5 minuted to get my point across. Overall I thought my presentaion went as planned even though I seemed to get some raised eyebrows from most of the class.

Technology and society

Media technology has came a long way since the telegraph and has become much more accessible to the public too. Since the beginning of the telegraph era, where public information could now be printed and distributed widely, information was not very easy to come by. You had to search it out by hand, in the library, etc. Now since the invention of the Internet, information has become so much more accessible to the public. Society inherently has the need to share information, but some times that information comes with a price tag. Because of this basic human instinct to share information, when it becomes more free and accessible, that technology will begin to take off. I believe that we are now entering this time period where legitimate information is becoming free to share, (when properly cited) and less professional people are gaining more credit than ever.

Online Segregation

The Seeds of Audience Fragmentation:

Specialization in the Use of Online

News Sites

Abstract: Contemporary normative concerns that the Internet might fragment nationalaudiences and polities are based on suggestions that the mediumis particularly conducive to specialized use. However, relatively littlequantitative research has explicitly examined this contention. Thisstudy evaluates outlet specialization within the context of online newsreading. Analyses of news viewing by a nationally representative panelof Internet users reveal that the user demographic profiles of news sitesare individually distinct. More important, the topics that readers viewvary by the sites they access. In sum, the provision of news over the

Internet exhibits ample signs of outlet specialization.

Bibliography:  

Tewksbury, David (2005) ‘The Seeds of Audience Fragmentation:

Specialization in the Use of Online News Sites’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic

retrieved feb, 8 2008 from proquest database

Media, 49:3, 332 – 348

To link to this article: DOI: 10.1207/s15506878jobem4903_5

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4903_5

link to my slidehow

Blogging Technology

What are the implications of blogging technology on established media?

The implications of blogging on much more established and mainstream media are small piece to a larger puzzle, but potentially threatening in the future of media. Because news establishments such as CNN are broadcasted on television they have more credibility in today’s world, although it is true they were much more creditable ten or so years ago. This may be a downward spiral of major news corps passing the upward blogland on the way down to the depths of media darkness. Needless to say blogging technology has come a long way and gain some tremendous momentum on its way up. I think that as long as Television is around, major media groups will hang in for a while, but by a thread. It is incredible how much money big media has and how little money it takes to create blogging technology and still have a devastating effect like big media. Until the public no longer is interested in television and radio large media corperation  will have remain on-top in the media world.

1. As television becomes less popular in the future, what will be its counterpart?

2. why is it that the public still remains to trust the news even though it is a for profit entity?

3. How in ten years will blogging technologies produce the same effect as a news channel would on the television?

LAB QUESTION

How do you feel this new-age market could expand on from music and movies to other goods? Goods produced from companies like Nike or Pepsi for example.

Interesting question here, mega cooperation such as COKE and PEPSI usually find all avenues to exploit. I was very surprised to find Nike entering the surf and skate world, successfully to. I think with the music business you’ll begin to see big corporations sponsoring big music events, buying rights to certain songs and eventually offering a free downloadable song with each purchase of their product. I’m sure that all this is already been thought of and already in progress. Music like anything is exploitable, so why would big corporations not want to dip their hands in the hot pot?

class 5 lab

comment on Lisa blog page