Best Blog Posts

1. Soccer is Fake News!

• This meets the in class criteria of extending course readings to the context of current events.  This was a perfect example of how fake news is used these days to help newspapers and online news sources make money, and how people take advantage of outrageous claims to get attention.  I attempted to make it interesting by providing a funny video that makes fun of transfer rumors, as well as having a funny tweet of a real player replying to fake transfer rumors.
• It has a question at the end encouraging people to give their view on how fake news is such a big problem in soccer, and give them a chance to discuss what they think will happen in the future in regards to the topic.  I also added humor to it in the form of a picture and video to make sure it is not all text,  so it is not boring.  It offers a take on a very real problem that I encounter almost daily as a soccer fan, and something all soccer fans would have an opinion on.
• Some of the features that I was able to use in this blog were humor to make it more engaging, discussion through a question at the end, and just being able to write about something I really have an opinion on and care about

2. The Power of Wikis

• I tried to create conversation by writing about a different view than we took in class.  Many of the articles we read were about how Wikipedia was bad quality due to the nature of how it is made, yet I realized that I use wikis all the time to find out information about many different everyday things.  This was an extension of course readings to a similar topic, but more broad about wikis as a whole, and seemed to really get people interested in discussion.
• In this case, I tried to use a picture of an example of when I had to use a wiki to break up the text, but I could not find a way to use a video or add a sense of humor.  In this case, I aimed more for discussion by offering a different view on the topic and asking a question at the end.  In addition to this, I tried to make it informative by adding articles that talked about the potential business uses of wikis, so it applied to more than just hobbies and gaming, but to the professional world.
• This blog was another one that I was really interested in writing as I use wikis all the time, especially for gaming but also for TV shows.  It encouraged discussion by giving people an alternative way to view wikis, not just as a bad thing but a very useful thing, and discuss and realize the many ways they use them in everyday life.

The Usefulness of the Internet

In the article about what makes things go viral, it was mentioned that people will share stuff because, “It allows people to feel like there’s a nice packet of useful information that they can share with others.” Believe it or not, the internet has articles and videos on it that have actual practical value in life.  In this day and age where memes and viral videos rule over everything, I feel we sometimes overlook how useful some stuff on the internet can really be.  Whether it is be going on WebMD to see what fatal disease you have, or going to Buzzfeed to look at reliable news and quality articles that would be impossible to live without, the internet is so useful and diverse.

The internet is full of many useful things, one of which is how to videos on YouTube (yes, there is actually useful videos on YouTube).  How to videos are huge on YouTube and I am sure that many of the people reading this have likely used one at some point to figure out how to do some household task, or how to do a homework problem.  Here is an example of a very useful how to video about how to fix a cracked screen, one that I actually used to fix a crack on my phone.

Beyond just how to videos, there a a variety of other things that are useful on the internet, like news.  The internet is obviously the only way to find out about news these day, and without this news source, people would struggle to learn about new and important things happening in the world.  An example of important news is this article about a new amazon service that I cannot wait to take advantage of!

Online communities are another useful thing on the internet.  They can be for anything from video games to just everyday life, and they give people a place to discuss their problems.  Online communities give people a chance to talk with people who have been through similar experiences and help people through tough situations.  This article talks about the potential healing power that online communities can offer, even though many may believe the internet is a place where people tear each other down.

We often seem to overlook how useful the internet is in modern day life, and how often we use it when we face a problem.  What useful things do you use the internet for?

 

The Importance of Going Viral

After doing the reading this week about what factors make things go viral, I began to think about the things that I see shared on social media all the time.  I usually ignore or scroll past the plague of Buzzfeed and Upworthy articles, but they are always being shared on social media as both pages have a good grasp on how to get shares.  I found it especially interesting when it was stated that, “The irony, of course, is that the more data we mine, and the closer we come to determining a precise calculus of sharing, the less likely it will be for what we know to remain true.”

Even though some pages seem to have a pretty solid grasp, the article says that the more we look into what leads to sharing, the less likely it will continue to be true.  This got me thinking about situations when people, groups, or companies try to use a previous technique to try to make their post or article go viral.  This satirical article from Clickhole perfectly illustrates this idea.  In this article it talks about how cancer researchers are trying to find a new way to go viral after how the success of the ice bucket challenge.  The thing is, any of the groups mentioned above would love to have something spread as much as the ice bucket challenge be it for financial gain, to spread awareness, or to just get shares and become popular.  The more we think about it, the more realize how big having a social media presence is for so many groups these days.  It is at the point where nearly every big company has a large social media presence in order to stay connected with people and become more popular.  There are people employed solely to run the social media of a company because it is that important to companies in the digital age.  Here is an article that discusses how different social media websites can be used for a businesses.

This image illustrates the insane popularity of the ice bucket challenge.

It is crazy to think about how going viral and being on social are so important to businesses, charity groups, and normal people these days, and this trend only looks to be continuing.

Social Media Personality

One of the articles we read in class this week talked about how social media “is about presenting the ideal version of yourself.”  While this may be the case for some people, I think many people cannot relate to this way of using social media.  Social media is such a diverse place that offers people a many different ways to express themselves, where presenting the ideal version of yourself is just one.  After all, Facebook has other more important uses nowadays.

I myself do not post often on social media and do not really try to create my ideal self online.  I find that my social media use very much reflects my real life personality.  For example I have a good sense of humor which is reflected by all the meme pages and funny pages I follow on Facebook, which often involves me tagging people to share the jokes.  Overall, this is the only reason I use Facebook as I have not done a status update for years.  I also use it as a way to keep up with my friends from another country and from other schools since it is the best way to see what they are up to and talk to them.  This article from the Independent examines a study that claimed there were four main types of Facebook users, however I feel that many people are a combination of all of them with a dominant type or two.  I think everyone may feel like they relate to one of the types mentioned and everyone definitely knows people who fall into all of the types.  I just think there is so much more to social media for a lot of people than constants updates of themselves to create an ideal version for everyone else to see and ‘like’.

Overall, I believe that a person’s personality on social media is almost as complex as their actual personality, and that there is so much more to social media than just getting likes and showing off.  After all, no one will ever be able to get more likes and shares than the image in this article which was shared by both LeBron James and the Dalia Lama.

Put Phones Away

This week I did the challenge of not taking a picture with my phone for a day.

See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Take absolutely no pictures today. Not of your lunch, not of your children, not of your cubicle mate, not of the beautiful sunset. No picture messages. No cat pics. 

At first I did not think it would be that hard, as I thought I did not take many pictures, but I forgot about Snapchat.  I did not think of that as taking photos, until I went to do it.  I got around this by sending messages in Snapchat, but it was definitely more challenging than I thought it would be.

I wanted to related this challenge to a problem that happens more and more today.  That problem is people with their phones out during things like sports events or concerts.  I went to several concerts this summer and I found it ridiculous that people would rather record bad videos on their phones than listen to the actual concert.  I am not totally against recording small parts or getting a picture or two, but when people start recording entire songs or large portions of the concert it just is not the right way to experience it.  The point of seeing a concert is experiencing the music live, if people want to watch a recording, there are many recording of concerts online or professionally done recordings.  This CNN article discusses how recording concerts on your phone ruins the experience for others as well as how performers do not enjoy the experience as much since the crowd is not as involved in the show.  One of the worst things is when you are stuck watching the show through the phone of the person in front of you.

Overall, it seems that people with their phones out at concerts, or sporting events, is becoming a bigger and bigger problem, and it affects everyone involved.  These people will not contribute to the atmosphere of the event, one of the main reasons people go to live concerts or sports, and they get in the way of people trying to watch the event.  I am okay with people using their phones a little bit, but it bothers me when people are on their phones for the majority of the event.  Do you share my view on people using their phones too much at live events?

One more reason to put phones away during sports events.

Soccer and Twitter

The reading this week about live tweeting in a classroom setting got me thinking more about how I use twitter.  In particular the idea that, “live-tweeting draws a diversity of perspectives.”  I used to think of twitter as just a social media website, but now I realize that my use of twitter is more related to getting sports news and discussing stuff about sports or reading discussions about sports.

This article about twitter as the 21st century news source discusses how twitter is a crowd-sourced news source that offers a different perspective than other news sources.  Firstly, the way I use twitter as a news source is to see news about Manchester United or any players from the team as they are more reliable than newspapers, especially with all the fake transfer news going around, and they usually tweet stuff as it happens.  This allows me to keep up to date on accurate transfer news and and injury updates or announcements from players, as well as one player who does a weekly blog post.  This represents one of the perspectives that we don’t usually get from newspapers, hearing from players directly is something that did not really happen before twitter.  I find it really cool to be able to have this connection to professional athletes that I watch every weekend.

Example of player making an announcement on twitter.  This was made in reference to him re-signing for the club for an additional year after his contract running out.

In addition to the team and players, I follow many sports accounts, ran mostly by normal people (i.e. not sports journalists).  They tweet about soccer games as they go and are interesting as they give different views on players and teams as the season goes on.  It is always interesting to hear what other people think about certain players, clubs, or coaches.  Overall, twitter is much more than social media, and gives people a way to get news and discuss things with people who share similar interests.  In what other ways is twitter different from other social media sites?

The Power of Wikis

The reading last week about how reliable Wikipedia was for a source on academic content was interesting in that it proved to be much more reliable than many people give it credit for.  The reason Wikipedia has been so successful isn’t just because of the quality of information, but the quantity and the fact so everyone can edit it.

Wikipedia has harnessed the work of millions of people to produce the world’s largest knowledge-based site along with software to support it, resulting in more than nineteen million articles written.

Wikipedia however is not the only wiki out there that people use.  I myself find that I constantly use wikis made for certain games.  These are so powerful because they allow the whole community of a game to pool together all their knowledge of the game to help everyone else out.  Wikis have improved my gaming experiences in so many ways, whether it be looking at the consequences of an action in an RPG, or looking at the stats of weapons and gear to be best equipped in online games.  Wikis offer a huge knowledge base for games as people who play the games are always discovering new Easter eggs, bugs, or items and they can quickly go online to let the whole community know about their discovery.

An example of a bug I have had to look up on the Fallout: New Vegas Wiki which helped me find a way around the bug.

Beyond just gaming, wikis can be used in businesses to help people learn and share what they know about something.  This How Stuff Works article that goes into depth about how wikis work, are maintained and cleaned from vandalism, and how they can be utilized by many different communities.  In the article it illustrates a situation where wikis could be used by a group of people who use some type of app or software.

2,000 people using the program can build their own documentation a little bit at a time. Each time someone learns something, they can toss a sentence or two into the wiki to let other people understand how to use the feature. Over time, the 2,000 users will build complete documentation for the entire application.

Wikis offer people a way to find information that goes deeper than just the basics as they usually are made by people who know the topic well.  I find myself using wikis for almost every video game I’ve ever played, and they are always helpful.  There are wikis out there for everything from TV shows to programming languages that go into depth about everything from the big ideas to small things only a few people notice.  Wikis show the power of allowing collaboration from a group of people.  Are there any wikis you use regularly?

Soccer is Fake News!

Fake news is something that has been very prominent during the most recent presidential election, however I have been exposed to it for almost as long as I can remember.  Soccer transfer rumors are the best example of fake news I can think of.  Their goal is to get people to click on the article, and there are many that are so unbelievable that people get pulled into the stories.  The “Pizza, politics and pure fiction” article we read earlier this week mentioned that one of the goals of fake news is ” hoping to maximise clicks on their link or site to secure advertising dollars.”  Soccer transfer rumors do this every winter and summer when the transfer window is open.  This means teams are allowed to buy players from other teams, and it means endless stories of player being linked to another team, no matter how ridiculous they may seem.

Example of a player responding to a false transfer rumor on Twitter.

An article from the New York Times titled, “The Original Fake News: Soccer Transfers”, talks about how soccer transfers have always generated fake news.  It even mentions that “Long before the ascension of President Trump made the phrase unavoidable, soccer provided the most fertile ground imaginable for what we have come to call “fake news.”  Fake transfer rumors are just as much a feature of soccer than any other aspect of the sport these days.  Before social media was a huge thing, many newspapers and sports news sites would have headlines of a big name player linked with a team to sell papers.  Nowadays, especially through Twitter, there are accounts and websites that have many so called ‘inside sources’ that supply them with rumors.  Twitter also makes it easy for stories to spread as people will see a rumor and retweet it causing more and more people to see it.  Some of the rumors are so outrageous that it’s hard to believe people would fall for them.  A video by Dream Team parodies the creation of transfer rumors, the scary thing is that almost every ridiculous rumor in the video was made by a real news source.

The problem is, with social media becoming a main news source for many people, fake news will only continue to spread.  Is there any way to prevent or slow down the epidemic of fake news?

 

Internet Brains

The internet has changed the way we live, but it also changes the way we think.  In the class reading “Is Google Making us Stupid?” Carr had a quote that said, “Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.”  This got me interested in what changes the internet was causing to our brains as it continues to have more influence on our lives.

Carr seems to believe the internet has an overall negative view on society.  An article from Huffington Post on how the internet is rewiring our brains seems to share this view.  It talks about some of the ways our brains have changed due to the internet  from several studies, summarizing the results.  Most of the changes it mentions seem to again be negative things such as memory problems from information overload and becoming addicted to being online.  I personally find that the problems mentioned in this article, while they may be true, do not apply to a large majority of internet users.

Looking at both the Carr article and the Huffington Post article presents the internet as only having a negative impact on our brains.  I believe the problems presented in both of these articles relate to using the internet too much.  It is also hard to believe there are so few positive changes to the brain caused by the internet when it can be such a useful tool to help us learn about new things and stay connected to people.  Another article I found from BBC about the internet rewiring our brains presented more of the positive impacts of the internet when it is used in moderation.  The main idea was that as long as a person interacts with people outside of the internet, the internet will have a positive impact on their lives.

Overall we cannot argue that the internet changes the way we think, but we can control our use of the internet.  Our control of internet use is what determines if it is helping us, or harming us.  Where do you lie in the argument over the internet?  Is it a bad thing like Carr and the Huffington Post believe? Or can we use it to enhance our lives without taking them over?