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?

 

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?

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?