Someone Else's Term Project Presentation

Pedro's term project presentation on p2p filesharing was absolutely informative. I liked how he included the fun fact about copying and reproduction of the Bible in the 16th century. It was something I've never heard of before, and I'm glad he introduced us to something new. I was also surprised to learn that illegal downloading has decreased among kids today. It seemed very counter-intuitive, because based on other's experiences, we now know that the chances of getting caught are practically none.

His presentation content aside, I was very impressed by Pedro's originality in presenting his material. The video formatted presentation was a refreshing change from powerpoints. And, his presentation handout was innovative and well designed.

My Term Project Presentation

My term project presentation centered around the risks of using new media. The presentation addressed the following topics:

• Online communities: whether they're truly supportive and care for their users' best interests. Pro-eating disorder communities were discussed.
  
• Case study: Adam Biggs' live webcam suicide

• Cyberbullying: forms of cyberbullying
  
• Case study: Megan Meier's MySpace suicide

• Sexual predators on social networking sites

• Sexting: what it is, and what the consequences for doing it are
  
• Case study: Jesse Logan's suicide over sexting scandal
  

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I'm one of the copy editors for the class wiki. And as a copy editor, my main responsibility is to enure all wiki content is grammatically correct.

So far, I've focused my attention on the "New Media in Politics" section, because politics is a topic that I follow outside of class. In this section, I corrected sentences using the wrong verb tense and fixed sentence fragments. I also restructured sentences to maximize the flow of content. In addition, I've focused on minor details in the class wiki, like making sure names were capitalized and making sure image links weren't broken.

In the future, I want to focus my attention on copy editing the "New Media in Entertainment" section. Perhaps, I'll even contribute content on the topic of online television.

Daily Dose of Humor

I came across this cartoon a few days ago, and wanted to share it with everyone.

found via: mashable, orginal source: hubspot

The Next New Thing

As a New Yorker who uses mass transportation, I often miss a subway train just as it pulls out of the station. This is a big problem for me and many other MTA riders alike. As a result, I propose creating a practical form of new media that's mobile phone based.

With this next new thing, mass transit riders can track their local trains and buses via their cellphones. For example, they'd be able to find out where all the downtown 6 trains are. They'd know that at 8:03 am, there's a downtown 6 train at Grand Central, and one at 23rd st, and one at Prince st., etc. This new media would help people estimate the amount of time a train will take to pull into their nearest station. And thus, they'd pace themselves accordingly, and never have to miss another train or bus again!

Advice to Baruch College

If I were hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the college, I’d advise Baruch to use new media as a learning tool for students. For example, Calculus professors could post Youtube videos demonstrating how to solve homework problems. Or, professors could utilize podcasts, so absent students can download the entire lesson onto their mp3 players. I’d even suggest Baruch to hold online sessions in virtual worlds. These new mediums would revolutionize the way people learn [and teach].

Old vs. New

New media differs from old media in the way information is communicated and consumed. To distinguish the two, you must ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I using the internet on a computer (or cellphone) to send/receive the information, or am I using something else? If the answer to the question is the former, it's likely that you're using new media. Many forms of new media like wikis, social networking sites, and video sharing websites rely on the internet to store and retrieve the information.

2. Who controls the message? For old media like newspapers, television, and radio, the parent company controls the message that is being communicated. In new media, however, everyone is allowed to publish their thoughts and opinions. Information is user-generated and contributed "by the people."

3. How fast can information be relayed? New media trumps old media in the speed at which information is communicated/received. The process of information gathering, fact-checking, and editing is what slows old media down.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds is an amazing form of new media that allows users to create self-representative avatars to put in a virtual environment, where they can interact with with other users from around the city, country, or world. The aforementioned virtual environment can be modeled after a real-life counterpart, from a tropical island, to the LES, to the Rayburn House Office Building.

So far, people have used virtual worlds to chat with real life acquaintances and strangers. These online interactions, however, differ from instant messaging in that, now, there's an added level of sensory perception. In a virtual world, one is placed in an explorable 3D environment. Aside from reasons of personal enjoyment, virtual worlds have been used by businesses to hold virtual conferences.

IBM uses virtual worlds to conduct employee training and to encourage community building. Ed Frauenheim discusses this further in his article IBM Learning Programs Get a 'Second Life,' where he writes,

"New IBM employees separated by thousands of miles will be able to mingle, interact and share ideas in the virtual world before their first day on the job,” Ted Hoff, IBM vice president of learning, said in a statement. “They can learn real-life working skills such as signing up for benefits, developing code as part of a global team, and ramping up sales skills before they meet with IBM clients."

Aside from aiding businesses, virtual worlds can also benefit autistic individuals. People with autism, who often struggle with socialization, use virtual worlds (Second Life, specifically) as a way to practice communicating with others. This was highlighted Nicole Saidi's article, iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction. In the article, Simon Bignell, a psychology lecturer at the University of Derby, says

"For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives," Bignell said. "For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems ... we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life."

Despite the great benefits that virtual worlds can provide, there may be a "dark side." At a Congressional hearing about virtual worlds, congressmen wondered whether virtual worlds could be used to launder money, and whether children would be safe in virtual worlds. ( At Hearing, Real and Virtual Worlds Collide) In regards to the latter, it is definitely possible, as predators lurk in every corner of the web.

New Media in the News

I read two interesting New York Times articles over the weekend, and thought I'd share them with you guys. Check them out below:

NYT: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up

NYT: As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes

Social Networking

Social networking is a powerful form of new media that can be used in a variety of ways.

Individuals can use it to:

• stay connected with family and friends
• rekindle relationships with former classmates/coworkers
  
• establish new relationships
• tell the world what you’re doing (via Twitter)
• look for jobs

Corporations can use it to:

• maintain customer relationships
• “encourage collaboration and communication across teams,” like at IBM (Is MySpace Good for Society?)
• “attract and screen potential new employees through virtual world interactions” (IBM: What's Next? Your Future in Social Networking)
• scout new talent
• “allows users to share their online rolodexes” (NPR: Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting)

A primary benefit to social networking is its ability to allow users to keep in touch with family and friends easily. Other benefits come from using social networking as a means to recruit employees. Frank Langfitt discusses this in the NPR article, Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting. Langfitt writes about Maureen Crawford-Hentz, a professional recruiter for Osram Sylvania, who used LinkedIn to find a product marketing manager. Instead of having to call up everybody in her rolodex (to see if they knew somebody who fit the job description), she was able to find the perfect candidate with a click of the mouse. Similarly, interviewers can also use social networking sites to screen potential employees.

There are "dark sides" to social networking, however, and we probably hear more about them than we do about the benefits. Sadly, there are people who use social networking as a means to bully, stalk, harass, and prey on others. An example of this misuse was demonstrated in the MySpace suicide case of Megan Meier. Megan Meier was a Missouri teenager who committed suicide in 2006, after receiving horrible messages from a teenage boy who she had friended on MySpace. This teenage boy turned out to be a 49-year-old mother (of one of Megan's former friends), who created a phony MySpace account to harass Megan.

MySpace, Facebook, and other similar social networking sites are also homes to thousands of sexual predators. Early last month, "MySpace provided two state attorneys general the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders it had banned from its site in response to a subpoena." (MySpace Turns Over 90,000 Names of Registered Sex Offenders) This number is quite frightening!

My New Media Class – So Far

What kinds of technologies are part of the new media?

New media encompasses a variety of websites and web applications that can be utilized via computers and mobile phones.

People use computers to consume and contribute to a myriad of new media, ranging from social networking websites, blogs, wikis, and sites that rely on user-generated content (ie: Youtube, Flickr, etc). More recently, people have used computer technology to watch television content online. Laura M. Holson discusses this phenomenon in the New York Times article, Who Needs a TV? I’m Watching on a Laptop. As Holson describes, “So many online “Gossip Girl” fans showed up to watch last season’s shows, they threatened to crash cwtv.com.”

Great progress has also been made in mobile technology. Two years ago, Yahoo launched a mobile application called OneSearch, which “relies on speech recognition software to interpret your verbal request, and then pumps the answer to your phone's screen in the form of a Web link to the answer.” (Pogue, Yahoo’s Answer to Speech Recognition for Your Cellphone) The company has also made instant messaging, mapping, checking email, and much more available for its mobile applications.

How important is the Internet to the new media?

The Internet remains an essential tool in facilitating the consumption of new media, because much of new media involves websites, which require Internet connection to access. However, the Internet is not required in the use of podcasts, which “sends audio content [that you subscribe to] directly to an iPod or other MP3 player,” according to Daniel Terdiman's New Twist on Net Audio.

Why and how are the new media replacing and/or enhancing the old media?

New media hasn’t reached the point where it’s replacing old media in its entirety. This is certainly applicable to the television! As Holson notes in her article, the time delay for online television content is a deal breaker for fans, who would much rather watch shows on their original air date.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Compare and contrast

Similarities

• Both are used to communicate information about various topics (there are no topic constraints).
• Information posted on blogs and wikis can be edited.
• Both allow for community building.

Differences

• Blogs are usually run by individuals, while wikis rely on the collaborative effort of many people.
• Communities are built on blogs when people read, comment on, and link one another's blogs. On wikis, however, the sense of community emerges when people work together to expand, update, and edit the wiki.
• Content on blogs can only be posted and edited by the administrator, thus providing a very narrow and limited perspective on things. However, content on wikis can be edited by any registered user, each contributing their own knowledge and perspective on a topic.
• While blogs use HTML coding, wikis "favour plain text editing." (Wikipedia on Wikis)

Convergence in today's networked world

Convergence of old media and new media has become absolutely essential in the news industry today, because in order to "stay alive," publications (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast stations (tv and radio) must be able to compete with online entities that can publish news by the minute.

Melissa Gerry demonstrates the aforementioned beautifully in her article, "Celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media," a piece about the changing landscape of celebrity news. To put it succinctly, celebrity bloggers were able to effectively compete with [entertainment] news organizations due to their ability to get the news out earlier in the day (and with less commentary restrictions!). Nowadays, entertainment news organizations have online counterparts that publish celeb news as soon as they are press-released.

Newspapers and magazines also have online counterparts these days to maintain their readership. The New York Times, in addition to archiving their articles online, boasts a myriad of blogs, with topics ranging from politics, to economics, to fashion, to food, to technology, to the environment, etc. It's nothing short of impressive; and, to be honest, quite overwhelming.

Blogs being used for collaboration

Using blogs to collaborate is not entirely unheard of. Many blogs rely on the efforts of multiple contributors. Mashable, a blog about web 2.0 and social media, is one of them. Another is The Cut, New York magazine's fashion blog. The contributions of multiple bloggers leads to more updates, more perspectives, and more traffic.

A new use for wikis

This is a tough one, because wikis are used in so many fields now - politics, business, education - that I don't think there's much left to be done. Perhaps, we should expand wikis into the field of medicine so researchers can pool together their knowledge?

Checking Out Some Social Networking Sites

When MySpace became a big thing for my peers back in 2003, I found myself hesitant to jump on the bandwagon. Something about tweens who posted inappropriate pictures of themselves for all the world to see was pretty off-putting. Since then, things haven't changed all that much; people still post questionable photos of themselves. However, one thing that has changed for the better is the implementation of privacy settings. Younger MySpace users are wising up and making their profiles private.

Facebook, in comparison to MySpace, has an older demographic. While MySpace is populated with 13-21 year olds, Facebook has more users in the 16-35 age brackets. Though this doesn't equate to a squeaky clean image, Facebook users tend to make more well-informed decisions about what they post onto their pages. Although...I do stumble upon the occasional photo of college students having "a good time."

LinkedIn, in stark contrast to both MySpace and Facebook, is strictly professional. As a social networking site for people in the workforce, it contains information regarding education, employment history, etc. It's pretty much devoid of the personal touches you can find in MySpace and Facebook like photos, videos, and information about people's favorite bands.

From my observations of the aforementioned sites, one pattern has emerged: content found on social networking sites are extremely dependent on the demographic of users (and of course, the overall purpose of the social networking site).

New Media on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

This is kind of embarrassing to admit. But, yesterday, I was watching some early episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu, and noticed that one of them completely revolved around new media. Or at least, what was considered "new media" in the late 90's.

Anyway, what struck me the most was a conversation between the computer teacher and the librarian. Read below:

C: You're a snob.
L: I am no such thing.
C: Oh, you are a big snob. You think that knowledge should be kept in these carefully guarded repositories, where only a handful of white guys can get at it.
L: That's nonsense. I simply don't adhere to a knee-jerk assumption that, because something is new, it's better.
C: This isn't a fad, Rupert. We are creating a new society here.
L: A society in which human interaction is all but obsolete? In which people can be completely manipulated by technology. Well, thank you, I'll pass.
C: Well, I'll think you'll be very happy here with your musty old books.
L: These musty old books have a great deal more to say than any of your fabulous webpages.

This is a clear case of "new media vs. old media." It's a bit insane that a decade (and then some) after this episode aired, we're still trying to address questions of what's better - new media or old media. Personally, I don't think the two have to exist independently of one another. They work perfectly well hand-in-hand.

Ok, that was my random tangent of the day. If you're interested in watching this episode, it's called "I Robot, You Jane" from Season 1. Click here, or enter this yourself: http://www.hulu.com/watch/45/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-i-robot-you-jane#x-0,vepisode,1 Other topics addressed in this episode include: creepy people in internet chatrooms.

What is New Media?

New media is a term that cannot be neatly defined. It encompasses an array of tools that are used for the purposes of entertainment, socializing, and much, much more. Forms of new media ubiquitous in our society include online social networking websites, blogs, and video sharing. This includes MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger, YouTube, Twitter, et cetera.

New Media is also a means of relaying information. Print newspapers and magazines, like the New York Times and Time Magazine respectively, can now be viewed online. And, their websites are always updated by the minute. Unarguably, new media is faster, more efficient and, dare I say, better way of communication. It reaches people across cities, states, and countries in the blink of an eye. The only downside to new media is that you're always being overwhelmed with new information.

Term Project & Description

With the advent of cyber-bullying, internet stalking, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can barely begin to wrap my head around, I decided to do my term project on the Risks [and Repercussions] of Using New Media. This project will concentrate on multiple forms of new media from social networking websites, to blogs, to text messaging.

With the completion of this project, I hope to address the risks of using new media (for children and adults) and what people can do to increase their privacy.

Related links (articles that "inspired" this project):

• CNN: Officials: Teen commits suicide on webcam as others watch
• NYT: Verdict in MySpace Suicide Case
• NYT: MySpace Turns Over 90,000 Names of Registered Sex Offenders