In Haiti earthquake coverage, social media gives victim a voice

In this article the author, Mercedes Bunz, talks about how social media helped the victims during the earthquake in Haiti.  She begins by talking about how during the earthquake, and a while after the main form of communication was through social media.  “User-generated content played an important role yesterday in spreading news about the Haiti earthquake” Bunz says.  She goes on to talk about how through Twitter people were able to get an impressive picture on what was happening.  Also that the BBC was using tweets along with the work of reporters to cover what was happening.  

She goes on to talk about how CNN uses what it calls the iReport on their website to provide people with information.  The iReport is a section on their website where people can upload videos with contact information.  Through this medium people were uploading material on what was happening, and through that, shortly after the quake at least 200 quake reports were uploaded to CNN, with an additional 200 missing persons reports.  They increased traffic 240% over a September-October benchmark.  She finishes by talking about how CNN was not only used to report the news, but also to connect people, giving the victims a voice, and helping them find relevant information.  As well as informing the public about what was happing, at almost a real-time speed.

Covering Disaster

With the advancement of technology comes the advancement of communication.  Over the past few years the acceleration of communication technologies has been greater than ever before.  Today, almost everybody in America has a cell phone, and a Facebook page, and around the world the story is no different.  With these forms of communication, the public is able to communicate and organize much easier than in past years, and because of this, many people all around the world are using these forms of communication to come together for a cause they believe in.

In the article, the author talks about how natural disasters strike all over the globe, but their greatest impact is on the less developed countries.  With the help of new communication technologies these less developed countries are able to recover faster and easier, but the use of these technologies has not yet reached its potential.  In fact, they have some challenges to overcome first.  Which are: information flow must be two way for communication to be effective, information will not be used unless it is trusted, and information will only be helpful if it is accurate.

Over the past few years, the number of disasters in the world has steadily gone up.  With the increase of natural disasters though, is the increase in online use, especially of social networking sites like Facebook, and Twitter.  The article talks about how during some recent natural disasters, emergency communication was not relayed to people fast enough, and after the fact, information about assistance was not reaching the people effected.  In fact, only 15% of people said they had received practical information about assistance.

The article also talks about how early conflict warning systems can help save lives, and stop escalating violence before its to late. Then to implement peace keeping forces to keep things from getting to violent.  It also talks about how with natural disaster early warning systems, technology is used, but for conflict early warning systems people will need to be used.  That is, in the form of online platforms where people report on whats happening, and through cellular devices as well.

The next chapter in the article talks about being prepared when disaster strikes, and what is being done to insure the people are prepared.  The author talks about how news outlets will be much more engaged in their stories because of the increase in new communication technologies, and they will need to be able to communicate what the audience is telling them, to the rest of the audience in a structured manner.   The article also talks about how there are efforts being made to create an early warning system that will be able to reach a large amount of people, in a faster amount of time.  It will be able to alert the decision makers in a specific area when to act, and what to do.  They also talk about another type of monitoring system that will scan the web for information on disasters, and send to the user the most relevant information, that is being passed around, and viewed the most.  Also in the works, is a system that will use satellite imaging to look at the earth, and see what groups of people are doing, and see the crisis patterns as they develop, and what the military is doing. 

Research, with Jim Disrude

In Jim Disrudes presentation, he talks about research, and how to find a good research question, as well as how to conduct good research.  In his discussion, he talked about how a good research paper needs a hypothesis, a rational, and variables.  The research question he was studying was the effects of social media on the credibility of professors.  In other words, he was seeing if a professor with a "fun" profile was looked at as better than a professor with a more professional profile.  In his research he asked different people to say which professor looked better in several different areas like, reliability, and credibility.  In every aspect, the "fun" professor rated higher.
From his research he has found that teachers with more self disclosure had more participation in class, and people have said it helps in their learning process.  He also found that teacher competence comes from having three characteristics, which are competence, confidence and caring.
In my experiences i agree with what Jim was saying, and i also believe that teachers with a higher self disclosure are looked at as more credible, and are easier to learn from. This is probably because when a teacher has higher self disclosure the students can feel more comfortable in class, and therefore will learn better.  On the other hand though, i believe there is such a thing as to much self disclosure, and that fine line shouldn't be crossed, otherwise the teacher is not looked at as credible anymore.

From Innovation to Revolution

In this article the author Malcolm Gladwell tries to disprove Shirky, in the fact that social media doesn't really have the effect he cliams.  He says that in order say social media has helped with gathering people to help solve problems in the world, there has to be a problem to begin with.  He also says that Shirky needs to convince readers that in the absence of social media, would the uprisings that have been happening around the world been possible?

Shirky replies in saying that social media has had an effect on society today, and that sure the protests probably would have still happened, but not with the speed, and sheer numbers that were possible with social media.  He also says that sometimes the protesters don't prevail, but that is because the state was stronger, and dealt with them in such a way that gathering, and having large protests did not effect them.

I have to agre with Shirky on this one.  With the help of social media, people have been able to connect on a scale never seen before.  Also in doing this, it is cheap, and effective, which everybody can rally around, and support.

The Political Power of Social Media

In this article the author Clay Shirky talks about how social media helped the people of the Philippines gather together to protest the impeachment trial, to make sure their corrupt president would be prosecuted to the full extent.  He explains how the people used text messaging to converge on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major crossroads in Manila, which shut down traffic.  In doing this the people got the prosecutors to show the crucial evidence, and got the president impeached.

He goes on to talk about how this shows what social media is doing for society, it is empowering it, which gives the people a voice again, it gives them the tools to converge, and stand together on something they feel strongly about.

I agree with the Shirky, and think that social media has definitely helped society in the long run.  It may take up many peoples days, while they mindlessly search through their friends posts, but when the situation hits the fan, and the people need an effective way of communicating with large numbers of their friends, or citizens, social media is their biggest weapon.