Discussion 4 – Web 2.0 as a News Source

Posted by on March 3, 2011 
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As Boshra pointed out in our 2nd discussion topic “Blogs, microblogs and RSS foster social meaning through understanding other peoples opinions about an event and do not depend only on media public sources.” This is such an important distinction with the way Web 2.0 tools are used for keeping up to date with news or at least our perception of news. It is a completely different method to get your news from numerous firsthand sources that are only making observations and stating what they are doing and how they feel about a particular event. It puts the reader in the seat of the news editor, trying to figure out what the story is and making a choice about what to think to form their own opinion. You get to hear from the people who had a great time and those who didn’t, those who thought the crowd leaned one way and the other. This new technology gives us the ability to write the news for ourselves based on the facts, opinions and evidence we have from firsthand sources. This is single handedly the reason that so many newspapers and news agency’s are doing so poorly and have themselves had to adopt Web 2.0 technologies to tell the news as they see it. Many of them are even using what people say on Twitter and other blogs as sources as well.

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2 Responses to “Discussion 4 – Web 2.0 as a News Source”

  • gmuwebdiva on March 4th, 2011 7:14 am    Reply

    Paul, very good description of today’s news. I assist a professor here at Mason who teaches online journalism. I meet with his teaching assistants each semester to recommend technology tools and advice for student projects. The course is heavily focused on teaching students to report the news with the latest web 2.0 tools.

    Today’s news reporters need to be experts in using social media. Many of the TAs go on to work for the big news companies, but recently three have chosen to work for Patch, a new AOL company. Using a social media website, Facebook, Twitter, and many other tools, Patch (http://www.patch.com) editors keep local residents informed on news in their local communities.

    Two weeks ago while driving home I saw and smelled heavy, black smoke for miles. When I arrived home, I couldn’t find any news reports on TV because it was a Saturday afternoon. When I checked my news feed in Facebook, I saw updates that detailed two brush fires. The TA I had assisted last semester was reporting the news for Patch here in my community every half hour. She included statements from the fire chief, details about how the fires started, and photos. Many local residents were commenting about what they were seeing and uploading photos.

    I remember waiting for the 11 o’clock news on ABC and later the 10 o’clock news was introduced by Fox. Now, I just log on to the news websites for live streamed news and check their Facebook and Twitter news feeds. And as you stated, many news agencies cite user generated content. It’s an amazing time.

  • sdecker2 on March 5th, 2011 4:34 am    Reply

    Paul,
    I used to surf blogs on a daily basis when I had more time to get my news and stay up to date with the mainstream media. However, I find that I use twitter for most of my information gathering. I follow many media outlets and often times I’ve heard about an event well before those I know that don’t have twitter accounts. I think the use of web 2.0 for news and other research is pretty significant because how quickly things go viral over the internet is amazingly quick. You do however run the risk of getting information that hasn’t been vetted more easily too.

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