And the Winner is...

As the election draws ever closer the question raised is how the voting system will affect the results. Last election’s butterfly ballot fiasco was a source of controversy, and I’m sure some people wonder how things might have been different if the ballots had been clear. The problem that both the print version of USA Today, and the Halloween online issue of the New York Times both point out that extra steps need to be taken to reduce the error in this hotly contested and historic election.

Both articles mention that the voting system is flawed Richard Wolf from USA today doesn’t go into depth as to what specific factors are hindering the voting system, whereas Ian Urbina from the New York Times goes very in depth as to what is going on. This difference goes back to the audience that the Times is trying to reach versus who the audience for USA Today is. USA today is targeted towards the younger audience. According to an article from the Times by Richard Perez-Pena, in the early years the writers were young, and didn’t have “Washington pedigree”.

USA Today in its inception didn’t cover topics in a substantial way. They were dubbed the “McPaper” according to Perez-Pena because of their brief coverage style. It was commonplace that a picture would dominate the front page as opposed to the Times which is principally a textual newspaper. The real differences in the papers I believe are the way articles are written. The USA Today borrowed from television ideas and applied them to their newspaper said Allen Neuharth, creator of USA Today. They created a small town paper feel by referring to Americans as “we” or “us” according to Perez -Pena.

Neuharth explained that the light coverage of the issues has a legitimate reason. He said in Perez-Pena’s article that he doesn’t expect that most readers are reading on a daily basis. Therefore, he has a limited amount of time to get their attention and also to get his point across. This also relates back to the younger audience he is dealing with. There is so much competing for people’s attention, so not too many people in the younger generations really would sit down and read and entire New York Times length article. This is why USA Today is a must have during any boring lecture class.

According to a paper written by Lisa George, where she was examining how the availability of the New York Times affects the readership of local papers, George says that readers of the New York Times tend to be more educated. This is an important factor when looking at how information is presented. There difference between the Times and USA Today tends to be strikingly clear from first glance. The Times is very text heavy. I think I remember discussing this in a Mass Communication class I took a few semesters ago. The New York Times is a very well respected publication with a rich history. The writers are undoubtedly at the top of their careers or are quickly becoming well respected as their articles are published by the Times.

I think that the Times’ format at presentation of their information is also a reflection of where the writers have come from. I do not know for a fact, but I can make an educated guess that the writers frequently come from the most prestigious universities locally and abroad.

When looking at an article that also covers how the flawed voting system will be handled in the upcoming election one of the differences I immediately see is that they go very in depth as to what the problems are and then go on to speak about how they are being addressed by each party. I think this is because, the medium this article is published in allows for longer articles. Also, since the Times expects a more discerning reader they assume that their curiosity will lead them to have more questions that need to be answered by the article. This most likely wouldn’t be the case with USA Today who presents for the less educated.

Citations

George, L. (2005, May 17). The New York Times and the market for local newspapers. Department of Economics, Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/waldfogj/pdfs/nyt_aer.pdf

Perez-Pena, R. (2007, Spetember 17). At 25, 'Mcpaper' is all grown up. New York Times, Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/business/media/17gannett.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Urbina, I. (October 30, 2008). In a tight race, victor may be ohio lawyers. New York Times, Retrieved October 31, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31ohio.html?ref=politics

Wolf, R. Legal volunteers ensure a fair election. (2008,October 31). USA TODAY, p. 2A.

Blogging is Power!

Through utilizing my favorite search engine Google I stumbled upon this interesting website for local conservatives. This particular website is called The Buffalo Bean. The blogger Matt Margolis doesn’t utilize a pseudonym. Matt is a writer by profession, and his recent publications is Caucus of Corruption (2007), which was co-authored by Mark Noonan. The Buffalo Bean was born June 13th, 2008. Technorati has ranked the website 368,349th.
This blog presents itself in my opinion with a serious tone. Maybe I think that because he is by profession a writer so everything that he writes sounds more on the formal side. He definitely injects his own brand of educated humor, the same type that my tour guide showcased on my college visit to Georgetown. This is an excerpt from his blog on August 12th, 2008:
“Scott Leffler interviewed Jon Powers on his radio show today. He’s posted a link to a podcast of the show.
I’ve listened to a good portion of it, and found Powers to be quite disappointing. He started off the show sticking to his usual script about why he’s running for Congress, and his responses to the questions about War Kids Relief were very defensive and quite frankly, I think Powers has to stop making it the centerpiece of his campaign and repeating over and over that he was on the cover of Newsweek.”
Obviously if he’s taking the time to post about politics he’s a critical person which I find to be positive in this circumstance because, it’s very easy to just listen to what you are told and to never investigate facts and form your own opinions.
Matt’s serious tone turns to dismissive when it comes to responding to comments from people who usually have an opposing (Democratic) viewpoint. One person attempted to respond to a post where he spoke about some good news for the Republican candidate Chris Lee and the opposed insinuated that Chris Lee wasn’t what was best for anyone but Chris Lee.
According to Dresner, under the right circumstances blogs have the potential to affect local politics. To affect change a blog needs to focus on a previously unexplored issue because they do have the power to “shape and constrain the larger political debate”.

If the blog’s power can extend to “the larger political debate” and I interpret that as affecting the national perceptions, than most certainly if scaled back it can affect the local assumptions and ideas.

To get the message out smaller blogs post to their sites for the most part, and then link up to what Dresner calls “focal point” blogs to increase their potential audience. Candidates have also been utilizing websites and blogging to influence their constituency. According to Gill, Howard Dean in the 2003 elections was among the first of the candidates to reach out to his audience using new media, and he was attracting 30,000 visitors a day at its peak.

Blogs are also effective in affecting the outcome of local elections because not only links, to other sites but because of the word of mouth factor. I have a friend who started a website based around the elections and informing voters. It has become pretty well known being featured in the Buffalo News and also other publications. I initially intended to reference his website, but it doesn’t include blogs, it more involves forums.

However, ideas that are introduced in the blog I think spread in a more important way offline and that is how differences are made. The most beneficial thing for a blog visitor to do is to bring what they read up in discussion out in public. This can be a way that opinions can be swayed and elections can really be influenced.

References

Drezner, D.W. (2004 August). The power and politics of blogs. Retrieved October 24, 2008, from The power and politics of blogs Web site: http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/spring05/cps182s/readings/blogpowerpolitics.pdf

Gill, K. (2004). How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?. Retrieved October 24, 2008, from Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle Web site: http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill

Mediation: Friend or Foe

AOL Instant messenger was a phenomenon when it was first introduced to the public. Since then it has become very common to be one of the primary ways people keep in contact. I believe that the Instant Messenger is a blessing and curse in disguise. According to Tom Tyler,

The ease of online communication may lead to weaker social ties, because people have

less reason to leave their homes and actually interact face to face with other people. The internet

allows people to more easily…form and sustain friendships and even romantic attachments from

their home…engage in political and social-issue based discussion with others from their home

(Tyler p. 196, 2002).

Utilizing Instant messenger does just that. As a member of the instant messenger community I’ve seen people talking to people in the same room as them, but through a computer when they could very easily just speak to them.

The most important part of building relationships is disclosure. Instant messenger as a technology allows people to share their lives with other people in a way that causes much less anxiety than face to face communication. Yifeng Hu et al. mentioned in her Introduction that many people are using instant messenger late at night and also in private, which is leading to more self disclosure. Before instant messenger, people used to get to know each other by talking on the phone or spending time in the other person’s presence. However, as instant messenger was introduced slowly people stopped spending time with each other. I remember that growing up I think instant messenger came out around the time I was 11 or 12. It came at a time when I was still outside playing all day especially during the summer, and not coming inside until my parents called me inside.

Looking back on it now I see that once Instant messenger came around my parents were calling my inside less and less because I was already spending more time inside. My family also did the singular computer for the entire family to use, and having a brother and sister who were just about my age made it hard to find time for me to talk to my friends. I began to go inside earlier because I knew my brother and sister would be outside playing so, I wouldn’t have them complaining about me spending too much time on the computer. I remember back then it was the popular thing for my friends to try to play matchmaker for their other friends, so I definitely talked to my fair share of guys I had never actually met.

Instant messenger didn’t make for the formation of a strong relationship. There are a few factors that are specific to instant messenger that affect the formation of a strong relationship. First, back when I first started using the internet very few people had pictures that they could send to you. I was always wondering what these guys would be lying about, because they would always try to portray themselves as the best thing smoking, which of course wasn’t true at all. Next, I felt like since I didn’t actually know these people we would have these random conversations where we would try to relate to each other, but we mostly ended up just making things up to sound more interesting than we really were.

Instant messenger I think fore certain people has redefined how relationships are formed offline as well. In my group of friends they know that if they want to speak to me they should text me. For some reason I’ve just become so accustomed to typing, that I took it from the computer to my cell phone. I now use cell phones that have QWERTY keyboards because I am so impatient that a normal cell phone just wouldn’t cut it. Even if it’s not a computer mediating my relationships it is some form of technology, and that is the new trend according to Theresa Kasallis.

Citations

Hu, Y. (November 2004). Examining the relationship between instant messaging and intimacy. JCMC, 10, Retrieved October 17, 2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue1/hu.html#fifth

Kasallis, T. (2006 July 6). Text messaging affects student relationships. Retrieved October 17, 2008, from BYU Newsnet Web site: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/60307

Tyler T.R. (2002). Is the Internet Changing Social Life? It seems that More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same. Journal of Social Issues, 58(1). 195-205

We Can Interact without words

I am a member of many common virtual communities, and many of them are of the common variety for instance MySpace, Facebook, and I also utilize blogs for this class. It is virtually located on a shared network online that links all its users.

My Facebook account establishes my online identity in a variety of carefully controlled ways. It will be fun to see how my project turns out because this is partly what we chose to investigate. My profile begins with a picture. Pictures I think are the easiest way to pique someone’s interest into scrolling down your page. People choose a variety of pictures. Some people pick their senior picture because it’s perfectly airbrushed, some people choose the bathroom picture they took themselves, and some choose a picture of them doing something “cool”. Either way each picture tells a story about how that person wants you to see them and how they feel about themselves.

If you were to ask me what my picture says about me, I would say my current picture is me saying that I clean up nice. Usually when people see me on campus I’m not really trying too hard because like every other college student we are short on time and energy. In the past I’ve had the “Party girl pictures”, and I’ve also had the “look at me pictures”. Each was sending a very specific message that people definitely picked up on.

After my picture gained their interest they scroll down and they read my basic statistics, which include birthday, hometown, marital status, and intended degrees. Sometimes I omit my marital status altogether, but usually it states fabulously single and that can communicates to people a dual message. It can say she’s on the prowl or it can say she’s not the type to be caught up the dating scene.

I think the most important way my Facebook establishes my online reputation is through the networks you are connected in, and also the comment section of my profile. If I were to not know a person and wanted to know who they were and what their interests were, I would immediately look at the comments their friends made about them. From a person’s comments you can tell what type of sense of humor they have, if they are central to their network, and most importantly who are they dating.

If I Facebook someone I comments that send up a red flag in my head are comments that involve a female or multiple females leaving what I like to call pillow talk comments. These are the comments that clue me in to who this person has a relationship with whether or not it’s been made official or not. If someone has multiple pillow talks going on with multiple people from that I know that this is not someone I would want to be associated with. My comments reflect that honestly, so that is why I apply it to others.

It is incredibly easy to create steal someone’s online identity using information already provided by them. I have friends that have created fake profiles for the purpose of surveillance using someone else’s pictures and profile information with everyone’s favorite shortcut ctrl+c. Also with the information being provided such as screen name people could be “phished”. I had a friend who would use that information than send people falsified AOL instant messages saying that someone else is logged on in a different location and to log them off they just needed to type in their password. It was never for malicious intent, but it was wrong nonetheless.