One of the questions this week posed by Prof. Halavais was how do you get your news? It made me think, as much information that is readily available on the internet, I still seem to turn to the newspaper and the television to watch my local news or to catch CNN. One of my co-workers gets e-mail alerts from one of the news stations about breaking news and he usually sends me the link if something has occurred in my neck of the woods. That’s actually how I found out about the horrible killings in Cheshire over the summer. There was a home invasion and the mother and daughters were killed. After reading about this on line, I went home and read the paper to find out more details of the story.

Wikinews: “The Next Generation of Alternative Online News?” by Axel Bruns spoke about the formation of Wikinews and other forms of news sources available on the internet… Wikinews “allows for open editing of it’s content by any user without a need to create an account” (Bruns pg 4). Wikinews differs from other news sites because there are limited opportunities on their site to post comments about what has been written and to partake in threaded discussions.  “This problem is further exacerbated by the active discouragement of news discussion on Wikinews, as in other sites it is exactly this discussion which promotes a sense of community…” (Bruns pg 6). Another difference is the fact that users are allowed to go back in and make changes to the articles that have been posted.

When I speak to people about Wikipedia, some don’t count it as an actual news source, due to the fact that anyone has the opportunity to go in and change articles to their liking. Although I think the concept is great, I don’t think I will refer to Wikinews anytime soon to read about current events.

Democracy & Filtering

Now more than ever we are able to get our voice heard through many different forms of media. For this class, we just went on wordpress and in a matter of minutes, our thoughts and feelings could be read by not only our classmates but anyone out there that was willing to listen. One of the great things about blogging for class, is that some of the authors of our readings have read our response papers. Although I do admit that I am a very private person and in any other situation, I don’t think that I would blog about anything unless I was compelled by a major event in my life or that of someone around me. ”If you have an opinion and want to express it in public or want to find an opinion of almost any kind, chances are you can, at trivial cost” (Sunstein pg 57).

In regards to filtering, I see the positive and negative aspects to it. If you want to find information about only your interests then you can. But on the flip side, I agree with the author. “People should be exposed to materials they would not have chosen in advance” (Sunstein pg 58). How are we going to learn about things if we limit ourselves? Sometimes we don’t know what might interest us unless we give it a chance.

Daily Me

Walter Bender’s article, “Twenty Years of Personalization All About The Daily Me,” was an interesting piece. He along with Pascal Chesnais put together fish wrap. Fish wrap allowed it’s users to stay connected with their community but also stay in tuned with what was going on in the world. ”Fish wrap provided its readers with an egocentric window in to world affairs while allowing them to receive news from their hometown and stories of personal interest” (Bender pg 25). The service catered to the individual interests of the consumer. But the author brings about a great point. “When anyone can have a web page and self-publish facts, discriminating the truth from the noise becomes increasingly difficult” (Bender pg 26). How do you decipher between what is fact and fiction? Do you only rely on trusted sites to get your news and information? What’s your opinion of anyone having a web page?

http://web.media.mit.edu/~walter/