Response (Citizen Journalism/Politics)


Oct 29 2010

Response (Citizen Journalism/Politics)

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1.) To combat this kind of elitist “aristocracy” of users, will there be an increase in Digg-like sites that cater to other diverse audiences? Will there ever be a site an aggregate news site that truly fulfills Digg’s promise of a “democratic” news source?

Just doing a quick search, I noticed that there were “Digg-like” sites catered to such audiences as bloggers, web developers, and designers. There are also sites like Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Fark which compete against Digg to act as aggregate news sites. I noticed that these sites also skew towards a similar flavor of posts as Digg does. There are a lot of news articles about technology, gaming, and web trends. One site that sticks out to me though is Stumbleupon which allows users to create a profile and tell the site what their interests are. Categories range from sports to art to gaming to politics. The site then presents random pages that fit the user’s criteria. Although I don’t see a lot of other sites doing this (especially news sites) I do think that the idea of users choosing their own news stories will continue to grow.

We talked in class about the idea of a “Daily Me” or a news site that presents a customized newspaper catered to specific user tastes. So one can imagine, in the near future, waking up in the morning, firing up the iPad, reading the news, and it presents all stories that YOU would be interested in). This sounds appealing to many users but is this really the direction that we should be heading in?

User control seems better than an elite group of gatekeepers on sites like Digg or news editors on big news sites, but are people going to be truly informed if they are only receiving news that they want to read and ignoring the rest? It could be argued that this is similar to traditional newspapers and people just taking out the sports section or life section. I just feel more uncomfortable with people creating their own news sources.

2.) It is inevitable that other future political candidates will  utilize social media in their campaigns but how will it be different from the election in 2008? The Web 2.0 world moves at a rapid pace so what new social media outlets will be utilized? And how else can candidates leverage the tools of interactivity to win elections?

Obama did an excellent job leveraging social media, like Facebook and Twitter, to help him in his campaign. I definitely see many politicians following suit. I am curious to see if politicians utilize other experimental social media tools such as location-based services, like Foursquare. I could visualize some really interesting uses for such applications. I could see users winning custom badges/stamps by attending rallies and speeches. I could also see politicians rewarding people who check-in at their events with exclusive announcements or campaign swag on the site.

I think that whatever new applications come out, politicians should not be afraid to take some risks and try new things. The younger voter power cannot be ignored and trying new techniques online can bring about big rewards in the long run.

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