Dear Media,
Please stop marveling at how anything is happening in Egypt even though the internet is shut down and people can’t get on Twitter or Facebook. You do realize that there were popular revolts before social media, don’t you? In the latter half of the 20th century we had the Prague Spring in 1968, the Soweto uprising in 1976, the Paris riots in 1968, and even Tiananmen Square in 89. How do you think people coordinated the labor demonstrations of the 30s, the anti-colonial revolts of the developing world in the decades following World War II. What about the French Revolution in 1789? OMG? How did they get anything done. They didn’t even have land lines!
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Tag Archives: Twitter
Frank v. Beilat, No Contest
The top mailing was meant to give me three reasons for firing Barney Frank, but in fact the mailings themselves were 3 reasons NOT to vote for Sean Beilat!
When I picked up my mail today I found a magazine, a fund raising appeal, and four political mailings relating to the elections next week, three of which were targeted against Congressman Barney Frank. According to the first mailing, Americans for Limited Government believe he “no longer represents ‘us'” and that Nancy Pelosi “has him in the palm of her hand.” Sean Beilat for Congress sent two mailings. The first claims that Frank “and his “rich friends… live by a different set of rules,” and the other that provides three reasons why voters should “fire Barney Frank on November 2,” claiming he caused the financial meltdown, bailed out friends in the financial sector, and accepted vacations from the people who got federal bail out money.
These claims are, at best, exaggerations, some of them outright falsehoods. They are examples of some pretty intense negative campaigning and an obvious attempt to mislead the public. Quotations are taken out of context, presented in the mailing to look like press clippings, and topped with the logos from the newspapers’ mastheads so they look like actual published news articles, when in fact they are taken from opinion pieces or editorials. They are not objective analyses.
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Beautiful Game Sets Records on Twitter, Growing Interest in the US
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Apparently the World Cup final represented the largest period of sustained activity for an event in Twitter’s history. According to Twitter Blog, during the final, people from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages. I really don’t have anything to add to the post, as it speaks for itself. Clearly Twitter is now a global phenomenon.
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Some Grey Bloke is a Favorite
Some Grey Bloke is one of my favorite YouTube channels. Here are two recent videos that make me laugh. The first raises the question of the World Cup and just why we call it that. Now that Graham mentions it, I’m annoyed, too.
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Journalism and Online Discourse
However, while blogs have created hundreds of prominent new voices in the national media, social networking sites like twitter have only reinforced the position of people and institutions who were already prominent in other media. Not a single person has risen to become a prominent national media figure just through their tweeting. However, popular TV shows, musicians, and politicians have gained two million followers or more through the medium.
Given this, it is a legitimate worry that the decline of blogging, and the rise of social networking, will mean that the media status quo that was once threatened by the Internet will now be reinforced by it. Rather than new media functioning as a democratizing force, it could become yet another tool of the status quo. Maybe once in a while it will be used by street demonstrators against a totalitarian regime, as it was in Iran, but most of the time it will just make the already famous and the already dominant even more so.
–via “Social networking sites reinforce the status quo“
Those are the conclusions that Chris Bowers draws from a report by the Pew Internet Centers on Social Media and Young Adults that finds that blogging is on the decline among teenage users of the Internet. Teens are also commenting less on blogs. Use among older Americans, on the other hand, remains the same.
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My Most Popular Tweets of this Week
I have not been active in social media much this week, having spent most of my time updating my web 1.0 personal site now that I am no longer with NITLE. I thought I had finished, but I’ve discovered a few things I still want to fix: Typos, a misplaced section divider, and other things of that nature. If you have a chance, look at it and send your comments. I welcome them all, whether it’s about a typo or the whole design.
Still, I did tweet a bit. The most popular ones this week were, most to least popular:
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Clash of the Titans: Google and Facebook infringe on one another's turf
Have you heard about Google Buzz?
An article from Business Insider provides some information on the context into which the service emerges.
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Some Twitter Links From Last Week
Here are the tweets containing the most popular links from last week, counting only those that contain links shortened with ow.ly. They are copied here as they were, embarrassing typos and all.
1. Netflix Gets A Huge Influx of Indie and Foreign Films http://ow.ly/12EQc NICE!!!
2. President Obama: ‘I’m a Big Believer in Net Neutrality’ http://ow.ly/13aqs
3. This is interesting! Free Online Courses Don’t Hurt Paid Enrollment, Study Suggests http://ow.ly/13agQ And it’s wise to remember last bit.
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My Most Popular Ow.ly Links for the Week
These are the most popular ow.ly links in my twitter feed from the last seven days. I don’t shorten all links and I don’t always use Ow.ly, but I find it interesting to monitor this.
1. TIME Magazine names 50 best websites.
2. Tearing down Twitter’s walls
3. These stories are killing me. I need a new laptop so why not the Apple tablet. But I want it NOW!
4. Saw the pic and thought it was ridiculous for the President to use a teleprompter with children. Turns out he didn’t.
5. Suu Kyi ‘to be freed in November Outstanding news, but I’ll believe it only after she is released. November is far
Can Watermelon really be considered side-effect free when watermelon is a diuretic and six cups is guaranteed to have you running to the bathroom all night long? While watermelon is a health food, it is loaded with sugar and caffeine is the second most abundant substance in them that, tadalafil 20mg tablets similar to alcohol, gives rise to water failure inside your body. Penegra 100mg is the reliable treatment working exceptional as the super passionate alternative to generic viagra online Sildenafil Citrate. A generic cialis levitra ligament known as the suspensory ligament holds this in place to the public bone. It stays in body for vardenafil 20mg tab 4-6 hours to be rescued from the problem. 6. Tonight the President made it clear once again that he will not back away from his commitment to enacting health reform
7. McDonnell Promotes His Rebuttal Via Google Ads”
8. Fact-checking Obama’s State of the Union speech Such a great service. And they started right away! Politifact
9. Google Voice finally on iPhone–in the browser”
10. Resources for Teaching about the Earthquake in Haiti” http://ow.ly/10gh8 A very limited list. Can you help with others? Thanks!
My Most Popular Tweets of the Last Seven Days
Here are my top 10 Tweets of the last seven days that contain links shortened using ow.ly.
- RT @florencedesruol English was the first #OpenSource language. http://ow.ly/XmZO Intriguing article on both English & concept of OpenSource
- Nation’s Largest Labor Union Group Creates Online Degree Programs http://ow.ly/XYE5
- Watching Young at Heart on PBS. So funny! And inspiring. http://ow.ly/Xi2n
- Academic Tattoos-Scholars with tattoos relating to their academic research http://ow.ly/XYZ2
- Offensive on so many levels. Pat Robinson says quake in Haiti result of deal with the devil. http://ow.ly/WgJa
- Check out the Crazy Heart trailer and The Weary Kind theme song. http://ow.ly/Xx0d
- Democrats’ Senate supermajority may be at its end after Massachusetts’ special election, polls show http://ow.ly/Y2wb If Brown wins,…
- Call for Sessions: Technologies & Pedagogies for Teaching Language, Cultures, and International Relations http://ow.ly/VR3D
- California Law Encourages Digital Textbooks by 2020 http://ow.ly/XYGL
- Higher Ed Faculties Are Liberal Because Conservatives Don’t Seek Academic Careers, Study Finds http://ow.ly/XYOY
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