New and Digital Media News Post

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/15/fact-and-fiction-trust-and-internet

I was sitting at a table last summer being patronised, lovingly. My friends were explaining, fact by splash of cold-water fact, how a recent TV special by a renowned celebrity hypnotist was performed by actors, and was not, in fact, magic at all. "But," I stuttered, as their mouths moued. "Then there's no point." Television itself is an illusion. To add yet more trickery – "real people" played by actors, things that say they're live but were filmed last March – defeats the purpose, wringing it of all entertainment. I went on a bit. If it's all showmanship, those men with their minds on, then it's nothing. It's air.

I was thinking about this again this week when a mean story that went viral – a man live-tweeting his interactions with a woman on the plane – was revealed to be fake. At the same time a Twitter conversation between a comedian and an American salsa brand – which appeared to result in employees being fired and had shot, sneeze-like across theinternet – was confirmed as a hoax.

I'd clicked on a Twitter link, read the BuzzFeed aggregations of screenshots, and I felt something twitch where outrage sometimes lives. A recognition that this could get annoying if repeated – a story written by a reality TV producer then reported as fact by an international media company (BuzzFeed's post got almost 1.5m views) and shared frantically by those who think it's real. Because if it hadn't been real – if, unlike the alleged non-magic of the alleged non-magician, it had advertised itself as fiction – nobody would have clicked even once. It would have fallen off the bottom of the internet within a day.

Which is not to say there's not a place in our lives for these tales. We love a good story. Endings that make you cry, twists. And the internet is where we gather to hear them today, cross-legged, with our milk. But the framing of the story is important. The point of the story is important. It's either told for the joy of telling a tale, or it's told to promote something for sale – listening to both can be a pleasure, as long as we know. As long as we know. When the truth is later revealed, it feels vaguely… evil.

It's harmless, of course – nobody was hurt, nobody will be hurt – but it does affect how we will engage online in the future. We will trust less, and enjoy less, and our lives will become fractionally worse. But the issue lies not with the storyteller – it lies with the sites that share it.

BuzzFeed is a lot of things. It's a gallery of grinning dogs. It's a thousand comedy lists about the 90s. It's a scrolling advert, a comic sports site, a politics blog, a moving newspaper, and its ad revenues this year are estimated to be $40m. As it stretches across our consciousness like clingfilm, its responsibilities are being called into question more and more. As a news organisation, profiting from the stories it shares, shouldn't it be verifying them before it publishes?

And if this continues to happen – if it repeatedly reports on fictions as if they're fact – then won't it start to lose us, its fast-clicking readers? We don't expect every story posted by a stranger on Twitter to be true, but we do expect every story reported on by a huge media organisation to be, because that's what they're for. The point of them is to filter through the daily mess of culture and to repackage it for us in witty, bite-sized, trustworthy chunks. The more they mess up, the less we'll return.

The thing is, I don't think magic is real. I don't. My dad was briefly a magician called the Great Malcomo, and I saw the safety blade on his guillotine. There are parameters to an illusion; you know where the sides are. When they fall away, it's not a magic show at all. It's just a man in a cape showing you his rabbit.

Summary:

This article from the Guardian talks about how the internet rumours spread easily. People reading a news post can instantly spread it to different social networking sites/apps and therefore spread even further.

People believe a lot of what they read on social networking without any doubt. They think if it's posted online it has to be true. An example of this is how people though celebrities such as the Rock, Jackie Chan and others were dead and this lead to trends on twitter. In addition to this, this article also includes journalists with the incident from the guardian - posting false information copied and pasted from else where.

Live tweeting incident with a man a woman on a plane was posted on twitter and got the user thousands of followers however it turned out to be a hoax and fooled many people. This affects internet users because they're in this state of mind where they think the internet is a safe and reliable source when it isn't always that case. 

Statistics:

BuzzFeed's post got almost 1.5m views

New and Digital Media Pareto's Law

1) What is Pareto's Law? Sum it up in a paragraph.
Pareto's Law (Lin Webster) suggests that 80/20 is rule that a minority of producers serve a majority of consumers, a large percentage is produced by a small percentage of producers. This Law is applied to ownership opposed to Content. For example 80% of media texts are produced by 20% of producers. This can be applied to large companies such as Google and Microsoft, accounting for most of the sites we use. 

2) What other industries or examples can you apply the 80/20 rule to?
The music industry can be used as an example as 80% of the songs in the chart hits are produced by 20% of producers.

Furthermore business management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; Pareto developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in this garden contained 80% of the peas. 

80% of population is served b y 20% of businesses
80% of the market share is owned by 20% of the companies
80% of complaints are from 20% of the customers
80% of value is achieved by 20% of the effort 
80% of work is completed by 20% of the team 
80% of software problems by 20% of bugs 
80% customers only use 20% of software features
80% wealth is owned by 20% of people

3) List three arguments in FAVOUR of Pareto's Law applying to the internet:
- Top 5% of all websites account for 75% of user volume

- Google own 127 sites.
Google own Google Earth, Google Map, GMail, Youtube, Blogger, Picasa, Nexus, Andriod OS and much more.

- 80% of searches are searched on the internet on 20% of the search engines.


4) List three arguments AGAINST Pareto's Law applying to the internet:
- Large companies don't own user generated content, it applies to the ownership.

- Content in YouTube videos are produced by users not by the company, Google.

- Similarly, texts and images on blogger or tumblr aren't produced by google or Yahoo but the suers themselves.
5) Even if Pareto's Law applies to internet ownership, does it still apply to the content we read online?

Ownership and Content are two different things, although the products of users is the form of text such as video or posts, etc, it isn't produced by the company but the users themselves, user generated content.

The three points for the Pareto's Law are reinforcing the ownership and the three against the Law are explaining how the companies don't own the content.  This law doesn't apply to whole internet as in media institutions. The company doesn't control what is posted or said by users.

Weekly New and Digital Media Story

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/12/02/meadow-walkers-social-network-accounts-are-fake

Paul Walker's representatives have confirmed reports suggesting a posting on Facebook from the late star's daughter is a fake.

A message attributed to 15-year-old Meadow, in which the writer recalled growing up with her late father, appeared on the social media website on Sunday, a day after Walker perished following a car crash in Valencia, California.

The post included a picture of Walker and his daughter and read, "When I was little he taught me to walk, taught me to smile, and taught me to never give up. I loved him even before I knew what love was. He was my hero. The REAL life hero! He will always be in my heart! It brings tears in my eyes as I write this. You're gone, but not forgotten! R.I.P Dad!"

However, the actor's representatives have revealed Meadow is not currently on any social media sites and they insist the heartfelt message was not written by the teen.

Representatives for Walker are working to get the imposter sites removed.

Meadow had moved to California last year to spend more time with her father.

Summary 

Fatal accident involving Paul Walker shocked millions, it was top news over the weekend with users from all different types of social networking sites posted pictures, posts about the star and to praise him for what he had accomplished in his life. 

But through this tragic event, a user had decided to use the actors daughter to attract followers and to rise to fame. This story shows how easy it is to create fake accounts that impersonate famous people, this can even happen to teenagers or anyone in the social networking world. After a tragic death of a famous actor, a fake account was created of his daughter which quickly attracted attention as users thought she was real and therefore re-tweeted or shared the messaged 'Meadow' posted publicly. 

My view

This is an example of the dangers that people could encounter if they believe a fake account is someone they know. There have been incidents with children and teenagers meeting people online and developing relationships which is a easy way of meeting new people however this could be putting them in danger due to the possibility of getting harmed or meeting a pedophile if cyber friends agree to meet up. 

Furthermore the account could say anything and cause followers to react to the posts either agree or disagreeing

there is a possibility of ruining the reputation of the famous person in this case, Meadow Walker. 

This social networking world has allowed users to post their views, opinions and allowed them to follow and keep track of other accounts, this is a great way for users to produce their own material or use the network to keep a track of their favorite famous people. As time progresses, more information is available on the internet due to the ease of finding and getting news from a range of accounts however it may not always be true but can seem to be if it is said enough times. 

This relates to the idea of 'Normal' that we discussed in class, if we see something happen in a certain way again and again and again, it become the 'Norm' and people will assume it will happen all the time, such as the common conventions of Hip-Hop and even horror movies, etc it will be expected. This can be used when we think of how news is spread, similarly to rumors or secrets in high school, it being passed on and attracting enough attention will make it seem like it is a fact when it isn't.