Monday, June 10, 2013

Wikipedia: Michael Oher

I've decided to write on the football player Michael Oher and explore his informative Wikipedia page for this media assignment. Starting with the Talk page, is the space where editors discuss changes made to the wiki page such as his contreversial jersey number in the Ravens football team and his GPA. Users discussed in this page have little information shared about themselves and were referred to in numbers rather than a name. All discussions were mostly done during the year 2009/2010. There are definitely a voice of authority in this Talk page who has clearly made many contributions, especially football related content. However, he has the authority to approve or reject other people's contribution to the page and edits with a check mark. The tone is very strict and it comes across that they take the content of the page very serious and that there are no room for errors. Also, they are very judgmental and critical on the information they choose to accept and only willing to change it if there is a good enough source to back it up. This keeps the image of reliability and validity of the information provided for the page so the public gets the least amount of false information. Although its hard to trust this authority who we have no idea who he or she is, believing their judgment is right can only be perceived by checking the sources they use and other material they have contributed to.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oher

@marwaah_

On the opening page of the site Twitter makes it seem he easiest task to sign up for an account. Displaying only 3 questions, once completed and clicking on register now takes you to another page for more personal questions to create your account. Once that has been completed, uploading a picture and chose a header was the easy part. I decided to follow some avid Tweeters I knew personally who are constantly finding the wittiest comments and comical things to say on this website. Sara M, Sara E, Shadwa, Saja and Soumia are the girls I have decided to follow on my account (which I just noticed all start with S) whom I really enjoy their tweets. They mostly talk about religious subjects, daily funny situations and updates on their favorites music, films and celebrities. For example, Sara M loves rapper/artist Drake and her tweets and memes she posts are usually her fan-girling. I also followed some accounts that are in my general interest such as Fashion bloggers who tweet the latest fashions, runway looks and celebrity's on the red carpet. These Fashion accounts are E!'s Fashion Police which is originally a TV show hosted by Joan Rivers, Glamour Fashion. I'm also following international news sources such as The New York Times and Aljazeera English with tweets varying from natural disasters to sports related issues.

Twitter says a lot about transitional media and how it has progressed the transportation of information. It has the ability to gather all our interests, hobbies, people and connects us in a unique way no other form of communication is able to do. The site runs on user generated content therefore Twitter brings variety of people around the world in one community. I love the fact that I can follow people or accounts that are relative to my likings rather than traditional media where you have one way stream of information. Personally I contributed to the site by being tweeting once or twice during class and commenting on lecture readings and videos. This was achieved by participating in the class hashtag #comm2p91. Hashtags bring other tweeters who are apart of that class together and in tune of what their mates think of a certain topic in the readings. I tweeted from my smartphone because it was convenient during class since I did not bring my laptop. My overall tweeting experience was a negative, I didn't enjoy the fact that I had to constantly check my timeline to see what others have tweeted and it's just excessive information I don't need to know about. The reading has definitely opened my eyes to micro-blogging and the different platforms this communicative form of media can socially connect the world.