Monday, February 28, 2011

Folksonomy & the Folks


 Michelle Scarr
Folksonomy & the Folks


The constant rise of amateur lead of posting has certainly not devaluated the content of the professional writers in the world. However, the internet has made the finding of information in some way easier to find and in other ways harder to find reputable information. It seems that anything that we need to know we can simply google and find an answer in literally one second, definitions of words, current events, and pictures of actors. In that one second that it takes to search, pages and pages of information appears with thousands and thousands of sources for those few select words that you searched. 

As you know, you can find all of those sources in seconds but which ones do you actually chose to cite a paper or simply to become knowledgeable on a topic? This is a way where finding information is considerably harder nowadays. In the earlier decades before, in order to research, people would go to the library and search through encyclopedias, dictionaries, and atlases. Now since, the internet is available to all people and we, as Americans, possess the right of free speech, Americans can post whatever ever they want about whatever they want. 

People post opinions, comments from facebook, photos, music, videos. People post just about every medium. The people and the mediums make up the medium that is the internet. We, as Americans, live in a democracy both in reality and virtually. We have the freedom of speech and of the press. This applies to all types of medias and mediums. We can print in newspapers, magazine, give speeches to our liking, and especially establish websites, domain names, and social networking accounts. The democracy that rules the online would gives us the power to post anything including graphics, pictures, text, etc. that we desire on the internet for everyone to read. 

Folksonomy is defined as a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy). Before the internet, a system such as the Dewey Decimal System was considered Folksonomy. It gives people the ability to search something by a certain category for easy researching access. The common process of Folksonomy has slightly changed once the internet became popular around the world. Now, when someone refers to folksonomy , they are usually referring to the concept of “tagging”. (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-21.html

Tagging something online is relating an image, a blog, a video, etc. to certain words or phrases. If the certain words or phrases are tagged to an article, for instance, once they are searched on a website or via search engine, the image will appear as one of the results. For example, if you type in “Mumford and Sons” into youtube, different songs by Mumford and Sons will appear, ones with lyrics, live performances, and talk shows featuring Mumford and Sons will appear in the result page of youtube. In databases such as ProQuest, you are able to search a topic, sentence, or word and articles with those same words tagged will appear on your results page. As you can see, this type of Folksonomy proves itself very useful in ways of the internet, if it didn’t exist how would we search topics and find information about them. It can be compared to a new fashioned, global Dewy Decimal System.

The folksonomy of tagging articles can get researchers into trouble as well. Here is where the lines between opinions and facts can most certainly be blurred. You can type a word into google in order to look for its definition. Thousands of results will pop up, but what sources are actually accurate. People must dissect their sources before they choose one to cite. People can define a word in a blog, they can write about what that word means to them, people can post different definitions of words, and it is the researcher’s job to sift through the validity of the site to ensure the truth of its content. For instance, one can easily be directed to Urbanidictionary.com. This a website which people can post their own definitions no matter how crude or offensive. Someone can obviously tell that that website is not reliable but some are harder to distinguish. 

In order for one to validate the accuracy of a source, one should investigate the author, the sponsor of the website, the date the webpage was made, and even the web address itself. If the site ends with a .gov or a .org, it is most likely legit. Dot com sites prove to be less reliable. When you consider the amount of facebook users in the world (500 million), it is hard to distinguish what is fact or opinion. Though it can be difficult, to determine professional sources in a virtual democracy, it can be done. Therefore, the fact that people’s opinions are on display on the internet does not affect the validity of the sources that are professional and scholarly.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Web 2.0 & Social Media


Web 2.0 & Social Media

  1.  I personally do not think that this pattern we have seen recently “homegrown ads” will continue much further. I do not particularly like homegrown ads due to the fact that I know some companies do have the technology to make ads as most appealing as they can. I love advertisements and television shows that are aesthetically pleasing and sometimes with “homegrown ads” that is not achieved. I do not think that professional production will continue to drop. I feel as though, these home grown ads are such a small portion of advertising, that the industry won’t be radically affected. There will always be a need for advertising no matter what.
  2.  Facebook is obviously the social media site that I spend the most time on by far and I am sure that my response is similar to the most of the class if not the rest of the class. I was never interested in Myspace, so I never even had one. However, facebook has so many social mediums intertwined in it so that everything is located in one specific place, the facebook site. It is a very organized website which allows me to stay connected to basically everyone I know and talk to. I found myspace very “spammy” and too flashy for me. Facebook is simple in format and easy to navigate. I think that facebook will be around for awhile since the site already stayed far more popular than myspace and facebook has opened up to every demographic.
  3.   Transparency is a huge concern in the social media world. The blog article stated that when we tweet or post on facebook or use flickr, our motives may not be one hundred percent genuine. You may not be posting because you want to but maybe to attract the attention of someone you like or get in the good graces of someone of higher stature than you. Then if you add in advertising, people may think it’s fair that if you mention a company in a tweet, blog post, etc. you should be compensated. This could turn social media from a way to connect with other to a way of simply making profit. Our motives would certainly not be genuine. Transparency in the real world could also pose problems. People may print or vow something they don’t mean in order to make a profit. Newspapers could become simply catalogues of people’s products and companies. And TV shows and movies could revolve around product placement more than anything else.

Monday, February 14, 2011

McLuhan Photoshop Final Post

For my medium, I chose facebook and showed it's evolution through all of it's stages starting out as a simple website and expanding to 500 million active users. It shows that the medium of simple htmls began a revolution of social networking. The instant emoticons and the image of a picture in an album on facebook demonstrates how facebook advanced. The image of facebook chat clearly depicts the fact that everyone needs to have instant communication with others almost 24/7. The image of aim on the side represents the concept in which facebook chat derived from. The child on the laptop shows the fact that younger generations are now adopting facebook when the website was originally intended for college students to connect with each other. Now, adults, teenagers, college students, and even middle school students have facebook accounts. And lastly, the file folder named "My Life" represents the fact that it appears to be that everyone's lives revolve around the concept of facebook and of the internet; the concept of being connected. McLuhan had it right, even though his work was published decades ago, mediums are extensions of ourselves and in today's society (even more so than ever) we truly live in a global village. 

Monday, February 7, 2011

New Mediums

Constantly in today's society new mediums are being developed. As stated by Marshall McLuhan in "Understanding Media: Extensions of Man", a medium is any extension of ourselves. The article also states that any new medium consists of old mediums. Mediums, in turn, make up each other. Examples of mediums include something as basic as the assembly line to something as complex as html codes. New mediums constantly change the way our society communicates with the world as they are created. The few examples that I will be discussing are Facebook Chat, Youtube, and Tumblr.

Facebook Chat




I would say that Facebook chat is a relatively new form of medium. The free automatic application on the facebook site of course stemmed directly from facebook. The chat feature on facebook allows a person to be seen as "online" or "idle" (meaning away from they're computer) for all of their friends (or the friends they have selected) to see. You also are able to view your friends that are online as well. If you are online, you are able to chat with that person in real time. This is the same exact concept of instant messaging only done through the facebook website. The mediums that incorporate facebook chat include: facebook, text, instant messaging, emoticons, and the internet itself. The new medium has perhaps decreased the act of texting and due to this new medium, generally speaking, aim had become obsolete. Chat speak has probably increased and email and messaging has also decreased.

Youtube



Youtube is a new type of medium that has completely changed how the world listened music, watched videos, shares videos with their families, and watched television shows. Youtube was a fabulous new invention that gave people the ability to upload their videos to a live website that displayed them for other users and non users to view and watch. This idea was pivotal in today's society because no one ever had the thought of giving people the ability to download their own videos in live time. Mediums that make up this pivotal website include htmls, videos, comment areas, text, and music. This new medium presented the world with a new way of communication with other users, decline of purchasing music, time taken away from watching the actual television tube, and even contests were created through the use of youtube.

Tumblr



Tumblr is perhaps one of the newer blogging mediums that I am aware of today. Social networking itself is a medium and that makes of Tumblr. Tumblr is basically a blogging site where a person can write about their days, post videos and links, follow their friends, and organize all of their writing and posting in various formats and designs. It is a very unique blogging technique because of its variety in appearance, in my opinion. You can arrange your postings in chronological order, by pictures, or key words with different types of columns. The types of mediums that Tumblr contains includes the internet, text, photos, videos, audio, htmls, graphic designs, and links. The creation of Tumblr gives people new blogging techniques and ideas, more accurate ways to depict their thoughts based on personal taste. It may have also decreased postings on facebook or even writing in journals or diaries.