ONE LAST WORD
During the semester I’ve enjoyed the most of the topics we have examined in the class and well-informed about the many aspects of the digital world. The every single topic was quite challenging for me and my journalistic development.
As a result of having a print journalism background in my professional life, I didn’t not realize how much I have missed about digital world. Despite I had a chance to work on online journalism long time ago; I’ve preferred to stay in the newspaper.
Today, I do not have any regret not to change my decision because I don’t believe there are rigid distinctions between online, print, radio and broadcast journalism. The purposes, rules and methods are almost similar. Only difference is where the journalism being applied physically; on the screen, monitor or paper.
However I have been defending that there should be a difference exposition between “journalistic work” and “non-journalistic work” in digital world, among blogs and web sites. I believe that the every single information or comments we have been seeing on the blogs can’t contain a news value. We can not assume that every blog or web site which has journalistic manners is credible for newsworthiness, liability, accountability.
On the other hand I also have been defending that a journalist should be aware of everything in digital world because no matter what this is the future. I was trying to refuse this point before I took this class. Now I’ve faced how much powerful and real the digital world is. We can not watch this big era from a distance…
THANK YOU ALL!
LET’S KEEP ON BLOGGINGGG:))
MAKING INTERNET REVOLUTIONARY IN FAVOR OF DEMOCRACY
“An amazing thing happened in the presidential contest of 2004: For the first time in my life, maybe the first time in history, a candidate lost but his campaign won.”
(Joe Trippi, The Revolution will not be Televised)
What Joe Trippi trying to say when he emphasizes Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign in 2003? “A candidate lost but his campaign won”.
The Dean’s campaign started with seven people in the campaign staff, $100.000 in the bank and four hundred thirty two supporters. At the end of 2003, almost in a year, Dean’s campaign ended with $50 million fundraising (from small donations $100 or less) and 640, 000 supporters. However it wasn’t enough for him to be the President of United States.
As Trippi says end of his book’s introduction one of the most essential results of this campaign is that it was the story how American people engage in real dialogue. Dislike other political campaigns in the past; this campaign stopped “selling” to them. This time the platform where the parties meet was different: Internet.
The aspects, interactivity and social networking have made internet a convenient place to give voice to voiceless, to share, to talk and to access information. It is not all about how much technology emerged in 21st century. I believe that if you don’t use the internet primarily for public’s favor (not only being accessible but also being questionable), you will not be accomplishing anyway neither as a businessman nor a politician.
TVs and radios haven’t given us a chance to show our reactions and express our opinions about what we’ve considered most. We were just listening and watching in the past but now we have been getting a part of the conversation. We have started to make our preferences on the internet easily and quickly. For instance online buying, selling, searching, watching, networking, mailing, discussing, surveying, talking, reading…etc.
As we realize almost everything what we were doing manually before the internet came into our lives, has been getting ONLINE.
In this sense why we don’t think about “online democracy“? As long as we maintain and encourage democracy on the internet we will be eligible to apply democracy among grassroots. The transformation from “TV society” to “Internet society” has been emerging increasingly. The internet will reach everyone in the world eventually. Thus why we don’t launch revolution on internet in favor of democracy?
I think Howard Dean’s campaign was launched with this belief and has devoted itself to power of democracy. Alike Dean says: “To really use the Internet well, you have to build community, not just enable fundraising.”
In my opinion whoever adopts this mentality would be successful in the future like Howard Dean and Joe Trippi.
FACEBOOK AND POLITICS
According to Facebook, more than 1,600 contenders for national and state offices have created profiles.
WHAT IS YOUR POLITICAL LANGUAGE? “A monologue or a conversation”
“The very technology that has transformed the global economy has transformed the campaign process as well, so that the race will be run as much on the World Wide Web as in union halls and town squares and on television. ”
From the introduction of “The First Campaign” , Garrett Graff
This statement explains why we have been facing with the First Campaign. It is quite hard to make further comment on the book because The First Campaign pictures whole journey how technological and political developments emerged synchronously in the last decade.
Today we have been watching political debates on TV where politicians were asked various and spontaneous questions by people because of YouTube. Today also people are invited to vote almost for everything.
As we have been examining during our class online media tools; blogs, social networking platforms, online campaigning and many other ways on World Wide Web are vital as new communication channels to say your word to people not only in your neighborhood but also to the world. This is the biggest consequences of globalization and technological revolution in today’s world. The thousand, millions of people are brought together to demonstrate their voices with only one SMS massage today.
The people are not voting only for political candidates’ appearances on TV but also they consider how much candidates response their crucial manners in their conversation and how much let people to make contributions to the conversation. As a result of that politicians have been realizing the power of the conversational communication with the society. Therefore they turn their head towards online fund-raising campaigns.
We all are aware how Howard Dean’s fund-raising campaign had been successfully accomplished. Dean’s campaign has raised $ 50 million and funds came largely in small donations over the Internet, the average overall donation size was under $100. Suchlike fund-raising has happened first time ever in political campaigning in the US history. This is an ultimate example of how much internet can be efficient in even political campaigning.
“The First Campaign” gives us the very interesting evidences about how the way of social and political communication and sharing was transformed by maximum usage of technology. On the other hand I agree that using of new technologies is not the only indicator to determine whether you’ll be successful or not. The question is how your tune is while you are reaching people through technology. Are you allowing people to join the conversation or wanting only their votes? What is your language in this sense? Monologue or conversation?
According to “The First Campaign”:
*In the fifth-season finale of Fox TV’s American Idol talent show, more people voted for singer Taylor Hicks than have ever voted for a presidential candidate in any U.S election.
*The candidates have profile on Facebook.com, the social-networking website targeted at collage students. A Facebook group for Barack Obama swelled to a quarter million people in less than a month, and when Hillary Clinton went onto Yahoo!
*By the end of May 2007, ABCPAC, the conservative fund-raising site equivalent to the left’s ActBlue, had raised only $385 for all GOP field. Meanwhile, ActBlue which draws upon the larger more organized and powerful progressive blogosphere, had raised more than $3 million for John Edwards alone, and total of some $22 million in online donations since its 2004 lunch.
