WHAT I LIKE ABOUT “PostGlobal”

 Due to my intense interest in international relations, reading about global issues is almost part of my ordinary life. Though newspapers such as The Washington Post and New York Times have very rich content on International developments, naturally they have limited space to publish every single coverage or article that is related to my interest area.

Besides it is hard to read my favorite writers every day in Washington Post because Post has only one page that reserved for the writers who write about International Relations. For instance Fareed Zakaria and David Ignatius are both my favorite writers. I used to read their writings in both Newsweek and Washington Post but their articles appear only once a week.

When I start to look at Washington Post’s blogs, I’ve found Post Global among them. 

“A CONVERSATION ON GLOBAL ISSUES”

This is what I was looking for:  “A Conversation on Global Issues with David Ignatius and Fareed Zakaria.” In the print edition of Washington Post’s Global Issues Section, you can find only couple of writers. However in Post Global there are 46 bloggers who write particularly on international issues. There are also 33 tags that represent particular regions. Once you click on each of tags you can get related news and entries instantly.

Zakaria and Ignatius, the creators and main bloggers of Post Global describe their blog:

“Post Global is and experiment in global, collaborative journalism, running discussions of important issues among dozens of the world’s best-known editors and writers. It aims to create truly global dialogue, drawing on independent journalists in the countries where news is happening-from China to Iran, from South Africa to Saudi Arabia, from Mexico to India.”

In the light of this aim I think it is very clear what global issues have to be handled journalistically. Many international journalists who work in overseas and columnists contribute to this blog and as a result there is a huge collaboration where various news, articles place on one platform. We do have a chance to see different perspectives and voices. There are very attractive applications such as Global Power Barometer, (GBP) tracks and analyzes thought and actions across the world and frequently catches sight of issues that will impact global politics.

There is also another section called as How the World Sees America contributed by Amar C. Bakshi. He reports from 11 different countries across the world including interviews and pod casts.

In Post Global, they also post questions twice a week and then gather responses from members of their network of experts on one particular issue. The readers of this blog are having a chance to get quick and professional comments on recently important developments in the world. 

This is a real conversation. For instance I’ve seen 259 comments on Amar Bakshi’s post what is titled as “Turkey to U.S.: Drop Your Orientalist Lens.”

 Moreover every single post is linky. If you don’t have background information about current issue you can follow the links that are already pasted to the post. It is like exploring the world. As prospective media leaders at least we need to know what is going on all around the world.  Thus gathering accurate, neutral and variety of information from the world we need to have professional help. I think Post Global is the right address to visit.

In the Post Global, tune, approach and coverage are completely different than Washington Post’s print edition. Unlike Washington Post’s limited pages, Post Global doesn’t have this problem. This reflects negatively on Post’s paper edition. As a result inadequate quantity of articles, lack of diversity and just reading writers’ opinions on one particular issue make me feel more unsatisfied.

I WAS TERRIBLY ALONE IN SECONDLIFE BUT YUPIIII!!!MY PACMAN STILL EXISTS

Let’s go back to my childhood for a while. Despite I’m not a huge fan of today’s gaming style, I have my own history with gaming:) As I remember, I have had my first gaming experience when I was about 6-7 years old. This incredible technology was named as Commodore 64.
We were changing cassettes once we finished Pacman ,we were playing another game and fighting about who is going to be  next. It was seemed to me like we were dealing with high-tech at the time. We were playing with Commodore 64 and It was huge deal in my childhood. Now, almost 3 decades later, Commodore became an ancient and games were first transformed to computer games and and finally to online ones. BUT THANK GOD THE PACMAN STILL EXIST!! Even I have Pacman application on my Facebook. Thus we can make that analogy : “Technologies can change but fun always stays in our hearts in same way”:))

After I have searched “Online Games” through Google, the result was unbelievable. The all blue links were saying FREE ONLINE GAMES entirely everywhere on the page. This is an incredible development in online gaming industry in last decade. What is the most attractive point playing game through online? As a result of online social networking and its magnet effect, Massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as SecondLife’s popularity have been growing every single day.

I have experienced SecondLife but I could not spend more than 3 hours to figure out what was goiong on. They are selling, buying, eating, flirting…etc. In short everything what we do in our real lives. At least Kristin Kalning, the Game Editor of MSNBC, describes like that. I have created an account in SecondLife, it took almost hour, and started to look around. Where I am going to go now? I felt terribly alone! I’ve tried to go more populated places but this time nobody accept me to settle there:((( I was getting tried by looking an Ireland for me and getting kicked out from where I wanted to settle each time. I didn’t even know how I could buy a house or private land to build my own place. I was desperate as a SecondLife Resident. Therefore I don’t have positive ideas about either 3D or Virtual World games because first you need to know how instructions work and what the rules are.

I am not in a regret. I insist that they are not welcoming games. I have a precious life and it is so real. Why am I supposed to spend my time to be part of an artificial life? Besides I’m not alone and I’m perfectly sociable person. I don’t want Agent Smith in my life.

However everyone is obsessed with these games. They emphasize themselves with characters who lives in the game. Maybe they can not get what they want in their real lives but their Avatars can do that instead. They can reach whatever they like in their Virtual Life. Isn’t that an Illusion? Indeed people do what they can’t do in their lives and somehow this game continuous. This kind of games can create asocial and character-disorder people.

While I was experiencing other games such as Persuasive Game’s “Points of Entry” Immigration Challenge, “The Arcade Wire” Airport Security, “Presidential Pong” I found them more realistic examples than surreal ones. At least they are part of our daily-base lives. I even felt that these games makes our lives more funnier.

ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NO DERIVATIVE WORKS 3.0 U.S LICENSE

These are the words well-describing my copyright license that I would like to have one for my blog.
First, I would like to declare that everyone would be free to share, copy, distribute, display and perform of my work. However they must ATTRIBUTE the work in the manner specified by me and I will not endorse them or their work in anyway. They were the good news so far. My license also requires NO DERIVATIVE WORKS rule. Therefore you may not alter, transform, or build upon my work. More importantly my works can not be used as COMMERCIAL purposes.
As you see my copyright license choose brings both restrictions and freedom of using my work.
I think I’m too conservative on this issue. I am not only the one thinking like that. My license is the most restrictive of six licenses of Creative Commons provides. “This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.”
Mercy! I have just dived into online media atmosphere and I have been hesitating to be copied:) I would like to remain as a unique blogger.
In all of a sudden I may pitch the story of my life and I would not want to share this with anyone. This is also same for  the picture I may take as a first photographer in the world. The rights on my work have to be my initiative. Therefore I do not allow the person who wants not only to use my work but also make changes or add something on my concept. By this way I can prevent the others who might wants to alter my work by changing format, style, colors, layout, size, shape or attempt to pass this off as his own work.
Also I don’t want my written or visual work to appear as a commercial material. You can not take an advantage through my efforts without my permission to earn a profit from the information that I have provided, directly or indirectly. In this way I can prohibit publishing my work to any commercial Web site.
On the other hand I do not have any problem distributing or making verbatim copies of my work by individuals for any purpose but commercial as long as they mention my link and my name.

WIKISCANNER REPORT ON FOX NEWS CHANELL

When I have started to search about Fox News on Wikipedia Scanner, I knew that I could find so many things worthy. Here are the topics what were edited by Fox News and most attracted to me. I think most of them can be taken as objectivity and Neutral Point of View (NPOV) causes. As one of the biggest news organization in the United States Fox News needs to foster objectivity and neutrality in media industry.
Before I started to list the topics I would like to make a summary in over all. My first observation is that Fox News doesn’t give a chance to any opposition or debates wherever its name takes place. They omit the whole controversial part and put how they believe instead.
In Fox News edits we can apparently see the words ‘Some Democrats’ and ‘Some Liberals’ have been substituted by ‘Democrats’ and ‘Liberals’.
They tend to use plural form of these words instead adding the word some. In fact “some” doesn’t exists in their format. Fox News has been editing these words promptly as the way they like. They have been targeting all democrats or liberals as components of the particular issue. Second, they tend to present Fox’s anchormans, reporters and their works as an admirable and unquestionable. However the other network’s anchors are presented as insignificant and unsuccessful. They omit the reports or critics by media organizations on their reporting such as Media Watchdog, Media Matters for America. They do some minor edits on grammar and proofreading but their quantity much less than contextual edits. Let’s examine some of the edits that I believe they are strongly attached to objectivity and NPOV issues.

Al Franken-Fox News Conflict

In this case National Public Radio intentionally and specifically wanted to be described as liberal and also Franken’s comment on Fox News was completely changed.The paragraph in older edit:
“The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the National Public Radio program ”Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was “literally laughed out of court” and that “wholly (holy) without merit” is a good characterization of Fox News itself.Fox News has edited this paragraph like that:
“The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal National Public Radio program Fresh Air on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.

 Carl Cameron-Journalistic Fraud 

In the wikipedia article on Fox News’s correspondent Carl Cameron contains critics on his reporting and accusations being a both journalist and partisan Republican at the same time. In the first edition of article there have been also findings of Media Watchdog Report on Cameron but they were omitted by Fox News.
 

Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton Interview 

 Fox News has omitted the part that was containing critics on Chris Wallace’s statement during the former president Bill Clinton interview. Also Fox News has omitted the part of an e-mail campaign that was organized by Modern American Liberalism and Wallace has never taken in response.

Keith Olbermann-Return to Reporting

Keith Olbermann-Trivia Keith Olbermann-Smoking

Eeach articles about Olbermann,  has been edited by Fox News, he has described as a liberal commentator who criticized by conservatives. Fox News has been accusing him repeatedly for making story about himself the day after news veteran Peter Jennings passed away from lung cancer.

Pastor Dennis James Kennedys

He has been described as the most listened to Presbyterian minister in the world by Fox News edit. Isn’t that relative information that we may not agree?

KEITH ON WIKIPEDIA

DOES ITS AN UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA”?

WAS THE WIKIPEDIA REALLY CREATED FOR CYCLOPEDIC MATTER?

If you are a journalist, academician or scientist you always need to have suspicious approach. We need to question facts. Otherwise the visible part of Iceberg’ may mislead our conclusion. The history of “Truths” or its opposite way “Truthless” lies down through the creation of human being. Describing the these two terms getting harder than ever in the condition of 21.century due to intensive Disinformation. In my opinion disinformation is translated to another word recently. As Steven Colbert describes, “Truhthiness”, the term defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.

We are as a millennium society have witnessed the revolution of Information Technologies in last decade. The most essential part of this revolution is self constructed, instructed and controlled Online Media. Online media have brought wide alternatives. Moreover it has created substitutionary media environment due to an online newspapers, blogs, social networking sites etc. People have started to read online newspapers instead of reading hard copies, to chat online instead of talking on the phone, to talk online instead of meeting in somewhere, to search on Google or Wikipedia instead of giving an eye on encyclopedia.

“FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA”

Of course we praise for what Wikipedia provides us. In fact nobody has an full-objection for blessings and contributions of online media tools to our daily lives. However the case what we are discussing influences all the society due to its technological power and attractiveness. As an our case study, Wikipedia’s core aim is providing a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet according to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. This is the magic word for all online media tools. FREE! He adds that Wikipedia is a lot more than a equal website also wants empowering people everywhere to have the information they need to make a good decision. It seems too idealistic isn’t it.

Let’s look the other features of Wikipedia?

According to All Headlines News, Wikipedia surpassed the 2-million article mark on September 9, as of October 8, 2007 Wikipedia’s English-language edition had over 2, 039, 985 articles. As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 language. Wikipedia’s articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Due to Wikipedia’s open nature, critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy. But because it is constantly updated, Wikipedia is also a source for rumors, a target of vandalism and a hub fornews and other internet phenomenon, with 6.8 million registered users worldwide.

“CONTROVERSIES ON WIKIPEDIA”

There have been many controversy and criticisms on Wikipedia’s concept. It has been criticized for being open to editing by anyone, being usefulness as a reference, it’s anti-elitist approach, systemic bias in coverage, systemic bias in perspective, privacy concerns, prediction on failure, threat to traditional publishers, quality of writing, anonymous editing, copy write issues, difficulty of fact-checking, using a dubious sources, exposure vandals such as John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy.
Moreover there are many criticism also made by contributors such as common complain “Flame Wars”, view of editing, dominant liberal bias, censorship, administrator actions, level of debate, male dominations, lack of credential verification.

“WE DON’T TAKE A STAND IN CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES”

Jimmy Wales describes their control mechanism as: “We do not talk a lot about truth and objectivity the reason for this is if we say we are only gonna write the truth about some topics that does not do us better good figuring out what to write because I don’t agree with you about what is the truth. We have this jargon term of neutrality which has long history with community. Anytime there is a controversial issue wikipedia self should not take a stand on the issue. We should report what reputable parties have said about it.“

Wales adds that Wikipedia has diverse contributors in terms of political, religious, cultural backgrounds and aims to keep everyone on Wikipedia’s Neutral Policy. I think this is the most crucial point of the controversies. There are several cases where Wikipedia has failed and I think the quantity of failures will increase in the future. Here some examples:

Mercedes hunts for Wikipedia vandal

Japan Officials Warned Over Wikipedia

Qatar’s Contributions Curtailed at Wikipedia

“DOES ITS UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA?”

For the conditions and controversies that I have listed above we can’t count on Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. If we are talking about public enlightenment through informations we have to stand for seeking truth and being an objective. Wikipedia can not reject that they are not one of the major media tools in today. If they think wikipedia has a suitability as an encyclopedia they need to have fundamental transformation from “everyone can edit” to “only experts can edit”. So I am answering the question: “We should trust expert-led encyclopedia no matter what Wikipedia provides easiest way to find an information.Due to Wikipedia should be open to just verified “experts”.

I might be a dinosaur because I am defending this idea but it seems the only way to enduring objectivity and preventing “Truthiness”.

 

 

 

Romantic Approach to Facebook

The Pros and Cons of An Online Social Networking

Do we need a Bill of Rights for the social web?

There is no doubt everyone wants to feel comfortable when they are using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster etc. The social networking brings not only opportunities to conduct our own media and social network but also provides more challenging market in favor of consumers. As Scoble says there is no rule book for blogging and this is “Come as you are conversations”. The authenticity is the core value that makes blogging such a new and different way for business to communicate. As much as being real and accurate in blogging, both companies and individuals reach to”success”. There are many examples of blogging by companies and individuals but now they have been realizing the value of social networking. For instance, Cisco Systems, a Silicon Valley heavyweight, plans to announce one of its most unusual deals: it is buying the technology assets of Tribe.net, a mostly forgotten social networking site, according to people close to the companies’ discussions.

Opportunities, Challenges and Risks

Once we carry this issue through social networking platform we also need to think about risks and rights for users of the Social Web. Let’s question the attractiveness of Facebook and other networking sites. Why they are so popular and addictive? Why MySpace attracts 70 million users, why Facebook has 27 million uniques?

What is Facebook’s secret sauce?

Is an enthusiasm knowing more and more about others who might be our friends, associates, family or their network? Supposedly I know who are close friend of mine. I already know their interests, backgrounds and current activities. How about the person who I do not know him/her that much or do not see for a while or have any single clue about? Am I strongly interested in their identities? I think we need to make rigid description of “FRIENDSHIP” in this point.

First, I need to categorize my friends as how much intense and extent ties with me. We can aggregate them as “Top Friends” or classify in different place. According to Jeff Jarvis, Facebook is a confused social space for that because there are too many different facets of personality being exposed through social openness. I agree with that. Whatever I make any configuration or change on my profile it is accessible through newsfeed for not only my friends but everyone. This point needs to be managed.

“BEFRIEND”

Moreover people can get invitations from people who actually are not their friends anymore or never have been. How are they going to deal with that? If they are not able to make decision whether they would accept this invitation or not by themselves they will not feel secure and comfortable while using their network place. The only solution is befriending someone but this time it is look like a discriminating someone. If I do this publicly I could be punished to do that somehow. This creates many misconceptions.

“Are Identities under the risk of theft?”

The another risk is identity theft. Some users of Facebook and MySpace routinely place information such as their date of birth,relationship status, locale, workplace and work history or even their address,email and phone number, right in their profile without any restrictions about who sees it.”

I really liked the way of this description on social networking: “People don’t put a sign on their front yard or apartment door listing the dates they’ll be away on vacation and all of their personal data. But, “people are doing just that through the growing phenomenon of social networking Internet sites, where members post pictures and current information about themselves as a way of keeping in touch and sharing information with “real world” friends, business associates, family and classmates,” states Grant Thornton senior forensic manager David Malamed. http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2007/01/c6097.html

For all those purposes we strongly need to have an ownership of our own personal information such as own profile data, the list of people we are connected to and activity stream of content we create. Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites as they are the requirements of A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web.

GOOGLE AS A DATABASE OF OUR INTENTIONS

WE SHOULD NOT AFRAID GOOGLE, “Unless it ensures our privacy”

               John Battelle discribes Google as a ’The Database of Intentions’ and continues: “This simply is an aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered and every path taken as a result”. The description of Google, made by Battalle, looks like a meaning of one simple word in encyclopaedia at the first stage. However “Google” is not a simple case as much as it’s description.

                When  I first started to read about Google and the circumstances that it has created; negative and positive consequences of using it, I didn’t know how much Google means in everyone’s life.  Then I realized that whatever I do on computer my fingers find “G.O.O.G.L.E” letters unintentiously. We are talking about most powerful media company in the earth and most rapidly growing company in the Wall Street. In less than a decade, Google has become a corporate colossus.  (Number of Employees: 12,238, Revenue in 2006: $10.6 billion, Profit in 2006: $3.1 billio n, Share of the U.S search market: 53.7 percent, Global Unique users in March: 528 million.) 

                Google relatively provides various advantages and disadvantage as its nature and size. I believe the most important issues we need to discuss are that the function of Google on our privacy and impacts of its monopoly in economic life. 

               We need to consider that Google provides a service what others find very useful and helps people to find informations at no charge and with one click.

                According to Battalle this informations represents in aggregate form a place holder for intentions of humankind a massive database of desires, needs, wants and likes that can be discovered, subpoenad, archieved, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. http://battellemedia.com/archives/000063.php

                Moreover Google letting advertisers promote their wares to those poeple in a finally targated way. Google’s book search product, arguably helps rahter than hurts publishers and authors by rescuing books from obscurity and encouraging readres to buy copyrighted works.

                There are many further Google tools that contribute more and more convenience to our lives such as GoogleMaps, GoogleNews, GoogleMail, GoogleReader, GoogleScholar etc…Each one was created to supply our intentions.  So far so good. Therefore Google is a capitalist tool and a useful one.

“New MICROSOFT“

               On the otherhand we need to pay much more attention to it’s unrivalled financial assets and technical wealthiness of Google in its category. This may create giant monopoly. Actually it has became a monopoly already.  Google controls more network fiber than any other organization. Thus other search engines will not be successful as much as Google in the  far future. If we look from this perspective Google might be our only media.  http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html.  

“Why does Google remember information about searches?”

               Finally we came to privacy issue that Google has created. Why Google needs to keep our searches? However they recently announced a new policy to anonymize their server logs after 18-24 months. They declare that immediate deletion of IP adressed from their logs would make their data systems more vulnerable to security attacks, putting the personal data of Google’s users at greater risk.  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-does-google-remember-information.html According to their new policy announcment,  they have rights and purposes to keep that information such as helping law enforcements in the investigation and prosecution of ” serious crime”.

               In conlusion, if Google adequately protect privacy, everyone around the world can get benefits from its functions. There are both risks and benefits of using Google. I believe big potential of bad use of Google can prevented by a legitimate agreement that place between consumers+state+Google.

DISCUSSING+SHARING= CULTURAL EVOLUTION

DISCUSSING+SHARING= CULTURAL EVOLUTION

I believe the society who talks and discuss that is a democratic society. People are needed to communicate and interact with each other in order to gain more accuracy and democratic culture in the world.

As members of the world community we used to have grassroots’ media tools to understand each other, to know rest of the world and also to be known by them. TV’s and Newspapers still have been doing their jobs as an initiative and massive media tools for centuries but this time we do have both interactive and informative one: INTERNET

Internet’s charming, useful and beneficial features that were created in every single day provide us many opportunities to manage our own communication tunnels. There was not any chance neither to do our own PR nor Journalism by ourselves until Internet.

The media without internet was inadequate to know everything truly, properly and without disinformation. The years without internet have passed with full of negative occurrences in the world such as wars, cultural and political conflicts, and economic instabilities in general; competitiveness, monopoles, high prices, corruptions, violations of consumer rights in particular.

In contrast when the internet became part of our lives we had a chance to have unlimited alternatives to choose, to learn, and to talk.

BLOGGING= DIGITAL CONVERSATION

The blogs, as the latest interactive media channel and precious gift of internet, has brought revolutionary change to transform the way business and communication. Despite no one really see each other; blogs have helped to build more reliable and trustful place to be part of the conversations on digital atmosphere. It has never been cheap and easy to share our ideas and products with millions like that.

LESS COSTS=MORE SALE

Moreover, the Long Tail approaches to the case from economic perspective and point outs that world market has been having a huge turning point what is eventually prevents unfair wealth distributions in all around the world. We have two success stories as an example of Long Tail concept: NETFLIX and AMAZON.

We all can see that how much they are successful on the way of sharing; as a consequence of minimizing costs for both consumer and companies. For instance the large proportion of Amazon’s book and Netflix’s movie sales come from either obscure books that are not available in brick-and-mortar stores or unpopular movies. This can’t be real if we would not have an internet. We were not able to find the movie that our grandfathers have seen many years ago.

Besides Long Tail’s economic positive influences on societies we can also discuss its cultural and political impact on the societies. I believe The Long Tail model might lead to improvement in society’s level of culture as well. As soon as costs go down we would have a chance to see more competitive markets, much more alternatives and finally cultural diversity.

The only point I have been mostly considering is: “An insufficient distribution of technology would remain same in needy part of world?