This isn't exactly pertinent to communication in life sciences, however, it certainly has a lot to do with how we as college students receive/pass along information about what's going on in the world. The article discusses how people our age use social networking sites like Facebook to pass along links of interesting articles as well as current event-related articles to friends. The article also discusses how many people have been relying on sites like YouTube to watch many of the political debates that have been taking place as of late.
I don't have a TV here at school and rely on reading newspapers and things on the internet for keeping up with what's going on in the world. Oftentimes my friends and I post interesting links on our Facebook pages, or use the "e-mail this article" button on many sites to share a piece of information we found to be interesting or important.
The internet had undoubtedly revolutionized the way we are able to keep up with current events, ranging from politics and science to entertainment and everything in between.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
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I'm following this election pretty closely, and although I leaf through a New York Times several days a week, I read a lot of election news online. CNN.com does a great job of organizing information about the primaries. The way the complex data surrounding elections is organized and presented to the public is one way political news online relates to science communication.
Although I read news online, I couldn't imagine "e-mailing articles to 10 friends" as is mentioned in the article. Facebook (as well as blogs) do give me a window into my friend's political beliefs, however. Between their stated "political views" and the groups they join, I can tell who my friends support and invite them to events and/or other groups accordingly.
I really enjoyed this article, it not only reminded me of my own practices, but I couldn’t stop thinking about just how smart the candidates, especially Obama, are being in this election in terms of reaching out to the younger vote. In previous years, attempts to increase the youth vote were through stations such as mtv that reach younger audiences. However, having speeches, video, ads, etc. available through so many different media, especially social networking sites, is an excellent campaign strategy and appears to be working as results from the elections keep coming in. Furthermore, this article demonstrates so many of theories and principles discussed in classes like comm. 101 and comm. 220. For instance, using all of these media to get candidates’s messages out utilizes Uses and Gratifications theory. This theory has several assumptions behind it including that: The audience is active and its media use is goal oriented, the media compete with other sources for need satisfaction, and Value judgments of media content can only be assessed by the audience. By analyzing these assumptions and using them to develop and implement a plan (an important step in campaign planning), the candidates can predict the needs their audience attempts to satisfy with each medium, and can properly prepare to help them find the gratifications they are seeking, in this case political information.
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