Comm455/History of Journalism

Reports from the battlefield have come and gone with the changing times. From the runners of ancient Greece to carrier pigeons in World War I, information has been the most valuable asset a military force can acquire. In today’s world, people get war reporting on current engagement s such as those occurring in Syria and Afghanistan from news networks […]

Many people believe that if the Internet didn’t exist, Barack Obama never would have won the Democratic Party’s 2008 nomination, or even more so, the presidency. When he entered the race in February 2007, the then-46-year-old Illinois senator had spent very little time in Washington and was considered a long-shot candidate by many. However, the […]

Social networking sites like twitter, facebook, tumblr, help you connect and find almost anyone, from a friend sitting two seats away from you in your American Literature class, to a girl you dated back in high school ten years ago. The cool thing about these sites is that they can make you feel as though […]

The ethical aspects of journalism are always strained around the time of a US presidential election and the 2012 race was not exempt of the abuse of social media outlets.  Because everyone can be a publisher now, most felt entitled in posting their bias through Facebook, Twitter, and other public forums.  Lacking professional training in […]

We have seen many cases, both in past history and recent news, when democratic nations have stepped in to control freedom of speech. In the United States, this is usually carried out as a protective measure when the safety of its people is in jeopardy. Social media has played a key role in the freedom […]

I will admit it; I was a late-comer to Twitter. I still don’t use it to post my own tweets, but it fascinates me to read. Being obsessed with celebrity culture, I’ve been most drawn to Twitter’s most famous tweet-o-philes. I started with Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), moving on to John Mayer (@johncmayer), and then comedians […]

Technology and Journalism. The two words go together like peanut butter and jelly. Journalism as a whole has been influenced by technology greatly over the past hundreds of years. The biggest enhancement has been the velocity at which news is delivered and distributed. As technology has gotten better and better, the speed of news has […]

For everyone who has ever found themselves using TweetDeck, it is easy to draw parallels between sensationalism and Twitter. For example, when the report of a possible gunman at Virginia Tech hit the Twitterverse in August, sensationalist posts flooded newsfeeds throughout the duration of the day. This caused the incident to be the topic of […]

There are many reasons to live-tweet. There could be a guest speaker in class or a panel that you are listening to. Beat reporters also live-tweet from sporting events. But can live-tweeting be used for entertainment? Andy Boyle was just a regular customer at a Burger King in Boston, Massachusetts when he overhead a couple […]

With print in rapid decline, there is a lot of discussion (and fear) that journalists are going to be out of work. However, ask anyone working in new media if they would agree with this point. They probably wouldn’t — and I don’t. Steve Pearlstein, a former columnist at the Washington Post and current professor […]

How far is too far? According to an article in the Atlantic, the CIA has admitted to using Twitter tweets and Facebook statuses to “glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad.” The intelligence agents, known as “vengeful librarians,” intend to scan the world of social media to monitor the opinions of […]

Twitter  and social media in general has revolutionized we do just about everything.