Three social media I use are
1. Twitter
2. Social network sites- such as facebook, but you should not be able to see it.
3. Blogs
I think that choosing which social media tool to use is mostly dependent on what you are trying to accomplish with your post. Are you trying to share a short or long message? Is it more important to reach the largest possible audience or a specific audience? A small, more active audience can sometimes generate more change than a loosely connected group.
The limit on twitter makes it ineffective for mostly everything. News organizations that use it must learn a new way to attract attention to article links that often obscure the truth. It is good for established organizations as an alternative means of sharing links and sharing photos.
Facebook is a constant stream like twitter. You can not guarantee that your content is at the top of peoples pages without paying. This social media outlet is where most people spend the most time. In 2012 56% of Americans had social media accounts and I am sure the number has only risen since then (Fox, 2012). An example of a successful page for a company is Old Spice. It is not easy to link social media 'likes' with increasing profit. The most effective way to grow your audience on facebook is with humor and cuteness. If your brand lacks this then you have to consider how to create it and possibly give up some seriousness. Because of its size, facebook is best for reaching a wide audience.
Blogs are an excellent way to share longer articles. However, I would not consider them an effective way to market content. Generally you share links to a blog through a different social media site in order to generate clicks to the blog. Blogs are normally shared via an RSS feed or web feeders. It is not an easily accessible thing to find a new blog unless you find the link through a different social media source. New bloggers have to establish an audience. They may share it with friends and have to establish trust before growing. Blogs are best for sharing detailed information with a deeply entrenched audience. I am excluding "blogs" on news sites because they are more like columns.
Fox, Z. (2012, November 28). This Is How Much Time You Spend on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/11/28/social-media-time/
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Friday, July 4, 2014
Untrained authors and Supreme Court decision translations
Today an extremely important Supreme Court case was decided. Hobby Lobby sued the government in order to not pay for the contraceptive mandate that is part of Obamacare. NPR and other news sources posted the result almost immediately- Hobby Lobby won. The story was expanded over time as more reactions were obtained. The author of the NPR article is Bill Chappell. He does not have a law degree and does not exclusively report on Supreme Court cases, but he is a long time NPR contributor ("Bill Chappell," n.d.). This article is part of their blog called "the Two Way" which reports on breaking news.
The most direct way to find the result of Supreme Court decision is to read the decision which is posted directly on their website. For the average person, this isn't always comprehensible. This decision was 97 pages long and includes the majority opinion, a concurring opinion from Justice Kennedy, and 2 dissenting opinions, one from Justice Ginsberg and one co-authored by Justices Breyer and Kagan (Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 2014). There are almost 40 footnotes in the opinion and the dissent from Justice Ginsberg, which often reference other cases.
Most of the story is quotes from sources, the very first of which is a reaction from the White House which is passed through the Press Secretary Josh Earnest. It is always questionable using an edited reaction like this that was specifically crafted to become the talking point on the subject.
The next source was the Supreme court decision itself. This is obviously a very reliable source. The author took quotes from both the majority and dissenting opinion to avoid bias.
The next quote is from SCOTUS blog, which is a very widely known and respected resource for these decisions. The link itself it not quite accurate as it is takes you to a live blog that has changed over time. So it is hard to find which individual actually said the quote taken from the site- is it one of the regular contributors or a random guest? The editors of SCOTUS blog almost all are lawyers who have argued at the Supreme Court. Thus they can translate the dense decisions into plain English.
The article then has some quotes from NPR's legal correspondent Nina Totenberg ("Nina Totenberg," n.d.). It is almost questionable that she didn't just write an article herself. These quotes could be old as they just explain the substance of the case, not the current decision. However, it does not link to an article that these quotes are taken from.
The most questionable sentence of the whole article is this "The case, Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, is perhaps the most important decision of the high court's term, legal analysts say" (Chappell, 2014). Why wouldn't you pick one legal analyst that actually said that?
For more background information on the basis of the case being sent all the way to the Supreme Court and all of the legal reasoning behind the arguments, Bill links to an article that is on NPR but is actually partner content written by a Kaiser Health News journalist Julie Rovner.
We then finally get to some background information about the plaintiffs in the case, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialists, and they include a link to the latter website, but not the former's. This may suggest bias.
The final 2 links are mostly superfulous. He includes links to the "Emergency Contraception Website" which have information about Plan B and Ella which were a particularly controversial part of the case ("Emergency Contraception: Plan B," n.d.). These links were clearly there to suggest that educational sources; the website is run by Princeton University, do not think that emergency contraceptive counts as abortion.
Since this author is not the most credible on this topic, the large number of sources used, and the good quality of sources make this article more reliable. I would not trust a random personal blog to detail Supreme Court cases, but a veteran journalist like Bill Chappell with his wide network makes this more credible. The media have made mistakes reporting Supreme Court decisions before see this article about the Wolf Blitzer mix up on the individual mandate decision- Supreme Court health care ruling: CNN, Fox news wrong on individual mandate (Fung, 2013). Overall, I think Montecino would find this to be a credible source (1998). But I can not wait until someone tricks major networks into reporting a Supreme Court decision going the wrong way again with our unrestricted blogs.
The most direct way to find the result of Supreme Court decision is to read the decision which is posted directly on their website. For the average person, this isn't always comprehensible. This decision was 97 pages long and includes the majority opinion, a concurring opinion from Justice Kennedy, and 2 dissenting opinions, one from Justice Ginsberg and one co-authored by Justices Breyer and Kagan (Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 2014). There are almost 40 footnotes in the opinion and the dissent from Justice Ginsberg, which often reference other cases.
Most of the story is quotes from sources, the very first of which is a reaction from the White House which is passed through the Press Secretary Josh Earnest. It is always questionable using an edited reaction like this that was specifically crafted to become the talking point on the subject.
The next source was the Supreme court decision itself. This is obviously a very reliable source. The author took quotes from both the majority and dissenting opinion to avoid bias.
The next quote is from SCOTUS blog, which is a very widely known and respected resource for these decisions. The link itself it not quite accurate as it is takes you to a live blog that has changed over time. So it is hard to find which individual actually said the quote taken from the site- is it one of the regular contributors or a random guest? The editors of SCOTUS blog almost all are lawyers who have argued at the Supreme Court. Thus they can translate the dense decisions into plain English.
The article then has some quotes from NPR's legal correspondent Nina Totenberg ("Nina Totenberg," n.d.). It is almost questionable that she didn't just write an article herself. These quotes could be old as they just explain the substance of the case, not the current decision. However, it does not link to an article that these quotes are taken from.
The most questionable sentence of the whole article is this "The case, Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, is perhaps the most important decision of the high court's term, legal analysts say" (Chappell, 2014). Why wouldn't you pick one legal analyst that actually said that?
For more background information on the basis of the case being sent all the way to the Supreme Court and all of the legal reasoning behind the arguments, Bill links to an article that is on NPR but is actually partner content written by a Kaiser Health News journalist Julie Rovner.
We then finally get to some background information about the plaintiffs in the case, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialists, and they include a link to the latter website, but not the former's. This may suggest bias.
The final 2 links are mostly superfulous. He includes links to the "Emergency Contraception Website" which have information about Plan B and Ella which were a particularly controversial part of the case ("Emergency Contraception: Plan B," n.d.). These links were clearly there to suggest that educational sources; the website is run by Princeton University, do not think that emergency contraceptive counts as abortion.
Since this author is not the most credible on this topic, the large number of sources used, and the good quality of sources make this article more reliable. I would not trust a random personal blog to detail Supreme Court cases, but a veteran journalist like Bill Chappell with his wide network makes this more credible. The media have made mistakes reporting Supreme Court decisions before see this article about the Wolf Blitzer mix up on the individual mandate decision- Supreme Court health care ruling: CNN, Fox news wrong on individual mandate (Fung, 2013). Overall, I think Montecino would find this to be a credible source (1998). But I can not wait until someone tricks major networks into reporting a Supreme Court decision going the wrong way again with our unrestricted blogs.
References
Bill Chappell. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/people/14562108/bill-chappell
Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., No. 573 (June 30, 2014).
Chappell, B. (2014, June 30). Some companies can refuse to cover contraception, Supreme Court says. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/30/326926331/companies-can-refuse-to-cover-contraception-supreme-court-says?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140630
Emergency contraception: Plan B. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ec.princeton.edu/pills/plan-b.html
Fung, K. (2012, June 28). Supreme Court health care ruling: CNN, Fox news wrong on individual mandate. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/cnn-supreme-court-health-care-individual-mandate_n_1633950.html
Montecino, V. (1998, August). Helpful hints to help you evaluate the credibility of web resources. Retrieved from http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm
Nina Totenberg. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/people/2101289/nina-totenberg
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