Convergence Culture

1. What is the author's understanding of convergence culture?
According to the author, convergence culture has to do with the circulation of media content and the response that it gets from the audience and the contributions that they give to result in more creative media products that appeal more to an audience.

2. What is creative engagement?
The audience connects with whatever form of media that information is coming out on and will respond with meaningful activity that can either help or hurt a product. This will also help advertisers with what they should do next.

Blog Assignment #5

1. An example of the Long Tail Theory can be seen in television. Programs that are viewed more and are more popular are available on any channel that you can find, but the more niche stuff that not a lot of people watch are only available through On Demand, pay-per-view, or through extra payment plans to get the extra channels making it only available for the specific audience that wants it.
2. I personally don't buy much online. I don't like to put out my debit card number on any sites. If I do purchase anything online it's usually over Christmas and on Amazon, and that's when I know I'm searching for a specific something for someone. So I guess my online consuming behavior would represent that of a routiner.

Privacy and Enhanced Personalization

       While reading Privacy and Enhanced Personalization, it was clear that you could either have more personalization and less privacy, or less personalization and more privacy. So really it’s up to what the user finds more important and what they think would be more convenient for them. I’m definitely skeptical about most information that some sites ask for and usually try to steer clear from it if I can. The presence of privacy guidelines and a layout of what the information is being used for would definitely be helpful and would persuade me more to give out some information, but even then not all of it. The web is a huge place and that information could get anywhere. What should determine what websites we put our trust in and which ones we don’t?

       One question that I propose about privacy is, are the guidelines and descriptions that some sites give about the information they receive really true, or is it just something they put in to try to persuade users to give up their information? It’s already hard to place trust in people we see day to day, why are we trusting these people without faces over the internet.

http://futureofchildren.org/ I recommend this article because I think it accurately represents the futures that may come with new media and how they will affect us and our futures. It relates to Internet Communication because it deals with social media and interaction with each other over the internet.

Information and Networks

1) I agree most with Reed's law.  I believe that social media has a lot of power these days. It's easy for people to hit share or retweet on Facebook and Twitter.  People who share information makes it accessible to all of their friends and their friends might share it and start a chain reaction, which quickly increases the value of it. It makes it easier for people to connect with each other. People can choose who they decide to connect to whether that be a small group of friends or a large amount of people they chose to add. I think it's the most accurate way to measure the value of something because it's also easy to measure the amount of connections a person has on social media networks.

2)  I think in the next 5 years a majority of people are going to get all of their information over the internet. It's obvious in schools and in the workplace that they are becoming more dependent on computers, tablets, or phones to get their information. Less classrooms are using less books and becoming more interactive over the internet with reading articles online or, turning in assignments online. Other sources of information are also available online now too like newspapers and e-books. Everything is available over the internet these days so that's why I think it's going to be the main outlet to get information 5 years from now.

Why We Blog?

Based on the reading "Why We Blog", it's evident that most bloggers would only post something if it's widely accepted or if it wouldn't cause any controversy with any of their viewers to prevent any hurt feelings from friends or family. It's also a way to keep in touch others or to give something for others to keep in touch with you. Others use it as a way to express themselves when they don't know what to verbally say. Blogs are used as a way to express oneself in a forum that’s open to any topics that are being discussed. Political posts allow room for comments and debate. Posts on ones on beliefs can be seen as a way to raise awareness on topics, like the death penalty, the War in Iraq, etc.

In my opinion, blogs are similar to Facebook or Twitter in that you can post whatever you like without adding a face to it if you wish to or not. I like that if you choose you can make your posts seen by anyone by just going to their page instead of searching for a specific user. You can just come across a blog through other pages. Blogs are a great way to express yourself in any kind of aspect whether it be personal, political, educational, etc. without the overbearing eyes of friends unless you chose to make it public to them and advertised in on other social media outlets.

First Blog