Georgia Police Use Facebook To Talk To Cop Killer

http://www.allfacebook.com/georgia-police-uses-facebook-to-talk-to-cop-killer-2011-03

The newsmedia article I chose was on how Georgia Police Use Facebook To Talk To Cop Killer. Jamie Hood who is the suspect for shooting and killing Senior Patrol "Buddy" Christian last Tuesday has been investigated and been communicating through the county's police department's Facebook through it's wall posts an comments. The Athens-Clark police department of Georgia have been investigating this suspect named Jamie Hood because they mentioned through their Facebook account to him, if he turns himself in, he will not be killed and face the death penalty. However, Hood feels since he had left prison 2 years ago after facing 12 years in prison for armed robbery ans is now found guilty of killing a police officer, the odds are against him. Even though, the police department states that is not true and that they will stick to their word.

I just found this article fascinating and useful because the police department of that county decided not only to create a Facebook account to communicate with the suspect however also as a means for members of the community to express their feelings about the whole case and express their condolences to the police officers family members.

From Computer Power and Human Reason

When I saw first started reading the article and came across the program ELIZA that was created, I found that not only fascinating but also clever. I thought it was neat to hear that the inventor of ELIZA chose the name because it had to do with language analysis program to "converse" in English as stated in the article(Weizenbaum, 369). To me the program ELIZA sounded more like a programmed communicative based robot than being referred to a language analysis program. That is also one main idea how Weizenbaum created this program to test scripts as a set of rules. The context of language changing and understanding was also addressed in the article and what I found helpful and interesting out of this article was an actual script discussing a conversation based script which could be found on page 369 as well. Overall, I found this article to also be very informative on coming to an understanding on how computers came about to understand language throough the databases and how "human reason" came into place as well.

Second Life

When I first saw and read this article and viewed the images in it, I immediately thought of the "Sims" game(s) and how males and females are portrayed in a virtual setting. How women are portrayed even in Second Life has to do with feminity and how females are looked at and portrayed in society and how that shows in the virtual world as well. What I learned and also found useful and helpful in this article was how gender can be affected even amongst avatars and in SL and not just amongst humans in reality. I found it fascinating that gender even in a virtual environment is correlated how our society views and perpetuates women, to be feministic and show skin. I found the images in this article to not be so surprising because even in reality, all the magazines we see, females are looked at as a commodity, as sex symbols. Not all females agree to that portrayal in society, in which this leads to males having to feel obliged to not agree with what society and in the virtual world how females are being portrayed because nowadays in the 21st century, gender is still a rising issue especially when it comes to jobs and the media, however overtime, since more women are rising on top and proving themselves to be more independent than ever before, men have more respect for them, well usually, and in a way have no choice than to accept the gender roles.

Facebook Users Who Are Under Age Raise Concerns

Right when I saw this news article, I knew it was going to be a fascinating read because the first sentence of the article drew me in right away. The name of this article is Facebook Users Who Are Under Age Raise Concerns and the first sentence that blew me away stated, "The fake I.D. has gone digital, and spread to elementary school." I felt that sentence alone set the stage and tone of this whole article. I completely agree with this statement and how this article discussed as early as being in the third grade, kids are getting facebook accounts and lying that they are 15 years old. What was the most skeptical point to me in this article and a true statement was that parents of a kid in an elementary mentioned, they are authorizing their son/daughter to create an account so they don't have to risk the fact of them lying about it if they were not allowed to. One individual mentioned and tied into the fact, imagine if these kids are lying about their age on facebook, imagine about underage drinking. I felt that was a valid point however, a good skepticism to address because the saying "don't believe everything you read on the Internet is true and accurate", is proven to be correct in this article. I thought this article was very informative and a helpful source to be aware of because under age users are becoming more frequent than they ever were before because of how fast paced and technology driven our society is. Social conformity is on the rise as early as pre-teens. I just thought that was good to be aware of.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/technology/internet/12underage.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Techhnology and Society

The society we are living in is all about technology. Whether it is dealing with the newest addition of the iPhone, ipad, apple computers, the new T.V. shows especially the ever growing MTV hit, "Jersey Shore", computer games, etc. We live in a world where technology is what we thrive for, and if we are not up to date on certain technological advances, we fall behind in education, work place, and other things as well.

According to the article we read called The Technology and the Society, by Raymond Williams, a few key aspects on technology and society were pointed out. First, the versions of cause and effect in technology was discussed. For example, one point highlighted from this section in the article was that television was "invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its power as a medium of news and entertainment was then so great that it altered all preceding media of news and entertainment" (Williams, 1972). Although television may have been created and invented for scientific research also mentioned in the article, as a society, we have perpetuated television as one of our biggest forms of entertainment. Without television, we would not be able to watch the daily news, watch ESPN, watch our favorite tv shows. I found this article to be extremely informative as well because it gave the history behind television and technology and why it was invented and how the purpose of it being created, has been altered over the years.

Just Like Me Only Better

When I read the abstract and introduction to this article, first thing that came to mind on avatars was the recent movie that hit theaters "Avatar" and how it originally came from and refers to representing "divine characteristics,independent of the limitations of time and space" as the article stated. What I learned and also found interesting and helpful at the same time was the ideas mentioned as the online representation of the self and the relation to Goffman and how to Goffman, face-to-face interactions provide the greatest communication "bandwith." I found the discussion on e-mails fascinating as well because through e-mail, the embodiment of the self is also showed, as well as on networking sites as well. However, as we have learned from previous articles before as well, online interaction is needed, but face-to-face interaction offers the more clear and concise interaction amongst the in relation to representing the self.

ALERT: Don't Click 'My Top Stalkers' Postings

Community Media

I found this article to be quite fascinating because of the author's approach towards community media. One of the main points mentioned in the article that helped me to understand what community media was about was in the wrap up of the article ("Keep Talking") section, where the author mentioned "One of the most important aspects of community media is that anything can happen"(194). That made me think of our Communication Studies department's main motto, "the possibilities are endless."

Another key point I noticed in the article was self-expression and self-representation. I thought it was interesting how the idea of democracy was discussed in this article, and it was not about government as a democracy, however more so how people in a democracy, a community represent themselves through different forms of media and in person as well. That all links to how when we represent ourselves, what type of image are we addressing, what we want others to see. Same with community media, as we have been discussing through online social networking sites, such as Facebook. The use of community media is really imperative to understand because how we represent ourselves on our profiles, can give others a certain image. We also have to be aware every time we post a comment, a status, a picture, how that will affect our overall network of friends and ourselves.

Uses and Gratifications

I'll never forget when Facebook became an epidemic during my senior year of high school and the summer before freshman year of college. I'll never forget how excited and nervous I was when I received an e-mail on whom my seven roommates would be on campus. Within a week of getting the names and contact information, about five of the girls had already Facebooked me and I got a taste of what each of them were like. This article mentioned how students would use Facebook and even MySpace to friend their new and potential roommates when they enter college. That is why I found this article to be fascinating and well stated on the theories mentioned.

What I learned from this article was how uses and gratifications theory is defined and how it "can be viewed as a psychological communication perspective which focuses on how individual mass media and other forms of communication such as interpersonal communication to fulfill their needs and wants"(Rubin, 2002). I just had to directly quote it because this definition gives us a clear clarification and definition on how uses and gratifications relate to communication and how it ties into these two imperative networking sites.

What I found interesting and useful about this article were the results (the five themes) used to answer the question in the article: "To what extent do young adults use social networking sites (MySpace and Facebook) to fulfill their need and wants?" The five themes were efficient communication, convenient communication, curiosity about others, popularity, and relationship formation and reinforcement. I couldn't agree more on these five results (themes wise) because I know I, myself used MySpace back in the day, because it was popular and it was convenient. However, I use Facebook for all of the above five stated themes for the most part. This article made me more aware of what uses and gratifications are and how they relate online communication with these two networking sites.