Lara Skolnik

***this was written 9/25 in response to the lonely girl 15 article 

Before this class i was aware that there were small series on youtube, but i did not know abuout Lonely girl 15 specifically and I definitely did not know about its popularity.  It amazes me taht Flinders and beckett could create such a convincing set of a 16 year old’s roo, fabricate a lifefor her, put it on youtube, and gain the popularity that it did.  it is even more amazing tthat after the viewers discovered that it was all fake, nothing changed.    It is interesting how the article shows the difference between TV shows and vlogs.  The author says that on tv, an episode airs at a specific time and is meant to make sure that the audience gets hooked on the show.  However, since vlogs can be viewed whenever, the creators get a very good, clear idea about what is attracting viewers and waht is not.  Also, Flinders and Beckett state that the internet is a new medium of enternatment. Although TV reality shows are popular, even more reality is required for successful vlogs.  Since Youtube is a palce for normal, every day people to post their own creations, Lonelygirl15 would have to look like improv. the filming techniques can not be advanced.  The videos are usually only a few minutes.  In addition, what makes Lonelygirl15 so realistic is the vlogs of other characters. On a tv show, a team sits down together and carefully plots out what contributuions each character will make to an episode or season of the show.  However, Lonelygirl15’s characters add their own, seperate vlogs, basically creating subseries.   I am now very impressed with the thought and effort that was put into lonelygirl15.  I was really unaware of the major differences between interne,t and traditional entertainment, and also the reasons behind those differnces.

Basically all of the groups were talking about the same topics. However, many different peoples views came into play during the “annonymus” chatting session.
To me one of the most interesting topics during the chatting session was the dialogue about interent plaigarism. It seemed to be a gray area to many people. In some groups people were saying that they had no idea that internet plaigarism was actually an issue, whereas others were stating that internet plagarism is getting worse. I actually believe that eventually internet plaigarism will be more strictly watched as technology becomes more and more advanced especially when you take in to account the fact the we might be “teaching” computers how to “think” like a human. Machines will be better at detecting plaigarism and stopping it. I also believe that there will more services and software implimented to help writers and publishers to not plaigarize. This is definitely always going to be a controversial topic with ongoing dialogue, but out of respect to historic authors and publishers people should be more aware of plaigarisng, and seriously putting forth efforts to not do so.

Autumn

I am absolutely loving Netvibes!!!! I am learning so much more about the RSS feed services and I am now hooked please check out my general feed page i hav made 12 different tabs with over 30 RSS feed in them! http://feeds.feedburner.com/AdvertisingAge/Talentworks

Autumn Clark

Lara Skolnik

By looking at the different tag clouds of the group discussions, I found that each group took their chats in different directions.  In group one, the most used words were authors, authorship, publishing, internet, idea, and yeah.  this group stuck to the topic of authorship.  By looking at group 2’s tag cloud, it is less obvious what exactly was discussed. There are less big, bold words, which leads me to beleive that the group jumped from topic to topic because one word was not used over and over.    In group 3’s discussion, they must have spent a lot of time talking about the internet, because “internet” is the biggest and most bold word in the cloud. Group 4’s discussion appears to be a more casual discussion because i see a lot of big, bold, haha’s, true’s, and yea’s. Tag clouds are a perfect way to get an overview of what a blog is about because instead of reading the whole thing, you can easily just see what words are used the most and waht words are used the least.

I cannot believe this second life site that Lisa posted about. People basically make up their own online virtual lives and live them out on this site. I think this site is crazy. People basically make their life into a cartoon and live out their fantasies on it. It is probably a lot of fun but at the same time i think that it is a little creepy. You never know who you are really talking to. I definitely have mixed feelings about this site. I don’t really know what to think.

-Melissa Ninni

Lara Skolnik

Something i read in group 2’s chat really stood out to me.  someone compared stealing a research paper and stealing music from a site like napster by saying “i think there is a difference between stealing music and stealing papers…. both are forms of expression, but when others steal papers, hey are passing it off as their own.”  I never thought of it this way, and now that i do think about it, i see how different the two situations are.  I beleive that when a paper is plagarized, the author would get mad because they are not getting credit for their work. However, when music is “stolen”, the artist is not getting money for his work. it all depends on the popularity of the person who created the work, whether it is music or literature.  No one is going to try to pass off a piece by a popular, well known author or a song by a well known band as their own.  So if someone “steals” their work and tries to pass it off as their own, the creater would most likely be concerned with being paid than that someone is getting credit for something they did not make.  However, if the creator is less known, they are most likely concerned with gaining popularity, therefore tehy want to get credit for their work whenever it is used, instead of someone who “steals” it getting credit. 

In the Napster article, parts of the “plagiarism, academic honesty, and the new digital ethic” section really stuck out to me. The author says that “the ultimate aim of writing lies in its ethical effects: to improve society, inform individuals, expand knowledge, and assists communities”.  If most colleges saw writing as this, I think the rules about plagiarism would be a lot less strict. It is only fair that if you take a quote or hard facts from a source, that you give credit to the author.  But I have always thought that citing a source in a paper because you borrow an authors idea or view point is kind of ridiculous. People are not just born with opinions.  They must be exposed to different situations and different view points in order to shape their own.  People do not go around telling people “I believe that abortion should be illegal” and then go on to give credit to any one or anything that has convinced them.  If the purpose of writing is to better society and give people more knowledge, then once we receive that knowledge, it is also ours. The facts that we read or hear play a part in our opinion making and they become OUR ideas too. 

 Lara Skolnik

I can’t really figure this site out. I don’t know how to add the different items to the sidebar of our blog. However, i think that i am learning how to do a few different things on here and once i finish all the readings i will be posting about a topic from one of them.

- Melissa Ninni