Weekly Media News Story: 11

TMZ video of murder condemned by victim's family

• Family of victim who was murdered brands celebrity gossip site as 'disgusting' for posting the murder of a man in a brawl in Hollywood
• The video shows a two minute video of  people throwing punches before someone decides to shoot a man.
• It then replays and shows slow motion footage of a man on the floor. 
• It was posted online with the headline, 'Clubgoer Shot Dead (video) 
• It has been viewed  17,300 times on Youtube and published on other websites.
• A link to the video on TMZ's Facebook page has been liked by 544 people and reshared 232 times.

I believe that this shows how dependent this society has become on technology as they record every kind of scenario on the internet to get views and start a discussion without thinking twice about the consequences which may happen after. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/17/tmz-video-murder-condemned-victims-family

How Facebook Changed the World?

Arab Spring Notes

Tunisia

• This was the original revolution which started the Arab Spring
• This was the first mobile phone captured war
• Fruit seller committed suicide. This was what ignited the civilians to revolt.
• Police used violence to the protests
• Tunisia TV didn't report anything. Tunisia press was censored
• Therefore, the civilians captured what happened on their mobile devices.
• These videos was then posted on Facebook for the world to see.
• Within days these clips was shown on the leading news organisation in the middle east, Al Jazeera.
• Activists would use Twitter to organize protests and to avoid the police
• Civilians captured live footage through live streams on the phones
• There were a 150 deaths.
• Bin Ali (Dictator) left the country after protests.
• It took 28 days for the dictatorship regime to fall.

Egypt

• The Cairo citizens awed the actions of the Tunisian citizens.
• They now had a goal to make the Egypt dictator (Hasnin Mubarak) to step down
• Bloggers who criticized the regime would get imprisoned and tortured.
• Only 20% of the population had access to the internet.
• Protests were planned to happen in the main city square
• Vodaphone decided to cut their networks from the civilians of Egypt.
• 200,000 protesters appeared in the town square, which was organised on the internet
• Mubarak sent patriotic messages via text to the civilians to try and stop them. They weren't impressed.
• The Egyptian army chose to turn against Mubarak and fight for the people of the country rather than him
• After the protesters took over the Tahrir Square in Cairo, politicians around the world advised Mubarak to step down
• February 11th: Hasnin Mubarak Stepped down as the dictator of Egypt.  

Article Summary

1. Will the internet end up controlled by big businesses and politicians?: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/23/internet-will-oligarchs-control-it

• Today, the internet is a platform for normal citizens to have their voice heard across sites such as Twitter, Facebook or blogs.
• However, with big co-operations trying to control everything to make the most money this article asks whether they will be able to control it.
• I believe that this won't happen and if it were to happen I think that it wouldn't be the right thing to do as it would take away the voice of the people of the net due to politicians and organisations monitoring your every move online.

    2. Why power has two meanings on the internet:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/06/power-laws-internet-john-naughton

• The 80/20 split = the Pareto Principle.
• normal distribution is rare.
• In its place, we see the distribution of which Pareto's Principle is a special example: a small number of people/sites/words/etc account for most of the action, with a "long tail" getting very little of it. 
• Instead of most websites having an "average" number of inbound links, a very small number of sites (the Googles, Facebooks and Amazons of this world) have colossal numbers of links, while millions of sites have to make do with only a few.
•  Everywhere you look on the internet, you find power laws

Weekly Media News Story: 10

‘Alex Jones’ Number 1 Twitter Trend After CNN Confrontation

• Alex Jones went on The Piers Morgan Tonight Show to have a debate with Piers Morgan over gun laws.
• It ended up being a very heated argument as Alex Jones was very vocal about his views. He began shouting and threatening Piers Morgan it immediately circulated over the web
• 'Alex Jones' became a number 1 twitter trend.  

Weekly Media News Story: 9

Twitter could be worth $11bn by 2014

• Twitter is planning to go public in the US stock market by 2014 and it has emerged it could be worth $11bn by then.
• This highlights the growth of Twitter over the years and is edging closer to seriously compete with Facebook 
• It shows that this society has become more dependent on social networking sites. 

Link: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/03/twitter-11bn-dollars-go-public