New Media Literacies

This article, “ Principles of a New Media Literacy” by Marko Ahtisaari, (or is it Dan Gillmor?), focuses on how various forms of media, whether contemporary or traditional, can not be trusted. While some news contributors may have good intentions, they way the story comes across may not represent the whole truth. In other cases, the news contributor may purposely ill inform the public by “putting a spin” on the story. This practice was overtly used against now President Barak Obama during the course of his run for the presidency. I was surprised, but should not have been, to hear that politicians and businesses such as Wal-Mart have paid people to create favorable blogs on their behalf. This turns a testimony into a lie. The use of technology has generated a host of new contributors to the media. While Ahtisaari/Gillmor sees traditional media sources as being watch dogs for each other, he sees this open criticism used more readily over the Internet. I believe that this is due in part to the anonymity these Internet reporters can hide behind. Maybe this obscurity encourages more honesty. In this case maybe the Internet can actually be more trustworthy than the big media stations. Who knows? In summary, believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear. Ahtisaari/Gillmor seems to end his article with tips to go by when deciphering what you should believe and not believe from any media source. What I got out of the article, “Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies” by Howard Rheingold besides the fact that he likes southwestern colors is the fact that Online communities did not create a group of people who love to socialize and help other people for nonprofit, but it is in fact, the other way around. Basically people how like to socialize and help other people created these Online communities. The article, “Old Growth Media And The Future Of News” by Steven Berlin Johnson must have been the short article you were talking about. Because of its brevity, I was rather confused on where the article actually stopped and someone elses blog began. All I got out of this was the fact that Johnson couldn’t wait to get the next copy of MacWorld. …..Well, I guess this turned out to not be the short article. Johnson still talks about the evolution of Online news seekers began with the computer junkies who loved to get the latest technology news from magazines. Now they get it quicker from the Internet. And they’re not the only ones using this technology. In fact, many people who would have been less likely to interact and share the same interests in the past tend to now cross paths frequently while browsing through the same Internet sites.