Assignment 4

The day was April 20^th, 1994. A day that many people don’t really think about very often anymore, seeing as it has been almost 21 years since it happened. However, something happened that day that may not be seen to most people as a significant event yet, but in due time it will be. No I am not talking about the Serbian army bombing a hospital in Goradze, Bosnia. I am also not referring to the space shuttle STS-59 landing. I definitely am not referencing the fact that April 20^th is commonly known as “national cannabis day” either. What I am talking about is the birthday of the soon to be famous Grant Cole (Famous for what you might ask? Only time will tell). April 20^th, 1994 is the day Grant Cole was born, and that day will next be described in detail.

So what exactly happened on that day? Well Vanessa Mateer, the mother of Grant Cole, finally gave birth to her first child. A child that was supposed to be born on April 19^th, but for whatever reason didn’t really feel like revealing himself to the world until a day later. Why he decided to do that, I am not entirely sure. To most it just seemed like another ordinary Wednesday, but there was a lot going on in the world that day. The Serbian army bombed a hospital in Goradze, Bosnia, killing 47 people. 

A space shuttle STS-59 also landed. One other example of something going on outside of that hospital room was the firing of a Miami policeman who ignited a riot back in 1989. A fatal shooting of a black motorcyclist caused the riot. The shooting led to a race riot, and the shooter was eventually acquitted with manslaughter charges. 10 months later, on the day of Grant Cole’s birth, the policeman was finally fired. In today’s society, one would think it shouldn’t take years to fire a police officer after an incident similar to that. Another event that happened on the day of Grant Cole’s birth was the death of Robert O. Peterson, the founder of Jack in the Box. 

Ironically, Grant never (to this date) has eaten Jack in the Box in his life. However, this is still relevant to millions of other Americans who choose to do so. Speaking on millions of Americans, or rather who represents them, the House passed a vote on that day as well. The House voted for $13.5 Billion to go towards state prison systems. There was concern over the early release of violent criminals. The House voted to authorize $13.5 billion over five years to help build and operate new or expanded prisons, which more than quadrupled earlier crime bill funding proposals. One provision allocated $10.5 billion for prisons, on the terms that violent offenders had to serve at least 85% of their sentences. Also, the house voted to authorize $3 billion in spending over the following five years to build state or regional prisons for violent repeat offenders.

So all these events are going on in the world on that day in particular, yet none of them really pertain to Grant Cole or his interests. What then was going on at this time that would be relevant to Grant? Seeing as Grant is one of the biggest music fans you will ever meet, he would have found it particularly relevant that Kurt Cobain had just passed away the week before due to suicide from self-inflicted gunshot. 

Clearly, this was still a major headline a week later, as is the case with most high profile celebrity deaths. Grant would grow up to become a big fan of Kurt Cobain and his music with the band Nirvana. The Division Bell by Pink Floyd was the number one album on Billboard for weeks following Grants birth. Grant would grow up to also become a big fan of Pink Floyd and their work, although ironically that album in particular is one of his lesser favorites from the group. Grant is also a big sports fan, particularly basketball. Ironically, at the time of his birth, the biggest figure in the basketball world (Michael Jordan) was retired temporally.

 However, the NBA season was coming to a close and the playoffs were right around the corner. Most of the games being played at the time of Grants birth were essentially meaningless, aside from teams trying to secure certain playoff spots or make the playoffs at all.

In conclusion, the day Grant Cole was born wasn’t just “another day” in history. Many events happened, including the Serbian army bombing the Goradze hospital, the landing of the space shuttle STS-59, the firing of the Miami policeman, the death of the Jack In The Box founder, and the House voting for funds towards State Prisons. There were also many things going on in the world of music and sports. There were also many other things going on that I didn’t even get the chance to list. Most importantly however (sarcasm, don’t take offense), Grant Cole was born. Without him, you would not be reading this blog which is more than enough reason to be thankful for that day in history, right? 

Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014. http://articles.latimes.com/1994/apr/20

"Today in History for April 1994 - HistoryOrb.com." HistoryOrb.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.

Assignment 3

After briefly analyzing both the Huffington Post and Google News websites, they both seem like pretty good sources for news. However, for this assignment I had to choose which one I thought was better. I am going with Google News, and here is why. There is more variety in the available news content on the front page, more information underneath each news headline, and what appears to be more “important” news on the front page. I realize important news is subjective, but in my opinion it is important to have more, as apposed to less, of an abundance and variety of high profile news stories on the front page. 


The amount of variety on the front of Google News’s homepage is important because people have a tendency to click on a website, view the front page (or even just the top of the home page) briefly then decide whether or not they want to stay on that website or look elsewhere. This is actually a very common practice, as some of the articles we had to read for this week (“A Lot Of Top Journalists Don’t Look At Traffic Number’s. Here’s Why” to be specific) talked about how media consumers will often click on a link to a website (in this case, a link to Huffington Post or Google News) and will often only glance over the top of the page, front of the page, or the major headlines.  The fact that Google News has a higher variety of topics on the front top portion of the page makes it superior in that aspect. Another reason Google News is superior to the Huffington Post is because there is more text under each news headline. As we learned in class and from some other assigned articles (“How To Optimize Headlines Using The 65 Character Rule”, etc.) not only do media consumers have a tendency to glance over the front page of websites, they also have a tendency to only want to read or see the top headlines when it comes to news. They often times will not even read the entire article. This is why it is important to have those brief little captions under each news headline like Google News does, so that each news story can hopefully grab the readers attention so that they may want to read more. Huffington Post does do this for some of the news headlines, but not all like Google News does.  Also, one last point, when looking over the Google News front page, I saw more news stories overall covering a wider range of topics. Huffington Post does offer a wide range of topics as well, but they are not all right in your face on the front page like Google News. You have to click a separate section at the top of the page to access stories that aren’t “front page” news topics. Google News isn’t as much like this. Granted, you do have to click links on the side of the page to access more in depth news for certain subtopics, but the overall front page seems more diverse on Google News. Also, the news stories seem more “important” on Google News’s front page to me than Huffington Post, but I realize that is subjective and therefore isn’t really a true argument. 

In conclusion, I enjoyed Google News more than the Huffington Post and thought it to be a better overall site for media consumers to get their news from. However, I don’t think you can really go wrong either way!

Assignment 2 - Don't Like Anything On Facebook

For the second assignment, I conducted an experiment using Facebook and the “like” feature.  Normally, I am not a very active Facebook user to begin with, although when I do use or browse the website, I generally just “like” things my friends will post, or I will “like” pages. I hardly share or upload new content on there these days, so I figured why not stop liking things altogether for a couple days and see what happens? Maybe my Facebook feed would become more interesting, and maybe then I would feel more inclined to use the site more frequently.  

I had been browsing and lurking my Facebook feed for a couple days leading up to this experiment, and I noticed that my feed consisted of updates from friends who’s profiles I had visited recently, updates from pages I had recently liked, updates from friends I had recently added, and updates from friends who’s posts I had recently liked more than anything else. Granted, there were a few random posts thrown in the mix, but those all stood out to me the most.

After I stopped liking things for a few days, I noticed that my feed became more and more neutral. In other words, there was no direct indication as to why certain things were appearing on my feed.  It seemed as if more people who liked my personal posts were appearing on my feed, as opposed to people whose post I liked myself. It was sort of hard to tell for certain if this was the direction my feed was taking, because I only stopped liking posts for about a week. One reason I felt this might be the case is because some of the people who I see like my posts I never really interact with myself. My feed still seemed to be flooded with a lot of spam and advertisements despite my experiment.  Also, a ton of posts from artist, movie, etc. pages that I had liked in the recent past were also flooding my news feed. In fact, I almost noticed more of those kinds of posts, as well as the advertisements, as opposed to posts from friends I know in real life. This could have just been me personally. I am not sure if my results would have been swayed if I hadn’t liked a bunch of posts right before conducting this experiment, or if I had gone a longer time without liking anything. 

• Less friends I interact with on my news feed
• More friends who like my posts on my feed
• A more neutral feed than before overall
• Feed still flooded with advertisements 
• Feed also flooded with pages I liked in the past

Assigment #1 - Indentifying 3 Tweets

     Hello all, and welcome to my blog! Seeing as this is my first post, I would like to briefly introduce myself. My name is Grant Cole, and I am a junior at the University of Texas at Dallas. This is my first semester at the university, and I have compiled this blog for my Writing and Research for Emerging Media class.

     For our first assignment, we were asked to create a twitter handle and follow at least 5 verified accounts. We were then asked to identify three tweets from our twitter feeds that we found the most interesting/engaging, etc. I have an extremely strong passion for music of all sorts & sports (mainly basketball). Therefore,  I mostly followed accounts pertaining to those fields of subject matter, along with a few others accounts I also found interesting.

     The first tweet (in this example, I am using a string of tweets) comes from the iconic progressive house producer, Deadmau5. This is a prime example of Deadmau5's contentious personality type. He is not afraid to openly speak his mind on any given topic. Aside from the music he makes, this is part of the reason why I along with millions of others enjoy his tweets so much. You can see the tweets below:

landed home to some interesting news: looks like Disney officially just filed in opposition of my trademark... lawyer up mickey.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) September 3, 2014

Disney thinks you might confuse an established electronic musician / performer with a cartoon mouse. That's how stupid they think you are.
— deadmau5 (@deadmau5) September 3, 2014

     Granted, this is not nearly as offensive as some of the tweets Deadmau5 will post on seperate occasions, but it is a very recent example. Deadmau5 is publicly calling out the Disney brand, who is only just now attempting to sue his trademark mouse head logo for copyright infringement that Deadmau5 has been using for years. Tweets like these two that Deadmau5 posted rile up controversy from his millions of followers, and it can be said that any press is good press. I retweed these two tweets to my followers because I found them entertaining and controversial. Thousands of others have already done the same. Tweets like these bring in even more followers, because these new followers are interested in seeing what may happen next. They can also rightfully assume that Deadmau5 will post more controversial and interesting tweets in the future. The tweets also informed the press about the lawsuit, causing hundreds of other accounts to tweet their own opinions regarding the same topic.


     The second tweet I decided to talk about was a tweet from the newly drafted NBA rookie, Joel Embiid. Joel is by no means one of my favorite players, but his tweets are entetaining to me. The tweet can be seen below:

First thing when I get 2k, I put the whole SIXERS squad on 99
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) August 27, 2014

      This tweet displays Joel Embiid's sense of humor, as he is referring to the video game NBA 2k15, and his NBA team, the Philadelphia 76ers.  The 76ers were the second worst team in the NBA last season, and aren't expected to improve very much this year. A rating of "99" is the highest possible rating an NBA player can have in the game. Joel is making a joke about going in and editing his entire team in the game once it comes out, and changing each players rating to a 99 overall. He later goes on to tweet afterwards how he plans to lower all the Cavs players ratings (The Cavaliers are projected to be one of the top teams in the NBA after acquiring LeBron James this summer) and also tweets about creating the celebrity Rihanna in the game, a celbrity he has recently been trying to reach out to over twitter to ask out on a date.

     The reason I chose to talk about this tweet is because it shows how humor can attract attention and thousands of new followers on twitter. Joel Embiid is only a rookie and has yet to play an NBA game, yet he has gained thousands of followers over the summer because of his twitter antics. He already has more followers than many established NBA players. It goes to show that sometimes it matters more what you have to say on twitter as opposed to who is saying it. Obviously Joel is not being serious with these tweets, but twitter is often used as a means of entertainment more than anything else. His tweets have already gained him more new fans than he likely would have gained without tweeting over the off season. Anyone can gain tons of new followers like this quickly if their tweets are humorous enough to garner new attention, retweets & favorites (obviously not as much as a pro athlete, but you get the idea). This is because most people see twitter as a means of entertainment when they're bored more than anything else.

     Lastly, the final tweet I chose to identify was a tweet from the Ultra Music Festival official twitter page. Ultra Music Festival is an annual electronic music festival in Miami, Florida that I have attended in the past. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life and I hope to attend again someday. In years past, Ultra Music Festival has been open to people of all ages who are willing to pay the admission fee. However, Ultra Music Festival recently made the announcement over twitter that it will only be open to guests over the age of 18. Below is the first official announcement made via twitter:

     

Beginning with its 2015 edition, Ultra Music Festival will be an 18+ event. http://t.co/M11OIM7Zwj pic.twitter.com/xGiHNXXTZX
— Ultra Music Festival (@ultra) September 2, 2014

     This tweet shows how often times, news is brought to the public over twitter before anywhere else. This is why I enjoy having a twitter and enjoy following so many famous musicians and such. They will announce news via twitter before they do elsewhere, and before other second hand sources can announce them in their own words.  Of coarse, this tweet also brought a lot of controversy, mostly from followers (and non followers who saw the tweet from a second hand source) under the age of 18. However, like said before, any press is good press (usually) and this move also brought a ton of praise towards Ultra. There have been numerous deaths, accidents, and mishaps in years past at Ultra Music Festival, so this move (and tweet) should be seen to most people as a positive preventative measure for next year. The tweet was brief and to the point, yet it drew a ton of attention. Sometimes, all anyone needs when posting a tweet is a brief sentence. There is a link included in the tweet that tells Ultra's full reasoning behind the move, for anyone curious to know more details. Including the link is a great move when tweeting something as controversial as that, seeing as there are going to be a ton of unanswered questions that Ultra's twitter account simply cannot respond to.

   In conclusion, every tweet posted to twitter has some sort of significance, seeing as anyone and everyone can read it (unless you make your twitter account private, then only you can approve who reads your tweets). Twitter is an awesome way to spread information quickly, get your message heard, and get your name out to the general public.