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BLOG V WIKI

In today's modern society, blogs and wikis are playing critical roles in the world of new media especially as ways to express ones feeling or establishing a fact. With these two vital new media available, they demonstrate how important convergence is in today's networked world. They offer a method of communication where you do not have to be physically there to hear all about a product launch, guest speakers, or even a sports match. It is through the internet where all news media platform converges together to establish the perfect outreach.

Having blogs and wikis available are a promising feature; however, they both present a different type of communication that may be able to cause a mixed reaction. A blog, a communication platform where anybody could express their feelings and opinions to the world with just a click of a button. Blogs could be written and used for personal writing, a forum, or even a product review platform. An example of a product review would be in the article "Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog" by The New York Times. The article states "Instead of relying on polished high-level executives, it is written by little-known buyers, largely without editing" (Barbaro, 6) demonstrating how large corporates rely on blogs to receive feedback for the company. Blogs are able to present a more concise and accurate portrayal considering that it is a response from the general public and the blog itself will be as honest as possible. By having responses from high-level executives within the company, the responses will at times be skewed and prevent the company from being able to demonstrate an accurate review of a product or service. Blogs are capable of allowing any type of responses whether it is a positive or negative response which is why it appeals to so many people around the world.

Wikis, a wildly recognized "information" website, is used by a plethora amount of people around the world because of its vast amount of "knowledge" and data. The benefits of a wiki as mentioned in the New York Times article "An Internal Wiki That's Not Classified", states how "The advantages are obvious, in efficiency and in saving paper, but it has required a leap of faith, too" (Cohen, 3). Wikis are a new media platform where it has a large amount of writing and somewhat proven and unproven writing where it is capable of enlightening anyone on this planet. Whether you need a background understanding of "Bill Gates" or the famous NBA Finals during 1996, Wiki has all of this covered. Despite its vast knowledge of everything around the world, the accuracy of these writings is questionable considering that anybody could change the writing at any given moment. Yes, like Noam Cohen mentioned in his news article that it is efficient and eco-friendly in terms of trying to read about someone or something; however, because of its questionable sources and editors, it causes a large amount of skepticism around the new media platform.

A new use for a Wiki that has not been seen yet is potentially allowing the website to create informative videos. Wikis has never been strict in terms of editors and publishers, so it should not be a problem to have anyone who would like to create informative videos that could potentially shorten the amount of time on the Wiki readings. Wiki readings allow users to learn as much as possible; however, it does have a large amount of reading and so by being able to create a video to simplify it or create a podcast, that can save users a lot more time considering how rushed they are to be using it.

Work cited:
  1.    Barbaro, Michael. “Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 Mar. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/03walmart.html
  2.    Cohen, Noam. “An Internal Wiki That's Not Classified.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Aug. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/business/media/04link.html.

Comments

  1. Hi Kevin, blogs and wikis have profoundly made an impact on expressing one's opinions, thoughts, or even facts. I think a great example of this is Op-Ed's and with its rise in popularity over the past year shows how we use these outlets to voice ourselves.

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