<----Now THAT'S breaking news!
Please view this enlightening video:
Ashton Kutcher agrees the tides are changing from traditional news outlets to social media outlets. "...with our video cameras on our cell phones and our picture cams and our blogging and our twittering and our facebooking...We actually become the source of the news, and the broadcasters of the news, and the consumers of the news." What an insight, Ashton.
Ashton Kutcher now has more followers than CNN on Twitter. Is that a good step for citizen journalism? Or a sign of our society's decline?
I believe that there is a great power for citizen journalism. It is definitely a new way to more broadly view the news. But, it is not a good sign that more people in our world care about Ashton Kutcher news of master cleanses and marital problems, than real world news from CNN!
Our society is way too concerned with celebrity, beauty and wealth. There are so many issues across the world that deserve our attention. If more people, especially Americans, followed world news, the knowledge that people would gain could at least broaden our ideas and cultural views, which is never a bad thing. That is one reason why everyone else hates "dumb Americans"!
I for one would rather feel that I am more knowledgable in world events, than in what the most popular celebrities are wearing and where they are partying tonight.
3 comments:
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Social networking tools and blogs are awesome in that we get genuine, average-Joe opinions on major world events. It's great for getting both sides of a story and not worrying about media spin. Unfortunately, for every blog post about the terrorism in the Middle East or technological advances in Asia there's 5 more about who's pregnant and breaking up in Hollywood.
I don't really think Americans are dumb. If anything, we're lazy. We have a wealth of information at our fingertips that we do little with. We only like to look at things that interest us, and in all honesty, if it doesn't directly affect us we're not interested.
I hate celebrities and their media vibe. Not that im jealous or anything like that, but come on, i want to hear something substantial, objective, educational, and helpful. The entire worlds focus is on things that honestly dont mean anything. We as people of the world/universe need to educate ourselves better and learn better ways to use our social technology
I do feel that there is some truth in the idea that more people following Ashton Kutcher than CNN shows that Americans may be a bit lazy (in that we would rather entertain ourselves than inform ourselves). But it is important to also take into account who uses Twitter and why they use it. I don't have any research to back this up but if i was to guess, i'd say that the Twitter community is mostly populated by younger people. So this Ashton Kutcher craze can only be used to gauge young people in America. In addition to this, why people use Twitter is important to consider. I consider myself to be a very informed person who is very interested in the news. But because I have so many other places to get my news (TV, websites, and so on) I don't think I would use CNN's Twitter. What I'm trying to say is that it's possible that a lot of these people may be very interested in what is happening in the world, they just stay in the know through other means and just use Twitter to follow their favorite celebs.
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