Social Media Tools

With the numerous social media tools available to get a message to multiple individuals throughout the world, it makes it so much easier to spread information.   In my opinion, the most effective would be mobile, real social syndication or RSS, and Twitter.  All of these resources have information that is immediately transmitted.  This makes it possible to share facts and information instantaneously. 

The mobile resource is a very reliable and efficient source.  It gives you the possibility of sending, receiving and viewing messages, all from your mobile phone.  These messages can be text, pictures and video.  You can also send a links to websites and have applications that the cell phone and smartphone user can look at or download from their mobile device.  I feel that this would be a great way to reach a large audience because of the possibility to send information to a vast majority with a click of a button.  There are many people with cell phones, “45% of all adults in the U.S. own a smartphone” (Mobile, 2013).

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hiv-testing-care-services/id560141508?mt=8 This link tells the cell phone user where they can go for healthcare services.

                With RSS or real social syndication, each person that is subscribed to a website will get automatic updates sent to their emails.  This would be a good thing for websites because if there is any time sensitive information that you would like your users to know, they will find out as soon as it is added to the site.  The best thing about this source is that people can receive the latest information from websites that they are interested and all of the notifications are sent to them for free.  I chose this option because of the fact that you can always keep users updated with information at all times if they are subscribed.

Link: http://www.aidsmap.com/news/News-feeds/page/1444172/ This link gives you options of sites that you can subscribe to, to get the news of updates instantly.

                There are many different social sites that are used to get news and information to a large number of people at a time.  I believe that Twitter would be the best site because of the fact that the site is based on the updates of statuses, which can be used to inform the public.  Of course you will not be able to reach everyone but, “20.6 million U.S. adults access Twitter at least once a month” (Twitter, 2013). 

Link: https://twitter.com/pepfar This link shows the updates and statuses about women’s health and those that are dealing with AIDS.

References:

AIDS.gov. (2013). New media tools.  Retrieved from Website http://aids.gov/using-new-media/tools/index.html#tool-bookmarkingNew

Unrestricted Web Publishing 

DeMers (2008) discusses the evolution of news from print media to social media.  There are many different links in the article that gave examples or even went in depth about something that was already talked about in the article.  One of the referenced links reviewed was from a New York Times article discussing the extinction of print media (Carr, 2008). 

This article was a valuable resource because included in the article were other credible sources that were from interviews.  Also, Jayson DeMers is a business journalist with his email and contact information posted at the bottom of the page and there were recent publishing dates that stated when the article was printed and when it was put on the website. 

The original article (DeMers, 2008) further discussed how there is citizen journalism being used often to make sure that the station has coverage even when there are no journalists present.  This method helped a lot during many tragedies, and the articles used the Boston Bombing as an example.  The link that was used for information on the event was posted on Wikipedia.  As stated before, this is not a very reliable website for information because anyone can log on the site and change facts that they feel are incorrect.  Needless to say there is not author or contact information for the person that is writing it in the Wikipedia postings. 

This was a very important and popular subject around the world and had many articles that covered the story.  “Though many search engines rank material according to their idea of what is relevant, that doesn't mean the material is relevant to want you want or  is reliable” as stated by Montecino (para. 2, 1998).  There may be some credible information in the article, but you must check every statistic and statement you read.

With there being so many ways to gain information, everyone must make sure that they check everything for credibility at all times.  I think that with the fact that anyone can post what they want and call it news, it can make things confusing.  You could get three different versions of the truth.  This will make it more difficult for journalists to do their jobs, but also make sure that they go the extra mile to find the right sources.

Reference

Carr, D. (2008).  Mourning old media’s decline.  Retrieved from Website

            http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/media/29carr.html?_r=0

DeMers, J. (2013).  How social media is supporting a fundamental shift in journalism.  Retrieved

            from Website http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayson-demers/how-social-media-is-

            suppo_b_3239076.html

Montecino, V. (1998).  Criteria to evaluate the credibility of WWW resources. Retrieved from

            Website http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm