In Context: 5 Web Perspectives On A Story In The News

Social media, social justice

(University of Western Ontario Gazette) A recent arrest made on University of Western Ontario campus is sparking anger and demands for justice from the student population. A video posted to YouTube shows a student being held to the ground by several police officers as more rush in. Eventually it comes to blows and the officers begin using fists, feet, knees and batons to attempt to subdue the struggling man. Protests have been held at UWO and the outcry has been loud. This represents a trend of social media being used as a way of holding authorities accountable and for seeking justice.

1.

Social justice, Youtube and guitars

Threeminds
Threeminds is the blog of online marketing firm Organic. The blog explores topics in online marketing and social trends found throughout the internet. In a recent case of social media being used to seek justice a Canadian performer, who had his guitar broken by careless airline baggage handlers, wrote a song and posted it to YouTube telling his story. The video went viral almost overnight and musician Dave Carroll got his guitar back. Threeminds looks at how corporations might view social media justice, saying it’s like a game of Russian roulette.

2.

Non-profit social justice

Hauser Center
The Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations (Harvard U.) looks at how non-profit organizations can utilize social media to promote their cause and spread awareness about what they fight for. This article provides some good resources that can be used to promote social media that is vlogging, blogging or tweeting for a cause.

3.

We can't ignore the poor

The Huffington Post
Billy Shore, a reporter for the Huffington Post, argues that in the past social problems like poverty could be easily overlooked, even accidentally. Today, however, with the aid of social media problems like these are difficult if not impossible to not know about. He suggests that to not recognize problems like domestic poverty in the U.S. is an intentional oversight. 

4.

What Mumbai changed

Mindy McAdams
Mindy McAdams is an instructor in Online Reporting at the University of Florida and feels that the Mumbai terrorist attacks and Twitter opened the journalism world to a new type of real-time reporting. It showed us that in the future one of the best real time tools for reporting will be cellular phones and that citizens on the ground will be as instrumental in telling breaking news stories as reporters are in newsrooms.

5.

Web 2.0, faster journalism

Journalism Festival E-Zine
Jose M. Calatayud is a freelance journalist and blogger based out of London who has written extensively for the Journalism Festival in Italy. In this article he explores the changing nature of journalism as more and more reporters are found tweeting, updating facebook, blogging and posting videos to the internet. In a way we’re all trying to keep up with each other, the faster the news can be delivered the better. He talks about longer traditional methods vs. the delivery and speed of web 2.0.