First Impressions

Me and my siblings at the American History Museum

Hey all! Greetings from Washington, or more specifically from Starbucks, where I am finally inhaling my afternoon latte. It's been a busy few days for me as I finally made it here and started exploring. We flew in yesterday under a winter snow emergency, and the government was officially shut down (thanks Obama!). That didn't stop us from walking a mile through the "blizzard" to the American History Museum. The blizzard was actually just some slushy light rain, and the museum was worth the trip. I thought maybe I could stretch to find something new new media related at the museum, but I unfortunately didn't come up with anything. I am trying! I didn't go through every exhibit, but I did spend quite a bit of time exploring the "Americans at War" exhibit. To me that is the most interesting, especially from WWI and on.
That was my main outing yesterday. My first priority was tracking down a Chipotle, and we finished off an early night by eating Ben and Jerry's and watching Forrest Gump on TV. Not too crazy, but I did get up at 3 am.

My family with John Thune

Today was a "work day" for us. My dad is here for the American Chiropractic Association conference and on today's agenda was meeting with our South Dakota congressmen about legislation affecting chiropractors. This morning we had appointments with Senator Thune's and Representative Noem's offices, and with Senator Johnson's this afternoon. If you don't know this about me, I'm a big fan of John Thune, and I've been obnoxiously excited about the possibility of meeting with and (dare I hope) getting a picture with him. Knowing that, you can understand my distress when he had to be on the floor while the chiropractors talked to one of his aids. Devastated. UNTILL, after our meeting had ended and we ran into him in the hallway (: He showed us his office, took a picture, chatted about basketball, and overall just made my day.
Since I can't top that, it will probably be a pretty chill night. Laters!

Blogging Spring Break

This will be my first time blogging just for fun, and if you are just checking in for a class related post, you might be out of luck. I'm heading to Washington DC for a spring break trip, and I want to try blogging through it. I'll try to throw in some new media references, but mostly I just want to see if I like blogging about my own life, thoughts, experiences, and what not. I won't bore you with tales from the airport, because its bad enough to live through it, nobody should have to read about it. Hope you all are enjoying your "spring" breaks. Stay tuned for stories from Washington when/if I ever get out of here.

My family and I at the airport

Why New New Media?

I posted some notes from our New New Media textbook on our class wiki about what new new media actually is. In case someone decides to vandalize my page and delete all the notes or you just don't want to go to the site to figure out what I'm talking about with new new media, here is a quick overview:

Old Media, New Media, and New New Media

Old Media

• Controlled by a gatekeepers (editors/producers)
• Audiences can receive and consume information, but not publish it
• Examples:
• Printing press
• Radio
• Television

New Media

• Still works with publishers rather than consumers
• Easier for users to publish information than old media
• Examples:
• New York Times online
• Amazon
• Twitter

New New Media

• Producer and consumer can be the same person
• Anyone can create
• Examples
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Google +
• Wikipedia
• Blogs

New Media v Social Media

• Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, ect. are frequently termed "social media"
• There are also social aspects of new media, and even old media
• A consumer acting as a producer does not necessarily need to be social
• New New Media is not distinguished by the social component

Guiding Principals of New New Media

• Every consumer is a producer
• Author has powers of a traditional publisher
• You get what you don't pay for
• Always free to to the consumer and sometimes the producer
• This is why Amazon and iTunes are not new new media
• Competitive and mutually catalytic
• Sites compete with another but also work to benefit each other
• Many links between sites
• More than search engines and email
• Email, search engines, and PayPal help support new new media but are not new new media
• Cannot be fundamentally created or tailored by users
• New new media ultimately beyond the user's control
• New new media requires platforms that are beyond user/consumer control
• We notices this when the medium interface changes without our control
• New new media sites can disappear overnight

YouTube

The first time I was exposed to YouTube, I was in middle school, and I hated it! When I was with my friends, we spent way too many hours watching stupid, (supposedly) funny YouTube videos that I just wasn't a fan of. It has only been in the last year that I have started using YouTube for entertainment. I follow two channels, and those are about all I watch on the site. The first one I started following is Jenna Marbles, and just recently I started following Crash Course. Jenna Marbles in an internet vloger who posts funny videos every Wednesday. It's not very intelligent entertainment, but I feel like she just gets what it is to be a college girl haha. All of my girlfriends watch her, and we often quote her videos to each other. Crash Course is a channel produced by John Green, one of my favorite authors. He is very active in social media, especially Twitter and YouTube, and after gaining huge popularity through a weekly YouTube vlog with his brother, they decided to start the channel Crash Course. The videos are just short lessons on different academic topics (World History, Chemistry, US Literature). I've only been watching the literature ones, but they are nice refreshers on some of my favorite books. Other than those two channels, that's it for me. I don't waste too much of my time on YouTube.

#twitter

Twitter and I just had our one year anniversary, so I guess now is a good time to step back and evaluate our relationship. In the last year, I've posted or retweeted 257 tweets, so that averages out to less than one tweet a day. I go through phases where I use it more, but I also often forget to tweet for a week or so. Even when I don't tweet, I usually check twitter every day on my phone or while I'm sitting in class. I follow 99 people right now and have 67 followers. Most of the people that I follow are people I know. I'm not very interested in following celebrities, but there are maybe two or three on my following list. I'm mostly just interested in what my friends are doing, and if more of my close friends were on Twitter, I think I would use it more. If you aren't on Twitter, here is what my page looks like.

My following page. I think everyone in this screenshot is a classmate for ENM . Welcome to Twitter guys :) 

My followers. I'm particularly honored that my little brother thought I was worth following again. 

Shout Outs

After taking some time to browse through the blogs of my classmates, I feel the need to step it up on this blog to be in the game. There are some really neat things going on with these blogs. Check out the links on the right to see for yourself. There are some posts that we all have in common - assignments given out for class. Those can be interesting to compare our different uses of new new media, but the ones that interest me the most are the extra posts that people are putting up. Bry posted a Youtube book trailer for Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children which I thought was a great link between old media and new new media (for those of us who still love paper books). Check out her post here. Another post I enjoyed reading was Chelsea's superbowl coverage. She talked about new new media, but she also talked about her superbowl experience and shared a funny picture. Here is a link to her post. I'm taking notes about what makes their blogs more interesting than mine, and my conclusion in that I need to be looking for and posting more cool new new media related information about things I am interested in or things I do. I guess I better get working on that now.

Looking at Local Blogs

This blog probably won't reach an audience far beyond this class because the posts on it aren't really relevant beyond our class discussions, so what kinds of blogs become popular, particularly in areas like Madison? As a class, we have been looking at several blogs from the community and how they attract their audience. Each of these blogs has different types of posts to suit their different purposes. The Madville Times blog is the type of blog that comes to mind when I think about traditional blogging. The blog covers current events with a clear bias and opinion and encourages comment discussion. A blog like that is different from a blog like Cassie Edward's personal blog where she promotes her artwork. While the first functions as medium for a writer to earn money from advertisements and get his opinion out there, this second blog is a way for an artist to promote a career in art while using the blog simply as a tool. The blog is a great way to show ones art because it allows for both large pictures and text in a way that is not crammed. The Madison Art's Council also has a blog, but rather than posting information or opinions about art and artists, the blog mostly exists to inform community members about events that they sponsor. Again, the blog format works well because it is an attractive way to display pictures and text and to reach anyone who might be interested. There is no right way to use a blog, and many individuals, businesses or organizations can use blogging as a promotional tool.