More on the Tea Party

I enjoyed exploring the Tea Party forums especially surrounding the elections. It was interesting because while there was a consistant updating of the message boards leading up to the election a lot of the discussion remained very general. There was talk about what was important standards for the country to maintain and of course more on going hunting. I expected more political get out the vote messages, but there really was not that much of that. The only reason I could think of for this would be that the Tea Party forum that I visited is not necessarily for political unity, but social unity to communicate people that have shared values

I never actually participated in the discussions because it was not a place for debate, but agreement the "virtual community" was well established and I didn't feel that I could enter into the conversation.

Professional Bloggers

I explored political activism through the use of blogs. I broke blogging into two groups, professional and amateur blogging. The difference is that professionals are current or former journalist and the blog is not just a hobby, but functions and a digital newspaper searching for new information with the aim to break a story. On the other hand amateur political bloggers are people with an interest in politics as a personal hobby, but are not aiming to create news just discuss it.

Although, both types are important I focused on the professional blogs such as talking points memo and Huffington post. I tend to group politico in this group because they are mainly on the web, but do publish a small newspaper in D.C.

I spent each day of my project searching these blogs. There is a strong influence of the print tradition on these blogs because most of them are Journalists. What is interesting about these media is that they allow for a lot of user comments and talking points memo allows people to participate in certain sections of the website. Usually these sites are starting by younger people looking to make a splash in political reporting with out all of the restraints that print media has

Practicum 8

For my final practicum post and as I have finalized my thoughts on my experience, I wanted to share how impressed I was with an online activist community. I personally choose to join Breast Cancer Research Advocacy groups because it has been a cause important to me, my friends and family. By joining these groups and following forums and walls, discussions, and news sources I felt like I was much more informed and part of a new community. In particular I felt that the democracy through the groups was an important and defining feature that attributes to much of the success that has come from these groups. It gave me quick and easy information, a diversified group, division of power that everyone here was as an equal and could do what they wanted and it allowed for communication within the members. It amazed me to see how much could be done online with the assistance of the Internet and these groups.
I personally chose to follow more than contribute because I am not as active outside of the online community as many other members are, but I still felt the benefits of joining a group. I was still able to participate by posting links that I found helpful, or clicking links posted by others and signing petitions but my personal actions towards the cause went as far as that.
I also looked at the way members chose to communicate with each other in order to see how dedicated and activists used online groups. I found that because this is generally a one sided activist group that the members were very encouraging and supportive of what other people had to say. For instance when I started a forum topic about a news break about Chicago's health care, I was flooded with responses that had to do with the discontent about the current situation and news updates about what was happening.
From doing this project and becoming an active follower of this group it has given me the opportunity to see how much could be accomplished on the internet. Although it may not be the most popular thing on the internet, it still shows how involved people can be outside of the physical reality and how much is being moved to the internet and the virtual community.

Practicum 8 Mike

For my last post I was going to wrap up all that I had found over my research, but because I just finished writing that in my paper, I thought I would discuss how people create identity through their gamer profile. Not only does the username itself say a lot about the user, but the user also gets to post two profile badges that are awarded for certain achievements within the game. The most striking feature I found about these profile badges, however is the fact that there are many drug related ones. These badges say more about the user than that game character as there are really no drug references in the game. Badges like "joint ops" and "blunt trauma" feature pictures of marijuana leaves on them and were visible on many player's profiles. I found it interesting how public these references were, as well as how prominent. I would think that people would feature things more about the game, but I supposed when trying to create identity on the online space, people choose to draw references to other aspects of their life.

Final Essay Promts...

... are up! Look under "Assignments."

Happy studying, and good luck on all of your finals this semester!

Last Practicum Post - Max

With this post, I will summarize my project on Twitter from a business perspective.

First, I just compiled our weekly Twitter stats for @UWBadgersdotcom. As I mentioned, I was curious to see if my tweeting from the Kohl Center inspired a new high in at mentions for the week. We had over 65 at mentions this past week! What I have learned as far as at mentions is: you see a noticeable jump when your football team defeats #1, wins the Big Ten, or goes to the Rose Bowl. Other than that, we were at about 15-25 per week. So did my tweeting help? I hope so. I hope it gave some followers the chance to interact with us and see some new content on there, but did I make a big impact? I was not even close to having the impact that the football team causes on our social media sites when they have success. It's just the way it goes, I guess; when your football team succeeds, social media succeeds.

That brings me to my final thoughts on this project. I was extremely happy when I received this assignment because the project would allow me to learn even more about something that I care deeply about (social media in the world of athletics). Combining concepts we learned in class, it was interesting throughout the semester to see the different levels of usage by followers (see who was participating) and to see how different businesses construct their identity on Twitter. As we have hit on, Twitter is a challenge because the site gives you a framework with which to work, but you have a good amount of freedom to give your page the look and feel you want it to have. A business Twitter is so much different than a personal Twitter and I got to experience that first hand. Punctuation, spelling, content, clarity of messages, what I could or could not say were just some of the noticeable differences I encountered over the semester.

It is hard to get down everything that I learned or discovered, but I think the big takeaway I will have from this project that I will use later in life is that in order to successfully engage your fans, you need to stay active on Twitter. Every person out there uses Twitter differently and our goal from the athletic department is to touch every single follower that we can. People go on Twitter to be a part of a community, and we are in the unique situation in that we already have so many fans across the country, we just have to get them to buy in to what we are selling on Twitter. Many people automatically flock to our page because they want to be identified with the Wisconsin Badgers. But as happy as we are that they want to identify with us, we want to reach out to them and give them all the more reason to like Wisconsin Athletics and become a fan on more than just Twitter. All athletic teams are the same and all businesses on Twitter are the same in that regard; a business is a unique Twitter page because people will automatically flock to the page to be identified with that product. Your goal is to give them a reason to follow you other than just having their name appear in your followers list. It is very different from a personal page; as a business on Twitter, the people come to you. Usually, a business would struggle to get people to come to its store or buy its product. With Twitter, the people come by the thousands just because they want to be associated with your business. The goal is to capitalize on that and make it worthwhile for them and profitable for you.

This was a fun project (one that I will be continuing during the spring) that I will no doubt use knowledge from class in helping to make our social media sites all the more effective. I hope everyone keeps following us!

http://twitter.com/UWbadgersdotcom

Practicum(8)-Allison

For my final post I will wrap up some of my final thoughts about social networking. Before this project I used Facebook and Twitter for my social networking needs, and now I am a member of 43things, last.fm, and bebo as well. Honestly, after this project I don't think I will keep up with any of these new sites. Because I do not know anyone on these sites I felt it hard to make connections. On 43things however I did feel a small connection with people who reached out to help with my goals. Overall, I think the three main aspects of class to draw on for this assignment are identity on the internet, online community, and web 2.0. For most social networking sites it is essential to feel part of a community or else you won't get anything out of the site. Also, I think it is important to represent yourself truly or else you may make connections that are not real and will not translate into real life. In regards to web 2.0 I do not think social networking sites would be around without this shift. Keen may thinks this brings about amateur content and it loses professionals, but I think it draws back to community and identity. Blogging or goal setting may give someone an identity that they never had before and this may build a community they were never a part of. Overall, I am glad I got this as my topic and I think I have learned a lot.