Globalization of News Events

Gaza Crisis Continues...

Gaza crisis: 'More than 100' killed in Israeli strikes

Retrieved from BBC News.

Key points: 

• More than one hundred people have been killed on the Gaza strip
• More than one hundred rockets have been fired on Israel by militants
• Continuing to secure a ceasefire
• Gaza on Sunday - the bloodiest day so far
• Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization

Choice words: fatalities, militants, ceasefire, truce, terrorist, launch, rockets, conflict, Palestinians, Israelis.

Israel Bombing Kills Militant In Gaza Strip

Retrieved from NPR (NPR retrieved from The Associated Press).

Key points:

• Palestinian death toll driven up to 100 from monday's attack on the Gaza strip
• Senior militant was intended victim
• Sharp spike in civilian casualties
• Israel and Hamas open to diplomatic solution
• Israel rocket defense system has intercepted hundreds of Palestinian rockets.
• Death toll much higher for Palestinians than Israelis
• Majority of Israelis support the offensive
• Egypt is trying to manage a ceasefire

Choice words: Palestinians, Israelis, death toll, casualties, militants, ceasefire, diplomatic solution, offensive, truce, rocket defense system.

Israel Keeps Up Gaza Bombardment

Retrieved from Al Jazeera News

Key points:

• Overall death toll reaching 105
• Strikes have lasted 6 days now
• 8 journalists were injured when the Shuruq tower and another media building, were hit
• Ramez Harb was the intended victim of Monday's second attack attempt on the media building
• Over 640 rockets have hit Israel while over 300 have been intercepted by their missile defense system
• Egypt is brokering peace talks and ceasefire
• International leaders will be visiting the area to help relieve the events
• 84 percent of Israelis support the attack on Gaza, though only 30 percent support the actual invasion.

Choice words: Palestinians, Israelis, death toll, strikes, Shuruq Tower, victim, rockets, Egypt, ceasefire, UN, international leaders.

Similarities:
All three sites did a great job in delivering the information of what is going on in regards to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict going on. In all three articles, they give the necessary key points to the events happening within the last week or so. They also give statistics of casualties, as well as others, that have happened throughout the course of this conflict. They provide testimonies and quotes given from both sides, too!

Differences:
Their structures were quite different. For example, the article on NPR, I feel had a bit more voice in it's content vs. the other two, of which were more like statistics with brief quotes from their sources. Also, the NPR was written under one heading, while the other two had their article split into different sections; covering different aspects of the information.

Surprised?
Unfortunately, I can't really say what surprised me because I knew right from the beginning that the articles would probably be written differently, highlighting different aspects of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It was also quite evident what the purpose was of each article; one was used to have more of a background of information while giving statistics, while the other two mainly displayed statistics and information with no voice or "stamp" of some sort by their authors saying "hey, I wrote this". Almost as if this articles were written by anonymous writers without care of any recognition.

"Alone Together"

During the four hours of "Alone Together" I did not use my phone for any reason, nor my MacBook, nor any other device used for accessing the internet or any form of social media. There was a point, probably about 2 hours and 45 minutes into this experiment, where I pulled out my phone. Luckily, I remembered to just shut my phone off which probably saved me from compromising the experiment. During this experiment, I spent my time in the company of my two very good friends, Parker and Kyle. When I mentioned to them doing this experiment, they were happy to participate. For the first hour and a half or so, we simply gathered in their living room and put on some music while discussing the events going on in the world today. The artist we listened to was Tycho, which is somewhat a mostly calming electronic listed genre of music. The thing of which we discussed the most was, of course, the election results and our over-all opinion of how our country, mainly President Obama, will continue to progress, or digress (hopefully not). Near the conclusion of that topic, we somehow got to talking about our thoughts and overall feelings of the new movie that came out starring Tom Hanks, Cloud Atlas. This part of the discussion lasted about 25-30 minutes mainly do to that fact that there was so much to take away from the film. If you ever get the chance or have 3 hours of free-time, I highly recommend that you go see this astonishing movie and if you do, make sure to pay very close attention to everything! To top the 4-hour time period off, we decided to watch The Amazing Spiderman, which is another movie that I highly recommend seeing. It's much better than the original with Toby McGuire.

At first, this experiment was hard to perform. This is due to all of us living in a highly developed digital world, where technology excels above all else. It was especially hard for me because I have a new smartphone where I have spent a lot of time customizing it with new applications, forwarding all email accounts to it, creating task lists, and let's not forget how addicting FaceBook is for everyone with a smartphone. It was almost as if I felt naked. The thought of getting an important call, text, email or notification, kind of put me on the edge. But once I began to occupy my mind with other things like our discussions we had, not using my smartphone was an easy thing to forget. I was also a bit more focused on my surroundings and much more observant. Having access to handheld technology is a fairly large distraction to many. I know that on many occasions (everyday), I tend to be trying to hold up a conversation with others while checking FaceBook at the same time. This could be due to my ADD but that is besides the fact. I didn't really notice anything different about Parker or Kyle's actions, but they did notice things about me in the beginning of the experiment where I was first coping with the loss of use of my smartphone. For example, I fidgeted a lot with my hands and was in constant motion of some sort most of the time. Again, I have ADD so this could be due to the fact I didn't have something to keep my mind and hands focused on, but this could be hard to determine. All in all, this was an eye-opening experiment and I'm very glad that this wasn't supposed to be a 24-hour experiment as opposed to a 4-hour one.

Niche Product

This assignment asks us to create a "niche product" and talk about ways we can use online tools to generate publicity for your niche product. For example, today (11/5/12) in class we talked about digital avatars so considering the information that is still fresh in my mind--my product is going to be a digital avatar specifically used for social networking. The way it works is unimportant. To start off, I would simply use FaceBook to initially introduce my product to the web. Since I already have close to 800 friends on Facebook, I would start off by creating a page for my product that my friends would be able to "like" and figure out some basic information. The reason why I would use FaceBook first is because it's a social networking site which lands in my niche category. Starting out with FaceBook is useful because the newsfeed shows when you and your friends "like" something, which tends to start a cycle of "likings". 

FaceBook is obviously just one of many things that I would do. Since FaceBook created pages are limited to the amount of content and creativity you can have, I would most likely use the "Wix" site to create my own website for my niche product and I will also provide a link to from the created FaceBook page. This site will have plenty of information and the site name will be very appropriate in case someone is already looking for my type of product on Google. That way when, for example, someone searches for social-networking avatar, my site would be more likely to be ranked higher on the search results. Going even further, I would probably take advantage of our Edgewood community by possibly asking others in the IT sector to review my product and possibly give some feedback, of which I will then ask someone involved with maybe "Wingra Weekly" or other campus news outlets to write an article or a review. I will also post that information on to the FaceBook page, as well as the Wix website. Social networking seems to be a good start for almost any type of product because millions of people use FaceBook every day.