Religion and the Media

I loved the socrative quiz that the group did, it was very insightful and forced us to ask a lot of very important questions.  Personally, I don’t think it’s a fair question to ask members of a religion if they think that they are being discriminated against, because they will always say that they are in order to garner sympathy.

In terms of the articles I read on this topic, as usual there are two articles that I read.  The first one is located at this URL:  http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-21-column21_ST_N.htm .  It talks mostly about how social media is changing religion, and I agree with a lot of the content in this article.  It’s pretty much saying that social media has affected religion just like it has affected everything else: it’s made it quicker, easier to access, and more wide spread.

The second article is located at this URL: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/5463/ .  It is similar to the first article in that it talks about how social media is affecting religion.  My favorite part of this article was where it talked about “social prayer”, and how prayers are kind of unified with social media.  When something bad happens, people ask for thoughts and prayers to be sent out to the victims of the bad event, and it kind of unifies people in that sense.

All-in-all, I see religion and faith as inevitable in the world, but I think we as objective journalists should try to eliminate religious discourse from our work.

The Media and Social

First of all, I really enjoyed this group presentation, because it helped us interact and participate very effectively.  Also I like doughnuts.  In terms of the subject matter, I found the presentation very informative and insightful.

            As always, I read two articles that relate to the topic, this topic being the media and civil rights.  The first article can be found at this URL: http://interactivefundamentals.journalism.cuny.edu/2008/10/16/the-media-and-the-civil-rights-movement/ .  This article talks about the media’s effect on the civil rights movement, and it highlights how the media played a huge part in the movement, and that it spotlighted some events that would have gone uncovered had they not been willing to talk about the civil rights movement.

            The second article that I read can be found at this URL: http://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-media-and-social-movements .  It talks about more modern movements and the integration of media within social movements.  One of these movements that I think gets underemphasized on this topic is the tea part movement.  The tea party movement was heavily affected by the media, and I feel like media exposure pushes certain agendas.  Matt out.   

Boston Bombing Discussion Blog

I really liked the presentation for this week; I thought it encouraged a lot of good discussion/thought, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  I had actually never seen the footage that you guys showed, and I found it tremendously impactful.  It actually made me feel anger towards the terrorists for the first time…..Powerful stuff.

            As usual, I read two articles on the subject at hand, and the first one that I found was published by the New York Times.  It is titled Bombings Trip Up Reddit in Its Turn in Spotlight, and is located at this url:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/business/media/bombings-trip-up-reddit-in-its-turn-in-spotlight.html?_r=0 .  Something that is under-covered when people recap the Boston Bombing was the impact that Reddit had on the whole debacle.  Reddit is a social media site, and kind of acts like the front page for the internet.  In the Boston Bombing case, Reddit helped in the investigation (and actually made the problem worse) of finding those guilty in the Boston Bombing.

            The second article that I read was located here: http://jacksonville.com/news/2013-04-16/story/effect-boston-bombing-felt-many-sports-events .  It talks about how sports events for a long time will be affected for a while, and to me, this means that the terrorism was effective.  It is sad, but if citizens are scared from here on when they go to sporting events, the terrorism succeeded. 

I would hope that people focus more on the positive aspects of the tragedy, because some really great things happened because of it: Boston as a city, and America as a country, banded together and worked hard to find those guilty, and it was a very successful manhunt.  Great presentation, with very interesting public discussion.