RSS feeds and Google Alerts have changed my experience on the internet. Considering the expanse that is the internet, to shift its influence is a great feat.
An RSS feed is essentially a service that a website can utilize. By subscribing to a website's RSS feed, the user is telling that website to send updates and new content to a specified reader.Google Reader is an example of one of these readers. Here, a user can have all RSS feeds they are subscribed to organized and ready to be read.
As the content is ready to be read, the four media tool sets are ready to be applied.
The neo cortex of my triune brain was stimulated by all of the written information contained within the news and text given and filtered to me through the Google Alert and RSS feed systems. The limbic portion of my brain was affected by the various emotions I would sometimes feel in the process of engaging these services. For example, when there were way more content updates than I anticpated and I am astonished. My reptilian brain was dormant for the most part, however sometimes an article may tie in my search terms in surprising ways that take me off guard, thus triggered the aforementioned brain sector.
The eight shifts of the 21st century media world apply to RSS feeds and Google Alerts in cultural, economic, and discursive fashions. The cultural shift questions how heavily we are being watched by corportaions and the government. If several users are now using one tool to sift through the countless numbers of journalism, publishing, and other related companies. Now those that are watching readers can use one source to see where people are reading news. Instead of monitoring the different sources of news in their respective places, observers can use Google Reader's data to monitor a more complex flow of information circulation in a very simple way.
In an economic sense, similar to the cultural implications, RSS feeds and Google Alerts disrupt the regular consumer's means of finding news and replacement those means with easier abilities. These abilities, however, threaten the existence of loyal readers, making news available based purely on topic and not on news source. A new reader in the world nowadays may have trouble picking a favorite source of information because they read a wide variety constantly (assuming they use Google Alerts primarily.) RSS feeds safeguard a reader's ability to engage in the news sources of their choosing by being accessed on an individual website basis, rather than collecting articles from across the web and putting them in one play - as Google Alerts does.
The discursive shift applies to these services because the articles you're reading might not be completely balanced in the information they present. Google Reader is not obligated to tell you what is opinionated and what is not, so it is left to the reader to know what they are reading. Chances are they might not know and take opinion for fact, flaunting that fact adamantly but incorrectly. In a way, Google Reader can endanger the ignorant reader.
The eight principles of media education shape Google Alerts and RSS feeds by means ofreality construction, ownership, and production techniques.
The reality being constructed by Google Reader, at least, might be the stitchings of various perspectives that can form an altered and ambiguous whole story. RSS feeds offer content from places the reader has consented to, therefore the reality being constructed is made by the reader and the sources established and selected.
Ownership plays a part in the risk of obeying the constructed reality. News sources are different from one another in that they are owned by different people and have different messages. By using Google Reader you are getting information that may cover the same topics but be owned by different people and thus be geared to make you think a specific way; a way that is going to be different from another source - probably. These messages are shaped by various production techniques that readers need to be aware of.
If there are two stories for coverage on driving while on your cellphone, one source may want its readers to feel angry while another source wants you to feel sympathetic. This is done by changing words, changing what is presented, and changing what other production techniques go into it.
The several persuasive techniques unveil Google Reader and RSS feeds by various means.
These services tend to promise "the best of the news at your fingertips!" or something similar. This is a few different things. Hyperbole rears its head because how can this be the best of something so expansive and opinionated? Secondly, this is a big lie because there's no way to prove that they are true, realistically.
Like most services, this one works up its own repetition which becomes appealing (once its easy to use) to users. RSS feeds use timing to their own accord, updating users when they want to, thus getting their hooks in their users whenever they want. Google Alerts can alert users whenever it is told to by the user, but there are a set list of options which might have been set with repetition and recurrence in the minds of the big wigs at Google.
People use these feeds and alerts to get informed. There is a sort of testimonial in these services because their owners are saying, "This information is good enough for us to give to you, is that enough? We say its legitimate, do you believe us?" Their putting their credibility on the line speaks strongly for the content.
RSS feeds and Google Alerts have, at times, been a troublesome habit in terms of consistent attentiveness, but I feel I have a strong handle on their nature and what exactly they can do. I have been enjoying a lot of different perspectives and ideas about my favorites topics, and recently I came up with a fun idea for Google Alerts:
Set up an alert for the word 'revolutionize' and there are a lot of interesting reads. I read about how the iPad can revolutionize wi-fi and, if the information is all valid, this was nothing I have heard or read in the mainstream media. It was fascinating. I also read about television technology with was written in such masterful explanatory prose that I have a mild grasp on what is to come for televisions.
These services will only expand, and what the presents has to offer is scary in terms of accessibility, therefore the future promises ground shaking developments.
For the curious and unenlightened, this video helps to explain the features and usage of Google Reader.
This one tackles Google Alerts:
OK, Ted.
ReplyDeleteThis is late.
But EXCELLENT.
I am applauding...
Dr. W
Did you catch MM #5? I like that one a lot better.
ReplyDelete