This series of articles was all about "Web 2.0," from what it is really defined as, to its true potential in today's society. As someone who has grown up with internet access and all it entails, I found it really interesting to see Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 compared, as in the (http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html) O'Reilly article. Some of the main differences given were different programs that we use today, blogging versus diaries and daily opinion columns, and the power of hyperlinking. Here I'll also pull from the (http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/Web2Expo.html) "Streams of Content" article, as it also discussed the use of hyperlinking as well as personal blogs. As both articles stated, there have always been opportunities for individuals to speak their opinions to the public. However, blogging is a much more advanced way of sharing opinions and information on any given subject. A blogger may post on any given subject, and then may go further to add hyperlinks to other similar pages, strengthening the original article by backing it up with proven facts, examples of the topic, or simply other articles written with similar opinions. These links also allow bloggers to easily give credit to original authors, which is a fairly controversial topic. As stated in the "Streams of Content" article, recognizing the original creator of any given content is something that is not always done online, but adding links within a blog or site is an easy way to do it.
One of the main points I got out of this series of articles is simply that Web 2.0 has created a great deviation from the original "producer-consumer" model for spreading information. The "Streams of Content" article gave the best example of this by referencing the nostalgic image of the family gathering around the TV at night to watch the same news channel everyone else was watching, receiving the same information at the same time. Web 2.0 has basically reversed this system, as we access news when we want it, and we access what we want to see or hear, or in other words what interests us personally. The Henry Jenkins article also addresses this idea, by stating that as we the consumers spend all our time on Facebook and Twitter, and that is where we get a great deal of our news, it becomes more clear that people no longer receive information by sitting around a television together or reading a newspaper, and this needs to be addressed by management. The overall idea here is that Web 2.0 has put us, the consumers, in charge of what is news, who gets the spotlight, and how we as viewers will receive it.
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