Sorry Colbert, a million Facebook supporters doesn't mean jack.

I’m sorry. I’m not quite sick of talking about Facebook yet. Rest assured that I will be sick of talking about it after today.

As far as Facebook and politics go, I found opinions all across the spectrum. Personally, I see great potential for Facebook to have a substantial effect on the upcoming election; however, this effect will only go as far as the lazy college students that created the phenomenon to begin with. It’s much easier to join a group supporting Barack Obama than to actually go out and vote for him; it will be interesting to see if Facebook supporters will show real support when the time comes. This poll asked 239 people what kind of effect “Facebook campaigning” would have on politics. 129 (54%) said the impact would be minor, 84 (35%) said there would be no effect, and 26 (11%) said the effect would be enough to sway the vote.

Really, there’s no way of knowing for certain how social networking websites will effect the election until election day, or the primaries at least. This section of blogs argues that people use Facebook merely for recreational purposes, and will be turned off by applications that offer opportunities to engage in debate (such as US Politics, which I mentioned prior). This intrigued me; so I found an interesting study done on how Facebook users spend their time. Because I can’t hope to explain the data in a way as exciting as the riveting circles on the website, I suggest going there and looking for yourself. The findings surprised me, and they show that the argument claiming that Facebook users aren’t interested in political applications or groups (as shown by the low activity with applications and group browsing in comparison to other activities) can carry some weight. Still, I stay with my original pessimistic prediction; the 18 – 24-year-olds, while they willingly place pictures of Ron Paul all over their profiles, might not make the real world sacrifices to go out and vote.

The other article is slightly older; I think this may contribute to the optimistic outlook it takes.

This article offers a humorous interpretation on the Facebook’s effect on the election.

Facebook and the Media/Advertisers.

There’s this application on Facebook that supposedly tells you how much your profile is worth. I added it and it didn’t work. It says that by taking your number of friends, photos, wall posts and other posted items, it can determine how much your page is worth to advertisers. When the article was written, calculations found the average profile to be worth $725. People who are more active with their profile will be “worth more,” and vice versa. But, like I said, the application didn’t work for me.

Regardless, the article makes the point that Facebook is a lucrative way to potentially reach a very specialized set of the population. It’s clear that advertisers have already gotten in on the business; this article shows how advertisers can use a profile’s “Personal Interests” to make their services more individual. If this seems like exploitation of your privacy, you should know that advertisers use this technique to control not only the ads you see on Facebook.com, but also the ads you might see on a completely random website.

From the article; “…if you’ve listed in your profile that one of your favorite bands is Coldplay, you might see an ad for their CD or concert tickets when browsing a random web site like ESPN. And who might sell these ads? Microsoft, who already has access to tens of thousands of advertisers through a variety of online advertising initiatives within the software giant’s online offerings.”

I include all this info on advertisers because, until now, ads have always been present with the media. Social networking websites are one of the first areas where the advertisers have beat the major media corporations to the punch. Every major media company exists today because of it’s advertisements, but it didn’t start out that way. At first, advertisers needed a newspaper or radio station to reach people; no longer, now Myspace and Facebook have already collected the people. This article talks of why media companies are slow to join the Facebook party. I have no doubts that the media will become much more prevalent in social networking sites. I think it would be awesome to wake up, open my Facebook page, and find breaking news from The Arizona Republic on my news feed right alongside relationship updates and wall posts. It’s only a matter of time I suppose.

Simply reading this title proves my point.

I found a good article today. It’s not so much an article, more like an announcement.

“Facebook, the popular social networking site, has become a full-fledged platform for communicating, sharing and advertising. ABC News is betting that it will become a platform for political coverage, as well.

ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership -- the site's first with a news organization -- that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new 'U.S. Politics' category.”

This is a pretty big deal. Facebook has 55 million active users. Half of these users are in college or high school. If that’s not a media outlet to a huge chunk of impressionable minds, I don’t know what is. By allowing any user to create an application, the media has the opportunity to reach and impact the political decisions in a way different from a newspaper or magazine. The application supported by ABC is called “US Politics;” it allows users to display candidates and politicians they support, participate in debates, and a convenient link to look at recent ABC news on the application’s homepage. Just the fact that you, kind reader, are on Facebook reading this blog serves to represent the ability of anyone to display their opinions in a popular, prevalent way.

The utilizations of social networking websites for the media are endless; so endless that I’m going to do more poking around on the ole world wide web for more information.

An interview with Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The last paragraph of this article brings up an interesting point. “After ten months online, a Facebook group called ‘1,000,000 Strong for Barack Obama’ has only 164,000 members, but a parody group called ‘1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert’ topped a million members in just ten days.” Ah, funny people always prevail.

Fulfilled wishes can be bittersweet.

I’m going to write about this article today. Besides being depressing, I see this new development with the Iraq conflict as a big step for the U.S. government. The only reason I say the article is depressing is because as I read, even though I am in no way a fan of what has gone on in the Middle East, I couldn’t help but detect a despairing tone in it. It’s like the government is like a young child who has been told Santa Clause doesn’t exist; the government has, in a sense, given up all their hopes for a positive ending to the conflict. So while part of me has a great deal of respect for the Bush administration, another part of me feels bad for them; they have come to terms with the reality of the situation. Maybe it’s just me, but I think this sympathy comes from the way in which the article was written.

I think that a more liberal individual would have much less sympathy for the administration. At nationalpriorities.org, there is a count showing the total cost of the Iraq War. (It’s pretty cool, you can compare the war costs with spending on housing, education, children’s’ health and other neat things.) As I’ve sat here with the window open, I’m watching the total go up by roughly $1,000 every second. That’s pretty intense. At 6:53:50 pm, it reads $471,449,320,678. I divided that amount by the total population of the United States (303,447,068), and found that to cover the cost of the war, each American would have to surrender $1,553.65. This number first struck me as small, but it’s $1,553.65 from every man, woman and child in the United States. Again, it’s pretty intense. But more importantly than monetary figures, 3,875 have been killed since war began on March 19, 2003. I have to wonder how the families of those killed feel about the government lowering their expectations; personally, it’s almost as if every effort made up until this point is somewhat invalidated.

Really, I guess I would just be curious to see how others interpreted the article. I believe it was written with a conservative bias, and this is why it evokes a certain feeling of remorse for the government.

Or I could just be feeling moody. Who knows?

I’ll conclude with the same point I’ve made many times. The way in which the media portrays the facts has a monumental effect on how these facts are perceived. The Spanish-American War, the Tet Offensive, Watergate, and more recently, The Daily Show/Colbert Report are all evidence of the relationship between the media and overall perceptions.

Jon Stewart the next Walter Cronkite? (part 2)

So I did some substantial searching (well, not so much me, but Google did quite a bit of work), and found more articles on The Daily Show, but they weren’t very friendly.

This article, like many of the others I found, mentions a growing cynicism among the American youth caused directly from The Daily Show and other satirical celebrities (Howard Stern, Michael Moore, etc.). The blog also has numerous links; this makes it my favorite.

I find this an interesting phenomenon. These bloggers are suggesting that while The Daily Show/Colbert Report are educating their viewers on important political developments (as I talked about yesterday), the efficacy of these viewers is dropping. Any show with a strong support from youth can be very impactful; mostly because youth, by virtue of being young, don’t know anything. So a teenager who knows nothing about politics or current events other than the watered-down versions on Comedy Central is going to absorb all they hear from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert like it’s complete truth(iness). I’m not surprised in the slightest bit by these findings.

This article really drives home this depressing result of a funny show that happened to talk solely about politics. I think the author might be a little on the extreme side, but his evidence is pretty much irrefutable.

On a lighter note, Colbert gave this comment to graduates of Knox College (which is why it sounds vaguely like a sermon); “Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it,” he said. “Cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow. … ‘Yes’ is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say ‘yes.’ ”

And who says he needs writers? Come to think of it, he probably didn’t write that.

After all this writing I’ve done on the youth being influenced by satirical cable news shows, this last piece of information I will leave you with shows that the Internet is still the best source for the promotion of political awareness. I stole it from the first article. Do you ever get the feeling that some of your best work is done in vain?

Well I sure do.

The Colbert quote is from this awesome article.

Jon Stewart the next Walter Cronkite?

With this sorry excuse for a school week coming to a close, I’m going to relieve some growing frustration I have for the writers’ strike. I’ve been without my nightly political satire for almost three weeks; I don’t need to tell you that it’s rough, you probably know already.

I’ve already said that I don’t consider The Daily Show/Colbert Report to be real journalism, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected the political/current event education of the masses. While this article is old, it’s information is viable today. CNN found that viewers of The Daily Show knew more about politics in 2004 than non-viewers. That’s a pretty big deal; though I might not equate Stewart or Colbert’s accomplishments with those of Walter Cronkite, the overall effect of the shows is one that accomplished broadcasters can only dream of. Despite the shows’ notable success, Stewart and Colbert are missing a key characteristic found in every typical news show. I’ve been a journalism student less than one hundred days, and I can still tell you that the lack of objectivity will forever distinguish Comedy Central’s news from real news.

This article offers a little criticism on Stewart’s business of criticism.

“Stewart, who has called the Iraq war a mistake, is more likely than Jay Leno or David Letterman to ridicule Bush while going easy on Kerry, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. ‘He's an outstanding comedian, but clearly he does comedy from the Democratic left perspective,’ says Republican strategist Mike Murphy. ‘A lot of people who watch Stewart and howl at the jokes already have their minds made up in the presidential race,’ ” Howard Kurtz, of The Washington Post, writes.

So it’s very obvious that both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “report” the news with a liberal bias, but what does this have to do with college students? Well, believe it or not, there is a ridiculous amount of research done on this topic. A study called The Daily Show: Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth claims that the 18-24 year olds are the largest age group viewing the show and 54% of this entire age bracket reports The Daily Show as one of their news sources. I will do you a favor, and not hyperlink this study; it will lead you to a 28-page PDF, and no one wants that. Every study I found is based on the election of 2004; so before I embark on a mission through the world wide web to find something more recent, I’ll leave this subject for a later date. By later, I mean tomorrow. I wonder how many times I will suffer the consequences of procrastination before I learn the lesson.

As a departing note, my roommate and I took our recycling out today. Seven bags. It was a good time, and a long walk. But, we have doubled the floor space in our dorm.

It's not easy being green.

I had heard about Freerice.com, but hadn’t visited until today. Now I’m rather addicted. Turns out my latest addiction feeds people; it’s awesome. The powers that be also extended my deadline for this project, also awesome.

Wow. Today is Awesome Day.

Speaking of the liberal agenda (world hunger), I shall continue my little section on college students and their liberal-ness. Today I want to touch on the environment and how I see a bit of a departure from the liberal college student stereotype when it comes to sustaining the environment. This whole topic comes from a conversation regarding the “recycling” program in my dorm, Hassayampa.

Let me break this down; every room in Hassayampa comes with a blue recycling bin. Great right? Of course, until you take into account that the only outdoor bin to place your bags of recycled stuff is about a ten-minute walk away. Ten minutes isn’t that far or long, but when you are carrying a huge box full of a month’s worth of newspapers and no one offers to help, the distance becomes annoying. As a result of this unfortunate distance, my roommate and I haven’t taken our recycling bags out in about two months. We still recycle, but the bags just chill in the entrance to our dorm. From what I hear, most students living here use their handy little blue bins for their recycling, but the recycling bags go in the outdoor trash bin because it’s too far to walk to the recycling bin. If I didn’t complain about this regularly to my roommate, our recycling bags would end up in the trash can as well.

Teenagers don’t like to inconvenience themselves. I’m no exception. On more than one occasion this semester, my roommate and I have been victims of the low flow plumbing Hassayampa tends to brag about. It wasn’t fun, pretty, or convenient in any way. I have no idea how much water this complex saves by using low flow plumbing, but when I couldn’t shower or pee in my own bathroom, I was quite irritated.

Azcentral.com has this list of 52 things people can do to improve their green living. Some of the items are student-friendly, such as carpooling (no one wants to be a DD if they don’t have to), but others are suggestions the average student would turn down in a heartbeat. Turning off/unplugging electronics, avoiding bottled water, becoming vegetarian, turning off lights, buying used products, all these options strike me as being tasks a student wouldn’t do voluntarily.

The whole reason our environment is degrading can be attributed to mankind’s dislike of inconvenience; it’s why global warming even became an issue. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s just an egotist tendency of people my age, but I feel like college students have complete disregard for their environment.

This study compared the environmental habits of business majors with environmental studies majors. Their results aren’t outside of anything you’d predict, I just found it interesting that they picked this topic in the first place. I’m not positive this will load for everyone.

Here is another list of ways to save the environment, but it is specified for college students.

This article has to do with an increased interest in careers in alternative energy due to increased research and publicity of global warming.