Twitter blog post

Twitter is an online social networking site that allows its users to communicate to one another for a variety of different reasons. Twitter is consisted of news, entertainment, and also opinions. Twitter allows the users to tweet/post short messages to their followers and also gives the readers a chance to reply to that tweet. Twitter users can reply to other people, retweet something they agree with or think is funny, and favorite something they really like. Twitter is also used beyond just socializing with other users, it is used for marketing as well. Twitter is known to be the first social media site that knows the news instantly. When the Boston Marathon bombing occurred on April 15, 2013, Twitter did its job with giving updates within the first five minutes after the explosions began. People in buildings around the marathon were watching Twitter for updates. They were asking each other questions, but constantly checking social media. Another example of marketing was when there were terrorist attacks in Paris. Instantly, celebrities around the world were tweeting out #PrayForParis. The reportings of the ISIS attack was devastating and within minutes of it happening, the world knew. Twitter is used to get the message and stories across to its viewers and to keep the followers invested into the news. In 2011, protests were occurring in Egypt and Twitter was used to continue the revolutions. Hashtags were made to persuade Congress to Free Alaa who was sent to prison for a year for organizing a protest. Twitter was used to communicate the issues that different countries are dealing with, for the whole world to see. In 2017, Houston was flooding. People were tweeting out for help and getting their messages across to find a solution on how to protect one another. However, some people tweeted back discouraging tweets. Twitter is very opinionated and is a form of social media where you can say whatever you want. Social media is continuously growing and Twitter has became more popular throughout the years. Twitter can be used as a journalistic tool by presenting news, crime, and accident stories to the public. Many news channels have their own page and always post their news stories on Twitter instead of just broadcasting it on TV. Twitter is used for politics and certain organizations as well by again tweeting out news on passings of laws, thoughts of a new law, charities, and more. President Trump is a big twitter influencer and many people have controversial thoughts towards him and what he chooses to tweet publicly. One topic that Twitter successfully communicated was the people’s march in January 2019. This was when a group a teenagers gathered around a Native American man doing traditional chants/songs and the teens were mocking him and laughing at him in his face. Twitter covered this thoroughly and everyone was sharing their opinions on it. Another event that occurred and is still occurring is March Madness. People are posting pictures of their brackets, their thoughts of who will win and the teams are tweeting updates on their wins/losses. Everyone knows or has heard about March Madness through the news or social media. Most of the younger generation is on Twitter almost every day and can view all of the updates for the standings of each team. A third event that has recently occurred is on March 30, 2019 there was an Earth hour at 8:30 p.m. People tweeted to turn of lights and power sources for one hour at that time. The message spread across fast and many people were involved in the movement. For the twitter project, I chose Buzzfeed, Channel 4 Buffalo, and the NHL as my three organizations that I tweeted to. I chose Buzzfeed because it relates to the career I am in. I am studying journalism and always had a dream as working for this social media company. I chose Channel 4 Buffalo because of my major as well and because I have learned a lot about writing news stories and how to depict them. For the organization out of my comfort zone, I chose the NHL. I don’t know much about hockey and I had to do a lot of research. This challenged me but I was able to learn new things about the NHL. This experience of using Twitter is different than blogging because we were able to communicate with others and learn about news events and tweet out our opinions for others to view. This project was different than other forms of social media especially Instagram which is strictly posting pictures or videos of whatever you choose. Twitter is the social media app that allows people to know what is going on in the world right away. Other social media sites aren’t as quick. The experience of learning new topics, researching and communicating with classmates allows us to build our skills in the social media world.

WikiHow blog post

WikiHow is a step by step process that involves great detail. There is a long process in order to create an article that is unique, but it’s not as hard as it sounds. To begin, understand that wikiHow is a website that gives readers a million different ways to do something, and almost everything is on their site. If anyone needs to know how to do something, they should go there. The next step is to figure out a topic that the writer would like to do their article on. It is important to make sure that this topic hasn’t been done already and that there is enough information to make it a long enough article. Figuring out a topic that isn’t already done is the tough part but the topic of choice for this assignment was “How to Make Reese’s Peanut Butter Hearts”. Since this topic is a recipe, the article was easy to write since there were many steps to make the Reese’s hearts. Throughout the wikiHow article, there were many pictures uploaded to show the steps of how to do each separate thing. This included mixing the ingredients, how to melt the chocolate, cutting the peanut butter into hearts, freezing them and more. In order to code a wikiHow article, it makes it easier to copy an already written article and paste it into a word document. This way, the writer can just delete the information that was already typed out and fill in their own writing and their own steps. There will most likely be articles that are similar to the one being published. Despite this, as long as it is not exactly the same topic, there should have no problem uploading the article to wikiHow. Sharing information on a topic the writer knows a lot about may seem very easy for them to communicate to others. However, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. In order to clearly state each step with thorough details, they must write every single detail they do during a step. It might seem like common sense to keep the heat on low while melting chocolate so that it doesn’t burn, but some people don’t know that. Another example of thoroughly detailing the article would be making sure there are tips and warnings at the end of the article to help the reader do everything correctly. A step by step instructional is the best way to communicate the wiki. Make sure that everything is given in a step by step format so that it is easy to follow. With recipes, it is easy to make a step by step instructional. However, it might not be as easy to do so with other topics such as ‘How to Be Happier,” “How to Finish Reading a Book” or “How to Trust Someone”. These types of wikis would work better with a method instructional. This way, it gives the reader different options on how to do something rather than a strict set of rules to follow. This works well because one method won’t work for everyone since everybody is different and so are their learning capabilities. With methods, it is easy to get mixed up while writing your article because there is more of a thought process to them. Although, methods and a step by step instructional both work fantastically. In order to manage a big project like this, it will cost a lot of time on the computer. To begin, there has to be photos of the process and they have to fit into the wiki. Photoshop was used a lot during this project and just being able to navigate photoshop took time to learn. Editing photos to enhance the picture and to change the image size is essential in creating a wiki. However, when taking pictures on a cell phone, the photos are too large and a website can not upload them and make it viewable to the reader. Using photoshop will help decrease the size of the picture and edit them all. Next, there will need to be access to a blank word document in order to code the wiki. As stated earlier, copying an already coded wiki is easier to just fill in the new steps, unless the writer knows how to code a wikiHow article already. All of this together takes many hours so if someone is looking to do this, they must plan to budget a lot of time in order to do so. While writing the article, they need to make sure to keep their article objective. Don’t use forms of “me”, “my” or “I”.

Below is a link to a related wiki and two images used in an article to make Reese’s Peanut Butter Hearts at home.

Related wiki: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Reese%27s-Peanut-Butter-Cups-at-Home

Images: