Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Amsterdam Plane Crash: Twitter,
Social Media, and the Anatomy of a Disaster

News of the plane crash involving Turkish Airlines flight 1951 near Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam broke first on Twitter, before being picked up by the mainstream media. It's an increasingly familiar story.

The playing out of major events in the world of blogs and social media is becoming an ever more familiar tale. Today’s plane crash just outside Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam broke first on Twitter, the popular microblogging service. Jonathan Nip, who lived near the scene of the accident, was one of the first to tweet about the crash. “Looking at a crashed aeroplane near Schiphol,” he wrote, just moments after the plane came down. “A lot of emergency services rushing to the scene,” he updated, a few minutes later. “Still no more info. Can’t find any info on the net.”

It’s the last part of that tweet that’s interesting, because it underlines the shifting dynamic of breaking news. Here was an eyewitness to an event who was able to broadcast the latest information far quicker than traditional broadcasters could. The internet, which Jonathan Nip usually relies on for news and facts, was being outpaced by his own direct experiences, which he in turn was sharing with the world via the medium of Twitter.

And from there, the news snowballed across the Twitterverse, the blogosphere and social networks. [Click for MORE]

Twittering Obama's Speech

President Obama spoke of the serious issues facing America last night, and while he was delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress, some of its members were busy providing color commentary through Twitter. If you take a look at the Twitterstream on Tweet Congress, you'll see that for the most part, last night's Tweets were respectful disagreements or enthusiastic support that went straight down party lines. [Click for MORE]

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Would You Print This Cartoon?

From the Wall Street Journal:

The New York Post faced a barrage of criticism on the Internet Wednesday after publishing a cartoon that some say compares President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee.

The drawing, by frequent Post editorial cartoonist Sean Delonas, whose work appears in the paper's Page Six gossip column, depicts a police officer holding a smoking gun he apparently used to shoot a chimpanzee. The caption reads, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

The cartoon refers to a well-publicized event in the New York City area: a pet chimpanzee that was shot dead by police after it attacked a Connecticut woman earlier in the week. Mr. Obama on Tuesday signed a nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package.

Monkeys have been used historically in pejorative portrayals of black people, and the New York Post cartoon immediately drew criticism, including from civil-rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best," and he called for a protest Thursday in front of the New York Post's headquarters in Manhattan. The Web also was filled with debate.

The New York Post defended the cartoon, and Editor Col Allan said in a statement that the cartoon "broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy." Mr. Delonas couldn't be reached. The New York Post is owned by News Corp., as is The Wall Street Journal.

This isn't the first time news organizations have drawn flack for their images of Mr. Obama. The New Yorker magazine generated unwanted attention last summer for a cover cartoon that depicted then-candidate Obama wearing a turban and long robe, with a framed portrait of Osama bin Laden behind him. The cover was intended to mock portrayals of Mr. Obama as a terrorist, but not everyone saw it that way, including the Obama campaign, which called the cover image "tasteless and offensive."

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Communications Student Hits the Big Time

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Saturday, February 7, 2009

Artist of Famed Obama Poster Arrested in Boston


A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said today.

The image is the subject of a copyright dispute with The Associated Press. [Shepard] Fairey argues his use of the AP photo is protected by "fair use," which allows exceptions to copyright laws based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work. [Click for MORE] Sphere: Related Content

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Obama Front Pages

Click on any front page to enlarge.


Hat tip to: Newseum and Going.com Sphere: Related Content