Welcome to ODU 366 Class Blog!

This blog has been created for the class of "Public Journalism in the Digital Age" taught by Dr. Jinsun Lee in the Spring semester of 2011 at Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA. Each student will develop his/her own blog and network with bloggers.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Technorati vs. Digg

Sorry this post is extremely late. I wasn't in class the day of and was told to write on the two blogs for half credit.

Both Technorati and Digg are blog sites made up of different stories floating around the internet.
The difference between the two however is that the blogs on Digg are popular because of the users rating the blogs while Technorati pulls blogs that have been the most popularly viewed through the different sites.

The topic that I chose to compare was country music.
For Digg the first three blogs were
1.Hank Williams wins Posthumos Pulitzer Prize. 310 Diggs
2.File Shareres Save until Muisc Biz changes laws 566 Diggs
3.Crazy County Fair Food: The Pork Parfait. 310Diggs

Technoratie
1.The Boot (Taylor Swift Flys to Auburn for Hugs) 729 Down
2.TwnetyFour Bit (Mark Ronson Produced Album) 661 up
3.Aquarium Drunkard (Music Blog) 865 Down

I think after checking both sites out it was definitely easier to follow Digg then it was Technorati.
I wasn't sure how users really rated technorati. There were a lot of hits on the first and third blog but they were red, and arrows down. But then the second blog had the least hits (out of the three) but had a green arrow.

Then as far as the content was concerneced, honestly on both sites for all three blogs I didn't really find the content useful. I didn't really care about the content so I wasn't intersted in what was being discussed.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Monday, April 19, 2010

Andy Hamm - Wachovia = Fail

Heather Lynn among many, many others decided to take part in the releif efforts after the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Heather decided to donate through her bank, Wachovia. After She noticed the unfair charges that Wachovia was placing on each doners transaction, she decided to go one step further and make some proactive efforts to do something about this situation. Heather started by sharing the situation with anyone she could. An ideal vehicle for this exposition was obviously one of the wolrds most popular social networking sites, Facebook.
Once Heather put the information out there, it was only a matter of time before other users began to spread the word. A perfect example of cooperation, people saw what Heather had to say, agreed with it and spread the news on to other friends.
After enough people found out about Wacovia's unjust actions and the rally finally gained Wachovia's attention, it was time for a change. Wachovia was forced to reavaluate their fees and through collective action, many voices were heard and an unexpected conclusion was reached.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Brenton Sharpe – Wachovia=Fail

After Heather Lynn donated to a Haiti relief fund, she noticed that Wachovia charged her an extra .30 cents for the donation. She then lashed out at Wachovia on Facebook (Sharing Stage) in protest on the bank’s policies by creating a Facebook group called “Wachovia = Fail”. She started this page in hopes of sharing information with her friends about the fees that Wachovia was adding to the donations.

People then started to join and inviting other friends to join along with them by commenting and telling others of their own experiences with the bank. This in turn was the start if the (Cooperation Stage).

After the Facebook page “Wachovia = Fail” started gaining attention from several users and other news outlets, Wachovia decided to wave and refund the fees that it had charged customers through donations. Through (Collective Action), users made a difference by making a stand therefore making Wachovia retract its policies.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Megan Morrow - Wachovia=Fail

After the Haiti earthquake,Wachovia attempted to help out by making donations available through the bank. However, the fees that were charged by the bank did not sit well with some, namely Heather Lynn. She started with the sharing stage, where she created a Facebook group called "Wachovia = Fail". This was to share information with the Facebook community about what fees Wachovia was adding to the donations.
After several people joined the "Wachovia=Fail" group, it turned into the cooperation stage. People initially acted by joining the group, and then continued to cooperate by commenting and inviting friends to join.
After gaining attention from not only several users via Facebook, but also news outlets, Wachovia decided to save face and reverse their charges. Through collective action, Facebook users were able to see real action being taken. It all started with one group created by one Facebook user.

April 6th Nicole Meraviglia

Heather Lynn is a 21 year old who donated money to Haiti for earthquake relief. After she put the transaction through by using her Wachovia debit card, she realized they had charged her a 3% intrest rate for international fees. Although it's a small amount of money, she was more upset over the issue of Wachovia making a profit off of relief efforts. Stage one of the collective action process was her creating a facebook page titled "Wachovia = fail." She got many people to join the facebook group for the common cause of making sure people knew Wachovia's international policies. Of course people agreed with her because within days the group was very large. Stage two is cooperation, and this happenes when Heather's friends start sending this facebook page to other people they know. As more and more people become involved, the cause is more known and progress is being made. Collective action is when everyone began sending comments and talking about the issue. Other newspapers and online journals got involved and many people found out about Wachovia's policy. After the three steps of collective action were taken, Heather's hard work did not go unoticed. She got back her 3% of the money and sent it to Haiti. People responded well to her facebook page and apparently there were other issues with Wachovia banking. Heather Lynn completed the 3 steps of collective action and won her argument.

In Class Writing - M. Owens Simpson

"Wachovia = Fail"

When Heather Lynn's credit card was charged an extra .30 cents for donating to a Haiti relief fund, she channelled her anger and disappointment into a "group activity" in protest against Wachovia bank. Just as the author Shirky would say, Heather's group activity evolved in three stages to achieve its peak effect. She  shared (stage 1) her frustrations with the world by creating a facebook group called "Wachovia = Fail" detailing what happened and what she thought about it. Heather then, of course, sent out friend requests, in order to rally people around the cause and educate them on the matter. As her friends and peers accepted the friend requests, and forwarded the group page to even MORE friends (cooperation, stage 2), knowledge about Wachovia's extra fees and Heather's cause grew. Wall posts and comments added in the cooperation for expanding the group and creating a group focus. Finally (stage 3 - collective action) the focus was born, which was that Wachovia should get rid of this fee when people are merely donating to a relief fund. Eventually, Wachovia could not ignore the growing protest, and the story was picked up by other online sites and news organizations. All of this combined, forced Wachovia to change its policy, after the three stages of Shirky's group activities was successful.

Kenneth Applegate 4.6.10 In-Class Writing

"Wachovia=Fail," who thought 2 words about a bank could gain so much interest across the Internet about a bank taking 30 cents for a transaction. Heather Lynn created the Facebook group after Wachovia charged a 30 cent fee when she donate money to the Haitian relief fund. Although 30 cents isn't a nominal amount of money, it was the fact that the bank over-looked her willingness to help and charged her for her goodwill. By forming this Facebook group, she used the 1st stage, sharing. When the Huffington Post caught light of this and wrote an article about it, more people became aware and joined the movement to get the fee removed for the donation. The 3rd stage didn't take part until Wachovia realized the negative look this group and it's members were giving to their bank, thus changing their policy to alleviate the fee, and regain trust from their bankers.

ODU Student protests Wachovia

When Haiti suffered its destructive quake a lot of charities offered help in the form of public donations. Some of these charitable sources were frauds and were actually stealing donations intended for relief. A surprising case of this came from Wachovia charging a 30 cent fee for international service. The money wasn't huge, but charging a fee for making a charitable donation seems unethical. Wachovia was making money from people trying to help out in Haiti. This charge struck a nerve in Heather Lynn. She fought back against Wachovia and demanded they cease collecting fees from donations. She created a group on the popular social network, facebook to show Wachovia just how many people agreed that this practice was unethical. In response to the over 1000 members of the "Wachovia = Fail" group, Wachovia refunded all service charges in Haiti donations.

Heather Lynn's Anti-Wachovia Facebook Page, How it relates to group activites

An Old Dominion University student, Heather Lynn, was frustrated with Wachovia for charging a fee when trying to use her Visa card to donate to Haiti, a fee other banks and credit card companies had been waiving. She began venting this frustration through a Facebook group entitled "Wachovia = Fail"

The three stages of group activities Shirky notes are Sharing, Cooperation, and Collective Action...

In the context of Lynn's story, the initial creation of the Facebook group, "Wachovia = Fail", takes care of sharing, the first stage.

The second stage of cooperation was accomplished when people accepted this request, and then invited their friends to the Facebook group as well.

Collective action, the third step, was when the members began to not only continue to spread friend suggestions for the page, but began commenting on it as well, for both members and visitors of the group to see. They all were commenting and complaining about Wachovia's practices together, with common frustration and understanding in mind. Wachovia must have felt pressured by all the attention, especially when digital outlets like the Huffington Post began to cover the story, and it appears Wachovia attempted to quell this negative attention earlier rather than later, and changed it's policy regarding fee donations, perhaps part of an attempt to silence any more criticisms that could be highlighted in the Facebook page.


In Class Writing April 6 - Thomas Raines

ODU student Heather Lynn has convinced Wachovia Bank to change company policy in regards to donations to Haiti. How did she manage to do this? By using the social networking site Facebook, she was able to share her concerns that Wachovia was charging people a service fee to donate to a Haitian relief fund. In doing do, she used the first of Shirky's three stages of group activities; sharing. She let her community know what was wrong and alerted the public that something should be done. Cooperation, the second of Shirky's three stages, happened when the Facebook group she started (Wachovia = Fail) began to garner more and more members and thus attention. The spread of the group shows the acknowledgment, and thus collective action that is the third stage of Shirky's list. With more and more members joining, and showing support for Lynn, Wachovia was forced to publicly announce that they would repeal the $0.30 international service charge for the Haitian relief fund. And that is how Heather Lynn utilized (albeit unwittingly) Shirky's three stages of group activities.

jillian baylor in-class writing

Heather Lynn exuded Shirky's 3 steps of sharing, cooperation and collective action in her fight against Wachovia.
Sharing - Lynn brought the issue of the $.30 charge first to Wachovia who in the beginning did not care about her out rage and did not even seem concerned. She then brought the issue to Facebook and gained supporters.
Cooperation - Through cooperation from her and her supporters Lynn gained enough backing to actually address the problem successfully with Wachovia, who decided to acknowledge her complaint.
Collective Action - Through cooperation of the masses, a whole collective action, Wachovia decided to change their policy since this issue became nationally realized through Lynn's efforts.

William Viola In Class Writing April 6th

The situation of Lynns problem with Wachovia shows a perfect example of Shirky's three steps. Those three steps being sharing, cooperation, and collective action are all seen in her use of the internet as a way to reach out.

By posting her argument on a facebook group page she was able to get her story out to many people and allow them to share it with others throughout the social networking site. As it got bigger and bigger the cooperation spread the story on to other sites and was able to gain major support. With all of these people feeling the same about the issue they were able to collectively act as a force to get the changes they wanted. In the end if Wachovia had not made new policies then they would have lost many valuable customers.

This is a great example of how people are able to work together much easier now with social networking groups than ever before.

Victoria Croffie April 6th in class writing assignment

The first stage is sharing and this is seen in the Wachovia article when Lynn made a Facebook page describing her disagreement with the bank. By setting up the page and sending it to her friends she allowed her thoughts and views to be shared with the rest of the world.

The second stage is cooperation and this is done by Lynn when people after becoming privy to her Facebook group and Wachovia's doing they band together to show their own disapproval against the bank via posting to the group discussion and joining the Facebook group.

The final stage, collective action is more clearly seen with better resultys when supporters of Lynn closed their accounts with Wachovia and voiced their opions to the bank. Enough of a complaint was made against the bank that they reversed their policy. If it wasn't for the sharing that Lynn originally did none of this would have come into fruition and therefore the policy would never have changed.


In-class writing assignment

Heather Lynn used Shirky's sharing, cooperation, and collective action ideals to take action. Her small fee created a big problem for Wachovia. Heather shared her personal issue she had with the international fee on her donation to Haiti by using Facebook and asking friends to become fans. She had cooperation of her fans to listen to her problem, read her page, and agree with her on the issue. They took a collective action by responding about problems they've also had with Wachovia (creating more negative publicity for Wachovia) and several made themselves ex-clients of the bank by withdrawing their funds. These 3 actions led to personal satisfaction and a $0.30 check from Wachovia for Heather Lynn.

Megan Byerly - In Class Writing Due April 6th

Heather Lynn created a Facebook page in order to express her opinion on Wachovia charging and international fee for a donation. Heather called it the “Wachoiva=Fail” page. She was able to use Clay Shirkey’s three stages, sharing, cooperation, and collective action, to make a change to the new policy. By making the actual page for the public to see and for her to express her opinion she was able to use the sharing stage. She asked all of her friends to join the page and by doing this she was demonstrating cooperation. When everyone pulled together and began pulling their money out of the Wachovia banks this was the third step, collective action. This lead to a reduction in the number of customers Wachovia was getting and was portraying the company itself in a bad light. In order to change people’s opinions and make the customers happy Wachovia was forced to change the policy back so that a fee was not necessary and they refunded all of the customers that were charged, all of their money.

In Class Writing due April 6th

Heather Lynn used Shirkey's three stages (sharing, coopereation, and colective action) in an attempt to make Wachovia change a policy where they charged an international fee for a donation. Suprisingly her attempt worked. She used sharing by creating "Wachovia=Fail" on facebook. This got the attention of her friends and others to see what Wachovia was doing. Then as perople interacted within the group, became members, and spread the word they all fell into the second stage, cooperation. She needed people to cooperate and listen to get the word spread so they could collectively take action, which is what they did. When Lynn took money out of Wachovia a lot of people followed as they were now aware of what was happening and as a result of losing business Wachovia changed their policy, and with Shirkey's three stages Lynn made a major change in how things were done.

Ina Chandler- Writing Assignment April 6th

Heather Lynn started the facebook page Wachovia=Fail to freely share her thoughts to others on the Wachovia fee. Many people responded to her page and shared their thoughts on the fee which started the sharing stage. Heather Lynn shared her thoughts so others wanted to share their thoughts on the fee. It did not matter if people agreed with the fee or not, people wanted to share their thoughts and be heard.
The cooperation stage started, when people saw others thoughts on the fee because they wanted to respond and be heard. So when others saw that many people had joined the facebook page more and more people joined. And more and more poeple expressed their opinions in response to other people's opinions.
Lastly, the collective action stage started when Wachovia saw the responses from the many people on the facebook page. They then decided to drop the fee so they would not lose members. So the collective action from all the people on the facebook page made Wachovia drop the fee because they saw the responses from others. Therfore, Heather Lynn made a facebook page to share her thoughts, many people started cooperating beause they saw others cooperating, and collective action resulted in the change that Heather protested for. And the change was made from so many people responding to something that they felt was wrong.

Monday, April 5, 2010

In Class Writing- April 6th

Heather Lynn was able to make Wachovia change its policy using Clay Shirky's three stages" sharing, cooperation, and collective action. By making a facebook page to let out her opinion about Wachovia's policy of charging an international fee for a donation. She then send the page to all her friends to join and be aware of what Wachovia was getting away with. Cooperation and Collective action coincided with one another in Heather's case by having the friends she invited to the facebook group invite their friends as well. By spreading the word like this, Wachovia was losing customers due to the popularity of this facebook group opposing their bank. Spokesmen Edward Terpening was forced to do something aobut it. Wachovia was forced to change its policy and refund everyone including Heather of their 30 cents charged on their original donation. By simply sharing, asking for cooperation from friends, and Heather's friends bringing more to the group through collective action, they were able to change a policy of a huge business such as Wachovia.

In-Class Writing: April 6

Lynn created “Wachovia=Fail” as a Facebook page for the first stage known as “sharing.” This is the most minimal of all 3 stages, meaning it releases the least information. The second stage is “cooperation.” As people join the Facebook page, comment, and interact, this creates the second stage. Finally the third stage is “collective action.” People began moving their money out of Wachovia, just like Lynn did, creating this last step.

Danielle Bevacqua: In Class Writing: Due April 6 2010

I apologize if this isn't meant to be posted on here, but I thought that's what we were told.

Shirky's three steps can be seen in the event of Heather Lynn's activism against Wachovia, starting with the sharingstage. This first stage would be when Lynn decided to make the Facebook page, "Wachovia = Fail." This is the stage that is the most minimal, in which the information is just getting out. During the second stage, cooperation, would have been when people started joining her Facebook group and changing their behaviors to mimick hers. Lynn removed the majority of her money and moved it to another bank. Once others joined the group, it was said that they too moved all of their money out of Wachovia and closed - in some cases- multiple accounts. This stage would continue as more and more people joined the group and shared the same actions. The last stage, collective action, actually would be as previously mentioned where people actually moved their money to other banks. This collective action- the movement of multiple accounts all around the same period of time- by many different people, would be the collective action of the group.

April 6th Writing Assignment

Through the means of facebook Heather Lynn was able to make Wachovia change its policy using Clay Shirky's three stages, sharing, cooperation, and collective action.
With sharing, she made a facebook page to vent her frustration with Wachovia's policy of charing an international fee for a donation and then sent the page to all her friends so they could be aware of the situation.
For cooperation and collective action her friends (once they had recieved the request to join) then shared the page with their friends. People who heard or read the story soon started closing their accounts. The controversy surrounding Wachovia became so huge that Wachovia Spokesmen Edward Terpening had to address the issue.
Wachovia was going to change its policy regarding charging international fees on donations made and was also going to refund everyone including Heather Lynn, the 30 cents which was charged on the donation.