Group Discussion Questions

1. Although it is true that today many TV shows and advertisements are made to look amateurish or "homegrown" I do not believe professional production values are dropping, or will ever drop. Although it appears that production has become amateur, the actual thought and ideas behind the production are only improving with the use of amateur looking shows or advertisements. Producers want to create something viewers can relate to. Viewers most relate to what they see and experience everyday on the internet. Therefore, professional production values are actually improving by creating media that is most relatable to viewers. Also, user-generated content will only get better in the future as it becomes more common. Users will constantly push each other to make the best media possible. In some ways, because creating a video and showing it to the world is much easier than many years ago, every person has a chance to show their abilities. Rather than just a few select producers creating shows or commercials, every person has the opportunity to show what they can do.

2. New York Times news article - "U.S. Hockey Team Starts to Believe Again"
Possible tags: Hockey, Olympics, Victory, United States
Tags from delicious.com: Sports, United States, Olympics, News, Education

After viewing the actual tags for this category, I realize that many of them are also what I would personally tag the article as. I noticed that the tags were quite vague (ie: sports, news) which surprised me. Also, I did not understand the relevance of the tag "education". However, despite these differences, I believe the tags are meant to symbolize the most main ideas of an article or website.

3. Transparency is such an important aspect in the Social Media world because Social Media really does not exist without openness and communication. Transparency allows for information to be shown to anyone by eliminating forms of privacy. For example, the website/application Twitter revolves completely around people revealing what they are doing or thinking at a specific point in time for everyone to see. Facebook is meant to allow social networking, but also allows for individuals to post pictures, comments, links, etc. Removing transparency in these situations would be removing the ability to post a comment or an image. Therefore, these sites would offer nothing. People actually want and need transparency in the Social Media. In contrast, transparency is not necessary or as important in the offline world. Personally, I believe that whatever a person may want people to know they will put on some sort of social networking site. Anything they wish to keep private will remain in the offline world, away from a computer. It is much more difficult for people to know things about another person in this setting. So, transparency appears to be something very few people desire in the "real world".