Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wiki's are both vast sources of information. The differences are just the type of information that is available on them. For example, because a blog is short for web log, information can be more biased depending on who the author is. On a blog, the author is able to write in whatever style the author wants regarding whatever topic. In her paper, How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere?, Kathy E. Gill, describes a blogging as a form of journalism, but not as a newspaper or a television; instead she borrows words from James W. Carey, and calls a blog "our collective diary." A blog is similar to a diary, because usually only the author is allowed to publish their content and write about whatever they want, while viewers are only allowed to comment and provide the author with the input and what they think, which leads to collaboration as it can lead to discussions between the author and reader, or one reader and another or viewpoints.
On the other hand, a Wiki is more of an educational media that is accessible to the public depending on what type of Wiki it is. At times, the public is allowed to add, remove, and edit content for the Wiki. For example, Wikipedia was originally created as an online encyclopedia for many people to edit and contribute content to. In the New York Times article, An Internal Wiki That's Not Classified, the article talks about Diplopedia, a type of Wiki made by the U.S. State Department, it is mentioned that the advantage of Diplopedia is the ease of finding information. Which is exactly what Wiki's are useful for as they provide information and the sources that can lead to someone who is interested to follow up with the sources.
At the same time, Wiki's and Blogs increase networking because they lead to more people interacting with each other. They also help with communication because you no longer have to physically be near someone to talk to them, you can talk to them over the internet.

New Media's Impact on Privacy

The invention of new media, for example, the internet and social media websites resulted in humans giving up more than just their money and time to access these things; us humans also gave up our privacy when we embraced new media. For the term paper, I plan to research how certain new media inventions led to this loss of privacy. I also plan to research how things such as RFID technology, databases that contain our information, and even things like laptops and computers helped us lose our privacy.

In my previous example of social media, us humans gave up our privacy in the sense that everything we do, we post on our social media accounts, such as taking a vacation or having a fight with a significant other. We no longer confine our privacy to the area known as our household, and the situation where mostly your family or extremely close friends would only know certain things that you know post all over your Facebook accounts.