Blogs vs Wikis

As the world continues to be more connected, it will continue to come together through ideas and knowledge. While both blogs and wikis are great easy to use places to consume information on the internet. I think the main difference between Blogs and Wikis is that blogs are more useful for conveying hobbies and ideas and wikis should be used for more factual, and informative uses.

Blogs are a space for individuals to express their ideas and to communicate with like-minded individuals coming from different circumstances. Individuals from all types of backgrounds can share their similar experiences. Another case would be like in the New York Times article " Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog." One of the advocates of broader social media use, General Caldwell, stated that it allows unenlisted men and officers to interact in a way not achievable before.
Through connecting, sharing and collaborating, networks of people and ideas can exist and slowly grow to something more prevalent than just an idea.

In contrast, wiki's turn collaboration towards a goal of more meaningful information in general. The allowance of any user, not just experts, to edit and contribute has lead to wikis being a great source of knowledge for everyone. In addition, similarly to blogs, many contributors do it simply for fun. In the article "What motivates Wikipedians?" the top two reasons why people contribute is either for fun or they have an ideology that knowledge should be accessible to all. Wikis have been used primarily as databases on all sorts of topics on a number of different aspects and places. A new way to use wikis could be using them in military applications. It can allow collaboration between soldiers and their superiors in having the ability to contribute to plans, information, and equipment needs. 

Discord: New Media Evolved?

I chose my research topic Discord: New Media Evolved because, for me and many other avid users on the internet, Discord is a very common app. While not the first internet communication app, Discord combines a number of different kinds of new media while being easier to use and run. I will analyze this growth and development. Over the years, it has incorporated its chat rooms with direct messaging, calls and video sharing. The result? In only a few short years, Discord has grown to have hundreds of millions of users, millions of servers and has grown past its initial audience of gamers. Today, there are servers for many communities surrounding hobbies, fandoms, music interests, and internet personalities such as streamers. Some servers are small groups of friends while others are social hubs of thousands of users. I will also be assessing its impact, it has led to many people to be able to connect with others. But has also lead to easier illicit activity. While it still is somewhat unknown in mainstream new media, it has the potential to be one of, if not the leading new media platform.