OWS- The Digital Impact

            As the first paragraph of the story suggests, social media allows for thousands of people all over the globe to communicate with one another in a short time period. Social media is even revolutionizing how our country protests. A very small portion of the success seen at Occupy Wall Street, I believe can be attributed to social media. There were several aspects I was trying to portray with my “storify story.” First, I wanted to show in part, the progression that has taken place at OWS. I also wanted to show how social media has affected the movement and changed how people communicate and gather to protest. I believe I was able to accomplish this by combining different elements in the form of tweets, YouTube videos, status updates, and Flickr photos.

            It is hard to determine whether or not Storify will be a successful and viable option for journalists in the future. Ultimately, Storify is still in its infancy and has yet to gain the type popularity seen in blogs and other forms of social media. But that is not to say it won’t. There are a few things Storify needs to fix. When I first tried signing up I was not able to do so using my either Facebook or Twitter accounts. When I did finally reach the final stage to set up my account the window stalled. I also had a few difficulties rearranging different elements on my story page and I was forced to close the window and open it again to regain function. My struggles may have been due to a lack of familiarity with the site, which is a likely possibility.

            But similar to previous discussions in class, I don’t believe this should be considered journalism. We are essentially creating a mashup; taking existing material and mashing it together to tell a story. There is zero content creation on the part of the “journalist.” It’s difficult to suggest this is journalism.