Twitter, Twatter, Tweeter

Twitter is a beautiful thing…well just a social media site where everyone can post their opinion or share with the world what they are doing. It can be used for business relations, research, etc. Except, there is only 140 characters available to type that thought.

            In the words of Paul Gil, “Twitter and ‘tweeting’ is about broadcasting daily short burst messages to the world, with the hope that your messages are useful and interesting to someone.” (Lifewire) That being said, everyone uses Twitter for many different reasons. For example, there is always information posted about missing children that each person that views it can retweet and spread the word. Unfortunately, not everything published on Twitter is accurate information. According to Lifewire, Twitter is used for marketing but also doubles as social site. People can talk to one another on the site due to a job being advertised. The article that was posted by The Washington Post due to the Paris attack, shows how law enforces can be active on the site finding evidence they have not been apparent of before.

            Twitter can be used as a journalistic tool because not everyone owns a TV or watches the TV to get their news. Reporters are able to tweet the information they want the public to know. Sports journalists tweet the final scores of games, injuries, players’ stats, and more. Although not all the information that people find and read on Twitter is true, since some do not watch the news on TV, those people end up believing it. For those journalists who are not on TV, on the radio or get their work published in a newspaper, that is a way that is part of their job to do as a journalist. These men and women get paid for that.

            Twitter is used in a big political way because our President does not stop tweeting. He tweets his opinions, his feelings, or the next move he is about to make. Anything regarding politics is more than likely tweeted about. Politics is probably the number one topic trending because there are so many things going on in this world that everyone needs to pay attention to in order to understand what is about to happen. It is impossible to go on Twitter once each day and not find a tweet regarding something going on in politics. Yes, politics is important and the public should always be aware, but sometimes it seems to be too much.

            Thirdly, Twitter is used to organize important events or protests that others might be interested in taking part in. If an individual wants to start a movement about global warming, in order for other people to come, that person would need to post all of the information about it so others become aware of it. It encourages others to stand up for what they believe in because they are able to say their opinion and others are able to back that person up. A lot of times, these kinds of events blow up because of the number of people agree or the number of people who just show up to see what it is all about. If someone wants to get the word out, the individual usually resorts to Twitter.

            One event that occurred within the last few weeks was the manhunt for Steve Stephens. Stephens killed a random pedestrian on Easter Sunday, at 2:00 P.M. for no apparent reason and fled the scene. It took the Cleveland Police Department approximately 48 hours to track him down. If it was not for the posts on Twitter describing him and including a picture, there is a chance it would’ve taken police longer to locate him. He was recognized by a McDonald’s employee who called the cops, but if it was not for it being published on Twitter, he could have not been found as soon as he was.

            Back in January, Donald Trump was inaugurated because he was voted to be the 45^th President of the United States. Every person who owns a Twitter was tweeting their opinion about him whether they were positive or negative. Every single person on this Earth has an opinion on Trump, and every single person’s opinion of him is different. Even if it was the littlest things, there was a tweet about it no matter what. There really is not a success nor a failure regarding this event because it does not change the fact that he is still the President. Just because people tweeted making fun of him, does not mean he is just going to be impeached.

            Another event that occurred in January was the capturing of the “druglord” El Chapo. El Chapo escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico. Of course, there are a lot of people who tweet humor about it but people in Mexico were generally concerned. With the help of Twitter, it was possible that the police were given leads to direct them to him. Once information like this is tweeted, authorities are going to look through it and consider if it was going to lead them into the correct direction.

            One topic chosen to follow on Twitter was The Buffalo Zoo. The Buffalo Zoo was chosen because the zoo does not get enough credit. It is very kid-friendly and a fun place to go for a few hours. The way the zoo refurbishes to accommodate the animals and the way the staff always makes sure the animals are fed and treated correctly is something special. There are people out there who do agree that it is terrible for animals to be locked up in cages and looked at through glass all day, but young children do not understand that.

            Donald Trump was the second topic on Twitter because he is obnoxious, arrogant and full of himself. As previously stated, he tweets his every thought and move. But when Barack Obama was President, he never tweeted nonsense or anything he felt like tweeting because he was bored, he treated the things he knew America needed to know that was important. It changes things up to follow an account that a person is not interested because for a little while at least someone can experience and understand the subject matter better.

            The third account followed was the New York Yankees. The Yankees have a lot of accomplishments throughout the years as Major League Baseball team. The team has had its ups and downs, but there is no other team like them. Yes, any person could say that about their favorite team, but the Yankees are different. The team may not always have the best seasons, but they really do have a nice record behind them.

            Twitter is different from blogging because blogging is viewed more in an essay format with lots of stories and opinions. Twitter can be full of those kinds of things as well, but blogging seems to be fancier. Blogging is taken as more of the serious route and potential employers will see it. They will look at anyone’s Twitter as well, but a blog defines someone more than Twitter does.

            Twitter is very popular these days and continues to grow. Twitter is going to continue climbing its way up as the top choice for a social media site.

Sounds Easier Than You Think

iMovie is almost like being in a completely different world when it comes to editing videos. Someone using it might think, “how hard could this be?” But it is a different ballgame than an individual might be expecting. iMovie definitely gave the students stress, aggravation and a run for their money.

            One of the main struggles when filming the individual parts was making sure that the individual clip had enough footage in front of the camera and behind the clip. This made it a little bit more challenging because some things had to be shot twice from two different angles or more than once due to if anything was interfering in the background or the angle not being enough. Shots had to be taken multiple times or after putting it all together with the group, there was a time when shots had to be redone or needed to add something more so they needed to be recorded all over again. It felt like a process but it really was not as bad as everyone was anticipating it to be. Who doesn’t dread group projects when students end up doing so many? This project was not as time consuming as thought but also trusting the group members to get the things done they are supposed to makes all the difference.

            When it came to editing, the biggest struggle was not being able to do the things that sounded easy in each person’s head to do. For example, if someone wanted to just trim their video and not their whole clip, there was no easy way that was discovered to just simply cut a clip. The clip needed to continue to be added and cropped down to where it was wanted every time. iMovie gets updates done on it all the time, but sometimes they seem to make things more difficult for its users. Also, making sure all the clips smoothed nicely together was another issue with editing because the requirement wanted two filters, music and transitions so it was a goal to make sure those worked together as well. No one can control how iMovie is created or updated, but it should not make anyone very nervous to use it to the point where they are unsure if the movie they have bene working on is going to be erased or not. Also, once each group was putting all the videos together, it was really nice that each group member took turns editing the video as a whole and contributing ideas.

            Using video as a form of communication instead of a writing piece or photographs gives the viewer a different perspective on what is being presented in front of them. It also gives the viewer a different feeling than writing and photographs could. When a person is watching a video, they are able to react a way they are watching actually move right in front of their eyes. For example, in a video clip, the way the performance given by the actor or the actress can make the viewers feel a certain type of way. If the actor is crying, if they give a good performance, the audience could be crying with them. A person reading or looking at pictures may not always have that same effect as a video can. An individual can feel emotion through a photograph or writing, but when someone is physically feeling pain right in front of their eyes it just seems more like the audience can relate or feels it all.

            Once the group came up with all different diverse ideas, it seems as though it changed everyone’s perspective of the video because beforehand it seemed as though everyone was dreading it and thought it was going to be really hard. It was actually the complete opposite. Once every person in the group stayed on top of what they were supposed to do, it made it so much easier for everyone to get things done. Also, it seemed as though when the group got the theme, it was thought that portraying that theme was going to be harder than the group anticipated. All of the videos each group member put together to flow nicely with one another’s ended up making the overall product even better. It also changed their way of thinking because they did not think how differently each person could portray that topic in different ways. But that was the point. The point was for each group member to have different ideas and then putting them all together to make sure the ideas did not clash and made sense leading up to the final product.

            The self-portrait experience was not as hard as each individual was expecting it to be. It did not end up taking up as much time as assumed and as long as each person planned out or knew what they wanted to do in each clip, it made the recording process go by so much faster. Although some shots had to be recorded a few times, having the general idea of what order each thing was going to be recorded in made it easier. Having the idea of what was going to be recorded and how it was going to be recorded made all the difference. Staying organized to record it helped make the recordings get done sooner.

            Unfortunately, Vine was shut down so the project has not been able to be posted on there. We had a couple misfortunes happen as well for the reasoning behind not being able to post them on social media. There was a snowstorm that occurred for about 48 hours which caused classes to lose time and not have enough time to learn how to upload them. There may be an opportunity to get to upload them, but other than that this topic cannot be commented on too much.

            This project was one of the more fun and different projects I have experienced because it was not like a normal research project that required a 35 pages of typed information. It was a different type of project where the goal is to make sure the audience understands the topic and agreeing that each theme flows together really well with the individual videos.