VasGk | Κοινωνικό Νερό

From the 7th to the 10th of April the Greek mainstream Media is on strike. This means that almost all journalists, reporters, technical staff and other people involved in the production and presentation of the news are not at their desks. Greek Journalists on Strike It's the first time, since I remember, that the Media strike lasts for longer than a day. When I first heard of the strike, I remembered writing this post back in June of 2010, explaining why the Greek Media is at a crucial point. " Greek media crisis ". Nothing much has changed since that post. The situation in the Greek Media is going from dire to ridiculous. Most of the traditional Greek Media do not want to know what is happening online.  An explosion of News Blogs, and News Portals, that are independently owned, are not taking part in the strike. Not to mention that some people get their news from twitter and facebook. Many Greek News Blogs keep posting updates, and most of the people I talked to ar...

Shimon Peres & Benjamin Netanyahu, in two different occasions, talked about the role of the Internet in the recent events throughout the Middle East. Peres at a Chatham House Conference: Sixty Years of British-Israeli Diplomatic Relations (30 March 2011), and Netanyahu in a recent YouTube interview (31 March 2011). Both messages carry the same principles. Peres said: It's actually a revolt without organizers. Nobody knows who organized it. It arrived from an unknown combination of sentiments and knowledge introduced to the younger generation by modern communication, the internet, smartphones, Facebook. For the first time, young people in the Arab world could have seen with their own eyes the ugly face of dictatorship, of corruption, of want. And they could have compared their lot with the lot of other young people in the world. And ask themselves why they're not here. And actually, it is really a revolt, unorganized, spontaneous, against autocracy, against oppressi...

I've been following what is happening in Libya these days, and I am not sure why this uprising has not been hailed as a Social Media or "facebook revolution". Although this sort of tagging is mostly planted by mainstream media, I am sure that in the aftermath of the middle-east happenings there will be a lot of analysis and even research on how the Internet played a part. In one of my past posts, I wrote on " The Internet and Social Media in #Egypt, how It really matters ". Saif al-Islam Gaddafi , the son of Muammar al-Gaddafi , on a recent speech to the Libyan people (February 20th) referred to some people that want to drag Libya into: "what happened in Tunisia and in Egypt and it started by facebook, emails and twitter and in their media campaign". In an article " Libyan dictator warns against use of Facebook " Emil Protalinski confirms what Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said. So, not only citizens know how Social Media impact t...

Sarah Palin released a video today on Vimeo (First time she utilized this video service) in response to the shootings in Tucson AZ. According to THEBLAZE.com (a site managed by Glenn Beck ) Sarah Palin has officially broken her silence and indirectly responded to criticism that she is somehow connected to the shootings in Tucson. According to CNN , the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner has been anecdotally regarded as very troubled and perhaps mentally unbalanced because of his ramblings spotted on the internet and the way he has been described by acquaintances. There have also been widespread rumours that Loughners' actions mirrored the Tea Party or the rise of right-wing activists in America. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin were named by some as the moral perpetrators to these despicable acts. Glenn Beck, from his TV and Radio shows, has defended himself, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, he also wrote a letter to Sarah Palin, to whitch she replied. Although they both need to go on t...

Writing about the Greek News Blogs in my last post, I started thinking about how the blogosphere interacts with the news and the mainstream media. I came across this very interesting clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. There are certain Blogs that just gossip around news shows, and are read mostly by people in the media: journalists, reporters and producers. Having these sort of Blog posts helps in recycling the news and recapping certain media highlights, but it becomes repetitive reading, that is only interesting to certain people, while loosing popular interest. Most of these media obsessed Blogs are written by people in the industry that just want to tease a reaction, or capitalize on the celebrity status or fame of a TV presenter or journalist, just to get some hits and get their Blog noticed. The Blogs Must Be Crazy The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c The Blogs Must Be Crazy www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humo...