This week, Professor Gill poses the questions: What are social media?  How have they changed the relationship between media outlet and audience?
            I would like to address the arena of social media called Facebook.  Facebook has added a whole other dimension of relationship between media outlets and audiences.  This new format of media have widened the two way street of accessibility between media outlets and audiences.  Media outlets can gather and disseminate stories more quickly and easily through this new social media form and audiences can access, absorb, and even provide stories in the same way.    

For example, a recent news story states that Facebook profiles have been under watchful eyes of employers looking for new hires.  Recent graduates have been encouraged to clean up their profiles meaning removing any suggestions of foul behavior, alcohol, crude lingo, scandalous pictures, revealing clothing etc.  It amazes me that this new form of social media provides employers with an entirely new screening process for job applicants.  I experienced this when I was applying to Komo 4 TV for an internship last year.  I was invited to “befriend”, or allow viewing access of my profile, to one of the past interns in the office.  I had never met this other intern before and it was obvious that they were befriending me to prescreen my professionalism for the older bosses of the office who were not Facebook members.  Stories found in and about Facebook are more prevalent forcing the media outlets to have a hand on the pulse of this new social media. 

Other keen examples of Facebook’s impact on media outlets are the cases of Amanda Knox, a University of Washington student being held in a murder investigation in Italy and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer sex scandal with a New Jersey prostitute by the name of Ashley Alexandra Dupre.  Both of these women in the two stories were hounded on social media outlets like Facebook including MySpace and YouTube for information and evidence to the identities of these two mysterious women.  Anything that the public posts on these new social media outlets is fair game for media outlets and the broader viewing audience.  In conclusion and in connection to the reading this week, “The Web created a new ecosystem.”

- Are new social media mediums providing a positive or negative outlet for media outlets and audiences?

- Is there a line to be drawn in terms of access and privacy on these new social media forms?