video game and free speech

If you have kids, you may be concerned about the potential negative influences on you kids' cognitive or behavioral development. If so, do you agree with a law that makes it illegal to sell violent video games to minors?

California in 2005 made such a law:

California’s law imposes fines of up to $1,000 on retailers that sell violent video games to anyone under 18. To qualify, a game must, as a whole, lack serious literary artistic, political or scientific value for minors.

It was ruled as against the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court reviewed it this year again.

The New York Times wrote an editorial hoping that "the law is unconstitutional" based on the notion video games are a form of free expression. The editorial ends with:

California lawmakers may have been right when they decided that video games in which players kill and maim are not the most socially beneficial form of expression. The Constitution, however, does not require speech to be ideal for it to be protected.

Facebook...Addict?

CD
Facebook:
What Is Facebook Addiction?


A funny outlook on Facebook Addicts, and possibly a way to tell if you are one?

Twitter Usage in America 2010

The Edison research group found American people's Twitter use patterns.

Here are key findings:

1. Awareness of Twitter has increased to 87% from 5% in 2008.
2. 17 million people are active Twitter users.
3. 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.

The full report can be found here, where you can also watch a video presentation.

Role of online newspapers' message forums

According to a recent study in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, entitled "Virtual Community Support for Offline Communities Through Online Newspaper Message Forum,"participation in online forums of US newspapers can increase participants' perception that they understand local communities better.

Associate Professor Jack Rosenberry at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY conducted a survey of 538 participants in message forums at the 80 local newspapers. Even though this study found the positive relationship between forum participation and better perception on community, such participation in online forums was not related to getting out and taking part in real-world community activities.

These findings indicate that online newspapers' forum can have "a mobilizing influence' but also imply that participants' engagements were more reflected by their existing social relationships and community involvement than the online community.

For more details, please go to here in which you can also download a PDF file of this research article.

Do you think that online information or communication behavior can lead to other acts on offline activities?

Media surfaces: Incidental Media from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Would you pay for New York Times on the Web?

Jan. 20th 2010, The New York Times Company announced that it will charge online readers for access to NYTimes.com.

"Starting in January 2011, a visitor toNYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the print newspaper, even those who subscribe only to the Sunday paper, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge."

Many media analysts and scholars agree that it is time to figure our a new economic model of news business in the digital media ecology. It is known that 17 million readers a month in the U.S. visit NYTimes.com, but I am not sure how many of them would pay the online subscription fee.

However, what is clear is that the subscription-based, advertising-driven mode of the traditional media business is no longer effective and efficient.

Are you ready to pay online news content?

New blog for the media

This looks like a great idea. The PBS people have started up a shiny new blog dedicated solely to the creation of a new kind of media, in particular, news media. MediaShift Idea Lab exists to generate ideas regarding the best ways to pursue the most innovative and creative use for new media. Often experienced individuals in the media community are reluctant, if not sometimes downright refusing, to embrace newer kinds of content creation, so it's reassuring that the established PBS conglomerate is willing to help underscore the rise of new media.
"MediaShift Idea Lab is a group weblog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age. Each author won a grant in the Knight News Challenge to help fund a start up idea or to blog on a topic related to reshaping community news. The authors will use Idea Lab to explain their projects, share intelligence and interact with the new-media community online," the blog's About page reads.
That's not to say that the old guys don't have a point... the saying goes you get what you pay for, and if journalists are giving it away for free... perhaps the fee scale will push them into extinction. At least that's what the Newsosaur says.
Let the games begin.