Virtual Worlds and Social Media

About Me!
I'm a twenty year old from Denver, Colorado who goes to college in Nashville, Tennessee and is now studying abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. Confusing, I know. Though where I'm living may change constantly, some things about me never change. I love song lyrics, running, and food blogs. When I shop I always want to buy sweaters, and I bake when I'm having a bad day or am bored. Although it sounds cliche, friends and family are my life. Seriously. And they are the reason why I've created this blog :)


I'm blogging my way through my experiences here and am using this site as a way to record everything I see and experience (or at least the things worth sharing). I hope you enjoy it!




American Assumptions
Though I could go on forever telling stories about how I've purchased the wrong groceries because I couldn't understand the label or about how every Dane seems to know that I'm an American immediately, there is one story that happened within the first two days here that encompasses all of these struggles. On the first night here Dane, our RA (Residential Advisor), told my roommates and me that in order to get to school we would have to take the bus labeled "6A" everyday. However, in the overwhelmed/mesmerized state that all of us girls were in, we really weren't listening to his instructions. So, naturally, when the time came the next day to return home from a meeting at school one of my roommates recalled that Dane had told us to, "Take the 5A bus home". Being a typical girl, I knew that Dane had told us to take the 6A bus but chose not to speak up for fear of being rejected (of course). After waiting at the bus stop for a couple minutes, eight American girls hop on the bus with our passes that cover two "zones" of the city and start what we believe is our quick trip home.


One of my definite God-given gifts is a natural sense of direction. My dad loves maps and, though I've teased him endlessly, I have grown fond of them as well. So, with this gift, I quickly realized that we were going the wrong way on the bus but chose not to say anything (again, for fear of rejection) and assumed that the bus would take a complete loop around the city and drop us back off at the stop we originally got on (I've now learned that some American commonalities do not apply here). After about fifteren minutes of riding, we all had agreed that we were on the wrong bus. However, unfortunately, we found ourselves in "zone 3" (cue the horror music), got off the bus, and waited. Thirty minutes, an awkward language barrier, and ten dollars later, we made it home. Don't worry, CPH bus system, we'll be friends one of these days.

Ida Auken: A Fashion Forward, Social Media Using Icon

When our class arrived at Parliament on Wednesday morning, I thought the woman who we followed to our meeting room was an assistant to Ida Auken. Turns out, I was wrong. Way wrong. The young looking, fashion-forward woman who we followed through Parliament was, in fact, Ida Auken herself. Once again, my American assumptions got the best of me. However, I do think that my assumptions are not to be completely ignored. Instead, I’ve found that my assumptions are integral to, what I believe, makes Ida’s social media strategy both the weakest and the strongest. Her accessibility.

One of Ida’s major points in her discussion with us was that she updates all of her social media channels herself. No assistant, intern, or friend writes her tweets, blog posts, or Facebook status updates. Impressive, right? As an American, I wish that I could say that our politicians did this. I think it shows a dedication to the masses and what they have to say. It gives them a voice in Parliament. However, what I’ve found is most problematic about this is the fine line between being a professional and a normal Dane. Although politicians are a voice for the common person, I think it’s important for them to also be professional. For example, on her website the order of links on her page is: Home, Blog, About Ida, Environment and Climate, Photo, Contact. Since her occupation is the main reason for her website, I think that her policies and beliefs should be one of the first things mentioned. This would keep the focus on what she supports and wants to implement, which is most important, rather than her blog. But, of course, this is something everyone is interested in as well. Which brings me to Ida’s greatest strength: her reachability.

I think Ida’s ability to keep up with the quickly moving and changing world of social media serves adds both a competitive edge and meaning to her job. She is able to hear what her followers have to say, what they want, and attempt to implement these things all during a meeting through Facebook and Twitter. Definitely something that I wish we could have in the United States. Especially with Denmark’s small population, it is really possible for an individual to be heard and for a politician to respond to their concerns and suggestions. This is definitely a perk to the country’s size because it is not a luxury that we have in the United States. Ida has the ability to personally respond to a large majority of what is most important: her followers. It is this ability, I believe, that will ultimately make Ida a very successful politician. As long as she can walk the line between her accessibility and professionalism, Ida’s future looks bright. And it would look even brighter if she gave me some European fashion advice…           


Giddens Post
From Anthony Giddens’ article one particular quote really stood out to me:

“Yet because of the ‘openness’ of social life today, the pluralisation of contexts of action and the diversity of ‘authorities’, lifestyle choice is increasingly important in the constitution of self-identity and daily activity” (p. 5)

Giddens point here is interesting and when I read this I immediately think of Facebook (Of course. I relate everything to Facebook. Who doesn’t?). I think about how our entire lives are plastered all over the internet, giving us what Giddens calls a "plural context". We are given multiple platforms to present ourselves to the world, making every single choice we make visible. Not only our lifestyle choices, but everything that we are and want to be is posted onto the web, which is why I agree with Giddens completely. The choices that I make daily are posted onto social media, adding weight to everything I do. Scary. If I drink a beer, a picture of me with that beer could be on Facebook the next day, removing our ability to censor the decisions we make. So I am constantly faced with the same question: Would I want my grandma to see this tomorrow?

Journalism: A field doomed for failure?

When I think journalism I think newspapers. I think of my dad, sitting on the plane with the Wall Street Journal opened so wide it’s reaching into my seat. For me, journalism represents a sense of nostalgia. The joy of flipping a page and looking at the colorful map of the United States with the weather forecast on the back. And the sports section, where my name would occasionally appear for a goal I scored in a high school field hockey game. For these reasons, the seemingly grim future for the field of journalism scares me.

But why? Why is a physical paper, whose pages I can turn, feel so important to me? After watching “Page One” and meeting Pernille Tranberg I feel conflicted. The traditional side of me wants to hold onto the past. It’s not just the physical newspaper that I want to hold on to, but also the trustworthiness of those who write for them. How do I know that I can trust an article that I find through Google? I don’t always believe I can. In “Page One” I watched David Carr and Brian Stelter go through the very detailed process of writing a journal article. It is this process that makes me trust the articles in papers like The New York Times. However, at the same time, this long, drawn out process is proving to be the journalism industry’s biggest downfall.

The idea of the consumer and their desires was briefly addressed in the documentary, which is really what is changing the field of journalism. The United States (and much of the rest of the world) has become a society that wants instant gratification from every aspect of life. Whether it be food, money, or news we want what we want. And we’ve been trained to think we need it immediately. It is for this exact reason that I believe that newspaper sales are declining. Rapidly. If a news story breaks we want to know about it the moment after it happens, we don’t want to wait 24 hours to hear about it in print. We want to read about it on Twitter, Facebook, and websites like cnn.com. Why wait an entire day to read about a story when we read about it instantly online?

Pernille brought up an interesting point that I had never thought about but completely agree with. She says that in the future journalism will need to become more of a hobby instead of a career path. There will be less staff reporters, more freelancers, and that news aggregators will replace individual newspapers. It is this prediction that both soothes and intensifies my fear of the disappearance of newspapers. Maybe those trustworthy journalists who currently bring me the news that I rely on will still exist, just in different capacities. But yet there is still the image of my dad and me on the airplane, with the Wall Street Journal, and I feel tradition slipping away before my eyes.