Sunday, September 19, 2010

Addiction to Facebook

It was interesting to observe a group of fourteen to seventeen year old Aboriginal boys and girls during the week. These are young leaders and the top academic students from the Eastern Goldfield College and High Schools in the Kalgoorlie region of Western Australia. They were visiting La Trobe looking at the facilities in case they decide to travel interstate to attend university. The immediate attraction from the moment they arrived was to get on the computer and access their Facebook site.

There were equal numbers of male and female students, numbering twenty in total. What I found interesting was that all the girls accessed their Facebook and spent almost all the time they had spare responding to it; however not one male touched the computer, preferring to sit around and chat. Is Facebook a predominent female activity? I had not noticed this gender disparity before and this question had me searching for the answers. In lectures most of the males seem to acknowledge they use Facebook or social media to stay in touch with their friends.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Crikey it's easy to get world news now

Looking across the world politics is much easier today than in previous years, but it has its problems for governments and newsmakers. Julian Assange is currently being pursued across the world by the United States administration for his 'WikiLeaks' leaks. http://www.crikey.com.au/  I decided to pursue the Assange story across the internet to see what else I might find about this story. In just a few moments I was reading about the claims Philip Shenon was making as well. He said even President Obama is asking for the allies (Britian, Germany, Australia and others) for help in tracking down and holding the elusive Afghan war 'leaker', Assange. http://www.thedailybeast.com//  It becomes even more intriguing to see the report expanded further in another site.http://www.mainjustice.com// At this site, claims were made by Leah Nylen that the Justice Department is working with the Department of Defence on probing who had leaked thousands of documents on the war in Afghanistan. The information is easily expanded by further links to http://www.bloomberg.com/news/, where Mahmoud Kassem claims the United States and Pakistan have dismissed portions of the documents. He gave the original reports of the leaks to The Guardian newspaper in Britian and Der Speigel magazine in Germany. In just these few moments I have been able to follow an interesting story story regarding the media. It is something unheard of a couple of years ago.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-28/attorney-general-holder-says-u-s-probing-leaks-of-afghanistan-documents.html
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/09/09/rundle-wikileaks-i-havent-seen-accusations-says-assange-as-plot-thickens/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-10/a-western-crackdown-on-wikileaks/?source=cmailer
http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/07/28/doj-probing-wikileaks-disclosure/