Xanga and my Extended version of the IE Map

By using Xanga and also creating posters to post on the streets where children returning home are likely to take, my message will be spread a lot further and have a stronger impression. The discription of Xanga is below.

XANGA

A website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. It is operated by Xanga.com, Inc., based in New York City, USA. Users of Xanga are referred to as "Xangans".

Xanga's origins can be traced back to 1998, when it began as a site for sharing book and music reviews. It has since then evolved into one of the most popular blogging/networking services on the web, with an estimated 27 million users worldwide. As of May 3, 2006, Alexa Internet rated Xanga the 21st most popular English-language website, and the 42nd most popular website in the world.

Here is a new map showing the nodes and connections I will be able to extend by using these new ideas. My message will be spread on geographical, institutional, and vertical dimensions. This will result in great increase (hopefully) in the number of people hearing my message.

Hello Class

Hi everyone. I have decided to use Xanga for my IE project. The link is on my Blogger "Kakko's Space" and you can jump to the site by clicking on "My IE Project" just under my profile picture on this page.

Feel free to leave comments! Thanks.

1. What is the central problem for citizens in democracies?
The problem is that it is difficult to actively spread your own words and ideas effectively in a society of millions of people.

2. What skills do citizens need?
They need skills to participate in the collective production and the circulation of political arguements.

3. What term does the author use to describe the process citizens use to promote their concerns about an issue?
"Issue Lattice"

4. What steps are the four steps in this process?
The vertical dimension, The geographic dimension,The Institutional dimension and TheIdeological dimension

p. 212-214
Write two of your own questions on the ideas and issues raised in this section. Lead a class discussion next session.

5. Which of the four dimensions will your strategy (which you had in mind before reading this text) of spreading your IE messege be catagorized in?

6. How could you apply all four dimensions on your IE? Also, how wider will your messege be spread out if you could use all four?

7. Based on the ideas and issues raised on these pages, what additions, deletions, or modifications suggest themselves to you in planning and implementing your Issue Entrepreneurship? Tell about your ideas.
My IE network idea was limited within only one step (the institutional dimention) involving the PTA of a small local school. In order to successfully deliver my message, I figured that I will need to think of a way to involve a whole lot more people using other steps as well. This reading gave me some new ideas.

My Second Attempt to Spread my Message

I have some good news and a bad news. Which to begin with? Well, since we all say "all is well that ends well", I guess we will start off with the bad news and then go onto the good ones.

:Announcement:
My messenger hog has officially ran away.
My 11 year old sister assumes that this tragic accident is due to the little respect I paid to the hog (my excuse is that I was extremely busy with mid-terms lately) and didnt spend much time taking care of him.


Although the good news is, I have finished delivering the message to all of my sister's class friends via Livly and asked them to pass the message along to their own friends in their Livly network, so my job here with the website was pretty much done. So now it is about time I made new plans to extend my network for passing my message along to an even wider range of people who are involved in this issue. In order to remind of myself of the possible communities I can get access to, I made a visual map of the networks I am linked to (related to the assignment).


My second plan is to get my message delivered through my high school 2nd year sister's community, and also my mom's PTA network which also involves the soccer club. I can pass around my message through the English class I teach as well. Since people in this target group don't use social websites, I am thinking of passing around my message through mobile phone email. I will need to make a chainmail in several variations with each of them aimed at different age groups.

Summary of Kahn and Kellner

February15, 2003 made us realize that the Internet has become a new tool for democracy. This was the day which the public demonstration of millions of people calling for peace was made. The demonstration was organized through the internet, and these kinds of online communities can promote democracy on a local scale, and also on a global scale. The internet is also utilized by capitalists and terrorists for instance, and thus can be a crutial problem and a threat. There are many different communities with various (sometimes opposing) ideas,　and they use the internet for their own advantage.　 Either way, the internet should be more concerned from a political viewpoint.