Monday, January 29, 2007

Saving the screen with news

As I will discuss in one of my forthcoming papers and articles, the internet should no longer be considered to be a homogeneous medium. I suggest, together with some other scholars, to tread the internet as a technical infrastructure that holds various different types of news media. A news item covered by a 'regular' news website looks different when compared to the publication on a news blog of trough RSS. Instead of speaking in terms of the internet as news medium, is suggest it is better to tread websites, rss-feeds, news blogs, discussion boards, usenet, ... as different news media with, apart from the possible differences in content, a specific structure and organisation.

When doing research in this interesting domain, I often discover some unknown types of news media. One of the first was the 'nieuwskraker', a service that makes it possible to chat with a news bot that provides you with the most recent news through MSN. Type 'Belgium' and the nieuwkraker gives you all the relevant Belgian news. The only disadvantage is that this is a Dutch service (De Volkskrant) so that only the very important Belgian news is covered. But it is for sure a new way of getting the news on the computer, especially for kids.

Today, I also discovered the 'news by screensaver'-service of Gazet van Antwerpen. Somewhere hidden between the multiple whistles and bells, this service caught my attention. I have no idea how long this service is already available, but I already know that I regret having installed it. After a break, I usually install myself before my computer and continue with what I was doing. But instead of moving the mouse and move on, a screen saver with lots of relevant and less relevant stuff now begs me to click on a link. Of course I want to know the latest gossip about Britney Spears!! So I click and click and click ... news is addictive, even it is pushed by a silly screen saver. After this blog post, I will definitely uninstall it.

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